Step Right Up To the Plate and Earn Your Paycheck

Do you make sure to tap all the dirt from your spikes with your bat, even if it takes two full-length TV time-outs for you to do so? Do you cross yourself once, twice, thrice, or perhaps fidget and fiddle with the letters on your uniform, no matter that they're sewn on so tightly that Superman himself couldn't budge 'em? Do you rub your hands together vigorously enough to make 'em bleed, perhaps because you've just spit into them in the on-deck circle? Do you take myriad cumbersome practice swings with three weighted bats, flinging them aside to wave the feathery club remaining menacingly as you turn to face the pitcher? Do you dance and prance to some hip melody, like an apprentice snake- charmer, as you approach the plate, inviting fans to heap trashloads of scorn and abuse on the batting helmet perched atop your fashionably overlong hair? Or do you stride to the plate purposefully without all of that fussing and fumbling, or all that commotion, to focus on doing what batters have historically tried to do, which is to hit the tarnation out of that little round ball zooming toward them at upwards of 90 m.p.h? ---Well, if that's what you do, then I am sure you're not a major-league player: They earn their $4.5 million annual paychecks by doing all that other stuff.