Confirming long-held suspicions, a new study suggests that the mere thought of baseball can remove your passions for pretty much everything and make even the most intense experiences seem mundane and joyless.
Recently published research led by Dr Ricardo Zapata out of the Clinical Psychology Program at Northwestern University strongly suggests that for all studied desires, urges, and cravings, thinking about baseball has a significant and universal dampening effect.
“We believe that just the thought of baseball curbs the involuntary release of most biological and behavioral urges,” Zapata said. “Anyone who has sat through a complete 9-innings knows what I’m talking about. You just can’t feel good after that experience.”
While the exact mechanism of the “thinking about baseball” effect warrants further study, Dr Zapata is convinced that pondering about our national pastime disrupts any need for satisfaction by overwhelming the sympathetic nervous system with tiresome monotany thus completely severs the link between stimulation and reward.
Due to the strong evidence presented by Zapata’s research group, the application of this effect has already begun to show practical results in practical trials and may be used as the next therapy fad for sexual predators and violent offenders.
For example, recently convicted serial killer Trevor Richard Ferguson admitted that the therapy based on this research is working. He said that thinking about the fielding of Chicago Cubs rookie shortstop Starlin Castro completely dampened his compulsion for taking the lives of at least a dozen runaway prostitutes and may have even contributed to his turning himself in.
“It got to where it would take me forever to finish off these people,” Ferguson said about his thinking-about-baseball therapy. ”I just wasn’t up for it anymore.”
Before this phenomenon was studied by Zapata’s team, thinking about baseball was widely known amongst men as a way to repress one of the most common and troublesome urges, that of actually wanting to watch the game of baseball.
“I used to want to watch baseball all the time,” said Philip Mosley, a 19-year old student at Northwestern University. But then Dr Zapata set up a controlled environment with a couch, a high definition TV, and a remote control and had him think about baseball.
Mosley said that baseball thoughts not only completely removed any desire to watch baseball, it was most effective when he was at his most passionate about wanting to watch the game and just about to lose control and turn on ESPN.
“Frankly, I haven’t wanted to watch the game ever since,” Mosley said.
Its application has been further validated in, of all places, actually playing the game of baseball and is credited by St Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa with ending a five game losing streak this last July.
“We were just plodding through this unbearable game that seemed like it would never end,” La Russa said. “Then I heard about this study and I told my boys to stop thinking about baseball. The moment we did, we exploded all over the San Francisco Giants, won our game, and the whole tedious experience ended.”
La Russa believes he will be able to use this technique in a variety of circumstances –like extending a nice hitting streak– but for now he is going to have his team think about Jessica Biel for a while and approach the remainder of the season one quick unsuppressed game at a time.
Zapata’s has been asked if thinking about baseball might even delay sexual gratification. Zapata believes that theoretically it might work.
“I’ve never even considered that,” he said. “I suppose I could ask the department faculty if this phenomenon could be applied to the act of –oh who am I kidding, they would have no idea.”
JB Goodbody frequently has thoughts in his head that makes him smile. Were they made public at the moment they poofed into existence, without some form of structured outlet such as satire, these thoughts would cause significant distress among his friends, family and coworkers. This is why he is here. 
