Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine...

This is true of every sport, and a lot of other things. If you want to enjoy a sport and leave it that then play it, bu don't think too much about it.

But if you want to truly become great at any sport, it comes to repetition. Can you do the same thing however many times out of ten which qualifies as a success? That involves working on the fundamentals, working on form, working on accuracy and conditioning. You have to be willing to go out and work, not necessarily perform but slog through the same exercises over and over and over until it becomes second-nature. I've been a machine before, it takes a lot to continue to enjoy something when you're in that state.