Fair or not, plenty of people have a tendency to classify baseball as borderline monotonous.

Todd Frazier is not one of those people.

And that's not only because he happens to play third base for the New York Mets.

Besides representing Major League Baseball for more than seven years, remember, the 32-year-old New Jersey native all but began making a living on the diamond, well, before he was old enough to even make a living. Years before his two trips to the All-Star Game, his trade to the New York Yankees, his 40-home-run season with the Chicago White Sox, his half-decade with the Cincinnati Reds and even his selection in the MLB Draft, Frazier was famous for his age-12 role in the 1998 Little League World Series championship -- a title game he started with a lead-off homer and ended with a clinching strikeout.

For Frazier, baseball has never been boring. (And how could it be when you're in middle school and get recognized alongside Derek Jeter?)

For him, baseball has always been about one thing in particular: Having fun.

"That's the only thing, to be honest with you," Frazier said in a phone interview.

It's why, in between a 162-game season with the Mets, just as important to him as correcting New York's slide from an 11-1 start is teaching today's future Todd Fraziers that fun is what the game's all about -- and that it takes some effort to experience.

In July alone, he had at a clinic at the Mets' Citi Field, where he reunited with Little League teammates, then partnered with Canon for a camp in New York City. Both stops were in the name of getting kids up, active and, most of all, putting themselves in a position to "instill lasting memories" and fall in love with baseball like he did.

"I like having kids outside," he said at Citi Field, "because ... no more video games, no more indoor stuff -- you get outside and just try and figure out a fun game to play."

Without that attitude, Frazier probably would never have been the 5-foot-2 star of the 1998 Little League championship -- a title run he admits he still thinks about "all the time," especially once August rolls around.

He also probably wouldn't be talking up the early prospects of his son, Blake, breaking into the majors. Not only is his boy already experimenting with some left-handed stuff, but he's apparently adept enough to make his dad's business partnerships look cool along the way, using Canon's new handheld printer to take action shots of himself on the field.

Oh, and he's only four.

"He just got his first Little League trophy in tee ball," Frazier said with a laugh over the phone. "And I didn't even teach him how to hit yet. This is his own thing. If I teach him my swing, he won't make it."

Without his fun-first attitude, Frazier probably wouldn't still be doing what he does, either.

He's had plenty of career motivations -- starring at the Home Run Derby, reuniting with Jeter, becoming "one of just a couple guys to say they played for both" of MLB's prestigious New York markets. He's also had plenty of career challenges -- being traded twice, enduring his first hamstring injury in 2018 and struggling to break baseball's dramatic increase in strikeouts.

"I think the pitching's gotten a lot better," he said. "They're throwing 95-plus with 10 to 15 inches of movement, and we're trying our best, but ... as hitters, maybe we need a new two-strike approach? We're playing against the best pitchers in the world, so there's no real answer yet."

What's never left him, though, beneath the highs of Derby slams and the lows of unhittable pitching, is the same mission he preaches to the kids: Have fun.

"As a young kid, it's tough when you fail, because you take everything so seriously, and it's the end of the world," he said. "But have as much fun as possible."

In fact, as it pertains to his current job responsibilities, like helping the Mets catch up to their 2018 -- wait for it -- Little League Classic opponent, the rival Philadelphia Phillies, Frazier thinks a turnaround could mostly boil down to something as simple as that. Learning to string together hits against this year's daunting pitching matchups would help, of course, but so would, according to the third baseman, the kinds of "little things that make you a better team and teammate" -- things like card games and dinner parties away from the field.

Just look at the Phillies. Frazier gives credit to their first-year manager, Gabe Kapler, for helping right the ship in Philly, but it's also obvious to him they're playing the game the way he knows best.

"They just play," he said. "They don't worry about nothing. They just play."

It's a vibe he knows he'll always bring to his own clubhouse.

And whatever it is, it's not monotonous.