#11: Fall Baseball

On the East Coast, the glory of fall is stunning. Trees burn in technicolor, issuing flames that herald resurrection instead of doom. It is not a forest fire; it is the world, changing.

And if you love baseball, this season is also the best season. It brings us the playoffs for the World Series, even though the world in question is just America. (Meanwhile, the actual world series—in that it pits countries against each other—gets all the excitement of a khaki pant: “World Baseball Classic.”)

The playoffs run from early October through the first days of November and have three rounds—Wild Card, Division Championships, League Championships—that culminate with the winners of the League Championships playing against each other the World Series. (The 30 Major League Baseball teams are slotted into one of two leagues—National or American—then one of three geographic divisions within that league: Central, East, West.)

With October looming, games at the end of September take on a breathless fury, at least for teams with a fighting chance. (The Nationals are not one.) These are the games I love, with all their melodrama and crackling tension. Perhaps it’s inevitable: as Tennis sings in “Origins,” Sensitive heart, you’re doomed from the start.

Where “today” is Thursday, September 29—presented by Scotts. (Credit: MLB)

I have yet to convert my friends to baseball. Somehow, my strangled hisses of statistics (.315 BATTING AVERAGE) or facts (STRIDER CONSISTENTLY THROWS 100MPH+ FASTBALLS) or milestones (ALBERT PUJOLS HIT HIS 700TH HOME RUN; HE IS ONE OF FOUR PLAYERS TO EVER DO THAT) haven’t smashed through. Instead I get a lot of patient nods. Sometimes even: “Oh, wow! Is that…good?” 

The truth is, you can never convince anybody of what to love, or how. How do you explain what you can’t fully understand? “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation,” Mr. Darcy says in Pride and Prejudice, referring to his love of Elizabeth Bennett. “It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

I didn’t care about baseball until 2019, when the megawatt energy surrounding the Washington Nationals in the playoffs swept into my nervous system. Since then, I haven’t shut up about it, even though I recognize the occasional gulf between the game’s traditions and my own. 

Unlike most baseball fans—at least judging by what I’ve seen at games I’ve gone to—I am extremely uncomfortable that the American national anthem gets sung, sometimes with skill, before each game. If we insist on calling it the World Series, and we do, why is God only blessing America? 

I don’t know if I believe in God, or a god, but I do know that if I eventually do, I want it to be one who hopes; who believes love really is boundless, not because it ignores or invades boundaries, but because the intention of love—the point of love—is to expand who we are. I am pieces of you, and you, and you you you: a litany of lives that have, in some form and with varying degrees of duration, intersected with mine.

(Credit: The Baseball Continuum)

And you know who gets that? Spencer Strider, that 100MPH+ pitcher. In an interview with Pitching Ninja, he explained how he approached his recovery, in his sophomore year of college, from Tommy John surgery. (Because of what they do, pitchers are notoriously susceptible to tearing their UCLs; the surgery, named after the first player to have it, reconstructs the UCL and has, on average, a year-long recovery period.)

Instead of trying to recreate his pre-surgery mechanics—which he realized were partially why he tore his UCL: bad pitch timing, poor hip direction—he essentially built himself from the ground up, incorporating techniques from pitchers, he said, “who were similar to me but didn’t get hurt.” He taped himself throwing, reviewing the tapes to see if his intention aligned with his execution; he watched a lot of YouTube videos. 

Years later, he can still tell which things he borrowed from which pitchers, and how he adapted them into his pitching. “That’s figuring out who you are, at its core, I think: trying to grow,” he said. “And you have to learn from other people to do that.”

When the pitching blatantly outmatches the gif quality. (Credit: Tenor)

Baseball stadiums generate two economies: the official one inside the ballpark, where a pretzel can cost $6.45 (with unlimited mustard!), and the informal community of entrepreneurs by the stadium gates. Over the summer, the ranks of the latter swell: they know people are hungry for nostalgia—three strikes and you’re out of the ball game, batter batter batter, crushed peanut shells and beer cans.

In Washington DC, Half Street SE serves as the illusive Americana Main Street for Nats Park. People spill out of the Metro exit; vendors greet them with cries for baseball hats sold in stacks of 10, COLD WATER COLD WATER, roasted peanuts. It’s unclear how vendors buy these items, and at what cost, but they appear at every game.

Drum bands beat rhythm into the atmosphere. Scalpers flash tickets, with an air of “I guess if you want to take me up on this, I’ll let you.” (It’s usually a dad and his son who do.) There are twenty somethings posing in front of the stadium, telling a friend how to get the right angle; as if the angle determined whether this photo would influence somebody else, or prove that the person had been influenced, and influenced correctly. 

And because the Nats have a stringent bag policy—WHAT THAT POLICY IS; GUARD HAS LAMINATED PAPER IN THAT SIZE—you witness heartbreak. Once I saw a few women show up with clutches apparently just two centimeters shy of the requirement; the guard turned them away. One woman said she’d come from out of town, couldn’t she just get in? The guard was unmoved.

Schmidt understands. (Credit: random Tumblr user, I salute you)

This week, I went to two games, two of the three in a series between the Nationals and the Atlanta Braves. Nothing mattered about the outcome for the Nationals; we’re in the middle of a “rebuild,” which means we suck but are supposed to. Young players get a chance to play without pressure: it’s a fun surprise if the team wins, or if a pitcher has a good outing, but when you’re 43.5 games behind the leader of your division, there’s a certain Fuck It energy that blooms.

Usually, Atlanta is my back-up team; right now, it’s my team. The possessive nature of fandom can be—often is—toxic, but it can also provide a fast lane to connection. Over the weekend, a friend and I were waiting at a bus stop when a trio of women asked if the bus would take them to St. John’s Episcopal Church. They were from Georgia, the woman with a close-cropped bob explained, and were taking a tour that started at the church.

Georgia? The Georgia? Were they also fans? I investigated. “Eddie Rosario was amazing in the World Series last year. You all are going to beat the Mets.” Then I lost all subtlety and said I LOVE ATLANTA AND SPENCER STRIDER IS AN AMAZING PITCHER AND SNIT IS GOING TO DO IT AGAIN!

It turned out they were fans. I was in love. And when we got on the bus, the bobbed woman twisted across her seat, so we could keep talking about baseball.

You’d never know some of these players are 6’5’'. (Credit: my phone)

That is the particular magic of baseball, a sport so invested in its own history that it has statistics for everything from batting averages to picked cherries like First Rookie to Have Three Hits and One Home Run and One Stolen Base in a Game (since 2005!)—it allows people to love stupidly, gloriously, in public, and have the numbers to back it up. 

And there’s also this, courtesy of the Atlanta Braves on Monday: Matt Olson hitting a home run that soared, first out of sight, then out of the stadium. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Eddie Rosario breaking their bats on contact, they hit the ball that hard. Bryce Elder, throwing the first shut-out game—and a full nine innings—of an Atlanta rookie since 1990. 

Then last night, Wednesday, in the crisp, cold and electric ballpark, they lost: 3-2. Not for lack of effort, but because effort alone does not equal control. That is obvious—and of course, most of us forget it. We break our own hearts and wonder why. It’s a lot to endure, life; it’s also all we’ve got.

“It’s one thing to do your work every day and work hard,” Spencer Strider said in his interview. “That’s one thing; that’s step one. But then it’s, ‘How do I focus on that and make it worth it?’”

Baseball is a love story, I told my acupuncturist on Monday, and he laughed.

What’s your small good thing of the week?

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A Continual Note of Gratitude

Like everything I write these days, this was written during sessions of The Writers’ Hour, an online hourly Zoom writing session hosted by the London Writer’s Salon. LWS is an online writing community so lovely and supportive that reminds me why I love writing in the first place.