The other day my father and I were discussing one of our favorite father/son topics – the New York Yankees – and he made a comment that seems ridiculously obvious and yet we baseball fans continue to forget it each and every year.
He said: “There are always three seasons within the season. The beginning, when everybody has hope, the one you think you’re getting and the one you actually end up with.”
What he meant, of course, is that the baseball season is so long, there will inevitably be enough subplots and narrative shifts to fill even the most epic of Russian novels. Tolstoy would be proud.
And though I think my father’s comment is trenchant – one look at the Yankees’ “We’re going to be great-we stink-we are great” campaign is enough to prove the axiom – I think there’s an even more relevant comparison that the sports columnists overlook but the poets must resurrect.
The baseball season is like falling in love.
Maybe it’s hard to remember now, especially if the last time you fell in love was 20 or 30 years ago. Married couples that have settled into comfortable domesticity may have forgotten the turbulence and unrest that often comes with falling into love, but let me remind them of the alternating spasms of hope and despair that often define the beginning of many love affairs.
Let’s take the aforementioned New York Yankees as an example, shall we?
For a team like the Yankees, the romance of spring is invigorating. Let’s put aside for a moment the incongruity of associating romance with a $200 million corporate entity and focus on the players and the game itself. I’m sure there’s a moment every spring where Joe Torre must want to pinch himself as he looks across the field and sees a collection of talent and professionalism unlike any other in baseball. ($200 million can buy a lot of professionalism.) Somewhere, beneath that placid exterior, he must be thinking, “I’m going to add another 100 wins to my managing resume before this season is said and done.” And when the record is 0-0, it’s intoxicating to think of all the possibilities that lie ahead, historic possibilities like scoring 1,000 runs or making the playoffs or, as is the case every year with the Yankees, winning the World Series. In the spring, all those things are only possibilities, but the potential for greatness is enough to excite even the most practical of managers, players and fans. It’s no coincidence that the expression is, “Hope springs eternal.”
It’s no different than the moment you realize you’re in love. It’s a startling realization in which one is suddenly buoyed by possibility, the possibility of not being alone, the opportunity to care greatly for the welfare of something outside of yourself, the potential to have someone with whom you can travel the earth. None of these things have happened yet but they are all possible and when love first hits, that is enough to motivate even the most jaded of hearts.
But no love affair – or baseball season – worth sticking around for stays clean all the way through. Even the 1998 New York Yankees trailed 2-1 in the American League Championship Series before winning their final seven playoff games against the Indians and Padres. Often though, the turmoil comes sooner than October. There are a multitude of examples. The ’78 Yankees trailing by 14 in August, the Miracle Mets of ‘69, the Miracle Bosox of 2004 (yuck!), the Bobby Thomson-led Giants of 1951. All these teams dealt with great adversity before becoming historical fixtures of baseball lore.
When my parents met way back in the early 20th century (sorry Mom and Dad), my father pursued my mother insistently as my mother steadfastly pushed away, dabbling with other boys, other romances, other ideas about how she wanted to live her life – she had even thought about joining the Peace Corps. When my father got frustrated and said he was finished with her, she was petrified at the thought of losing him and they were married shortly thereafter. Thirty-five years later, my father is still giving my mother romantic carriage rides around Disney World for her birthday. I’m not sure that happens if there aren’t some struggles along the way that made them recognize what they have, that forced them to fight for what they love.
As silly as the comparison sounds, the current edition of the Yankees – sitting at 37-41 a week before the All-Star Break – got scared. Then they got mad. And they’re probably a better team for it today, more closely-knit and unwilling to revisit the abyss that was the first half of their season.
I’m not sure how this season will turn out for the Yankees, just as every love affair is perpetually undecided. A lover can decide at any moment to walk out, even when things appear to be good, and that right there is both the joy and suffering of being alive. Nothing is ever finally decided, unlike in sports where there is one winner and a whole bunch of losers. But the process toward achieving something – love, comfort or a World Series ring – is startlingly similar, a lesson for sports nuts that sometimes the ecstasy is in the process and not the end result.
It may seem frivolous to compare falling in love with baseball. After all, one is essential to our existences, to our aching and passionate search for something that truly matters and it encompasses all our most heart-wrenching vulnerabilities. The other is just a game. But the point here is that baseball is a romantic game. It’s played through summer nights under the lights in every big city and small town in America. It’s played by 10-year-olds and 60-year-olds. And even in the professional realm, there is an innocence, an enthusiasm that can remind us of what is truly worthwhile in life.
Baseball is the poet’s game. Or maybe, more accurately, it is the novelist’s game. It tells a long circuitous story that is rarely what it seems to be during its initial pages. It is a metaphor for what matters, as long as you stop worrying about wins and losses and start enjoying the moment.
Tonight, go watch a baseball game. Or better yet, fall in love. They’re both good for you.