Rain-out Meanderings

Well, Destiny, we got you yesterday: even the Cubs can’t lose when it rains.



(Now, if you could just clear things up for the next few days I would appreciate it, since I’ll be at Wrigley for three of the next four, starting today in the sleet and wind. At least I won’t be stuck with Len & Bob’s broadcast.)



When it rains. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains. Think about that for a while." Crash Davis & Ebby LaLoosh, I am thinking about that, and if you’ll bear with me a while, I’d like to meander for a bit about how baseball is where Aristotle meets non-western philosophy and mysticism, and then tie it in with some thoughts about women. It’s a meandering I’ve been meaning to write on a rain delay for a while, and this seems like the chance. Footnote 1



Actually, let’s start with women.

* * *

I wrote the other day about casual fans, and the way that baseball has perpetuated some of its problems by marketing to these fans. I don’t mean to sound self-righteous, because I don’t think my attitude is self-righteous; I just think that you get more if you give more, and if someone doesn’t want to put in that much, that’s their business. I hope it doesn’t feel self-righteous, anyway, because I don’t think I’m a better fan; it’s not about being a better fan, it’s about how much of a fan you want to be. We all have to figure out that balance with baseball, and with anything really. There’s only time in this life for so many passions, so we should choose them carefully. For the fair weather fans, or the fans that like the party, or that like the spectacle of the ballgame, if they can use baseball as a release -- however brief –- more power to them, because we all need those releases or our minds atrophy.

I just happen to think that baseball is one passion that’s worth it. A good list of passions to start might be baseball, music, literature, and women -- the ordering depends -- but maybe that’s just me. It’s just that these are the arenas that challenge and humble me enough to help me get in the right mindset to start figuring out how I want to approach my life – how to avoid wasting the hours.

Still, I do have to say that one positive side effect of the casual fan campaign is the women it brings to the ballpark. If I’m right that Wrigley Field became the best party to be at, well we’re all familiar with a certain type of girl that just has to be at that party, and frankly she will look great. I was in the bleachers a few weeks ago with my friends Joel & Bob, and we all remembered one particular girl that was in the bleachers during a game we were at last year. She definitely stood out, even 9 months later.

On the other hand, after going to a dozen games or so each season at Wrigley the last 4 years, I’ve started to think that every year, the girls at Wrigley start to look the same. It’s not to say that they look bad, because they usually look good, but they just start to lose their identity. Every year there’s a style of sunglasses that they all wear. Every year there’s a style of shirt they wear. Every year there’s a hairstyle they wear. By the time I’m drunk and I’m out at the bar, where it’s dark and my vision is fuzzy, all the girls I notice out of the corner of my eye seem to remind me of someone I kind of know because they all start to resemble each other. It’s funny how “Don’t I know you?” became such an overused pickup line because now I understand how a guy might use it and mean it. I don’t mind this conformity when I get to watch them, and I’m certainly glad when fan cam highlights them for me on TV, but past that?

It’s disheartening at times, because I kind of want to find a woman that likes baseball enough when I start looking for a wife in a few years. I’d really like to marry a woman that is willing to keep score for me for an inning while I go take a leak and buy a few more beers. A woman that can fill me in on what happened. She doesn’t even have to pay attention the whole game, just that one inning when I have to piss. I only know one woman that knows how to keep score, and I just found this out last weekend. She’s been one of my closest friends for 7 years, and one of the few women I’ve trusted as a confidante, and now I figure it’s probably not coincidence that I like her so much and that she can score a baseball game. It’s just consistent personality traits.

A woman at a client of my company noticed my sunburn from the bleachers, and her eyes lit up when I told how I earned it. When she was younger, they used to love going to Cubs games and partying. In fact, her sister met her husband at the Cubby Bear after a game, and they’ve been married for years now. I’m sure there are lots of stories like this.

So are there women out there that can score an inning of a ballgame? Is there one among the throng of hot look-alikes that shares my passion for the game? But before I answer that, let me explain what might be my unique style of passion for the game, because it’s wrapped up in a lot of other tangents.

The question at hand is whether all the time we spend on baseball is worth it, and I think it’s appropriate today as I’m gearing up to head over to Wrigley to freeze my ass off.

A lot of people don’t like Bull Durham, where the earlier quote comes from, usually because they argue that it falls under the heading of a chick flick. I suppose it is, but my counterargument is that I don’t know how you could make a movie like that and not have a thread of romance winding through it. It’s all wrapped up. Someone on the type of journey that Crash Davis is on with baseball absolutely also has to be on a parallel journey in other aspects of his life. The shortened version of this is Martin Sexton’s idea that “in the journey / there is no destination.” I can’t speak for baseball players and their goals to win the World Series, but for those of us that otherwise engage the game, at some point we have to come to terms with the fact that there is no end goal in sight for all this work. For me, I have to recognize that even though we’re going to win the World Series this year, there’s still a chance that I might be logging 1400 innings a year on a team that won’t win the World Series any time soon. And when they win the world series this year, is that it? Won’t I just start with them at game 1 again next year? So what’s the point?

It’s sort of a paradox: the goal of any worthwhile journey is unattainable, but from the outside you see that it’s only in pursuing this goal that you achieve the goal of creating a good journey.

I’m no expert -- in fact I’ve hardly done more than dabble with a little bit of reading -- but I think this is one of the core ideas that’s involved with non-western philosophies like Sufism & Taoism and so on. With Sufism, one summary writes that “A Sufi takes an inner journey to attain the knowledge of Self, a knowledge that leads towards the understanding the Divine. A journey towards understanding such truth will necessarily involve steps, one has to pass through stations of learning, awareness and understanding. One must learn the rules, disciplines and practices. One does not become a Sufi without honoring the rules of the Path.” Understanding the Divine might not be possible in this life, but putting in effort pursuing understanding of the Divine might be a way to live a good life. There are no casual Sufis.

It’s also something that goes back to Aristotle, I think. His concept of virtues was such that we develop them in the honest pursuit of the good life, and acquiring and using them help us live the good life, but we can’t really judge this until after someone dies, and we can never judge this ourselves. You can learn how to be honest, and then you can practice being honest, but you can’t really say that you were an honest person all the way to the end until after it’s over. We’re all on a journey, and the best we can do is to continue trying to improve ourselves, hopefully enjoying the journey along the way. It’s that sense of engaging baseball that keeps drawing me in further. I think Aristotle would have liked baseball, because of the level of effort required to try to master it, mastery being a goal which is ultimately impossible but the pursuit of which is infinitely rewarding.

Lao Tzu seems to be getting at this in the Tao Te Ching:

50
In the journey of life and death,
three in ten will live a long life,
three in ten will die before their time.
There are also three in ten will survive from the extreme dangerous situations.
Why is this so?
Because they know the ways of surviving.
Who knows how to preserve his own life,
will not meet rhinoceros or tigers in traveling,
will not be wounded in battle.
Because, rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
tigers no place to use their claws,
weapons no place to pierce.
Why?
Because, he will not place himself into those situations.


51
Teh (virtue) arose from Tao, nourishes everything.
It gives rise to form, body, and individual fulfillment.
Thus, everything respects Tao and values Teh.
The high honor of Tao, the high value of Teh,
are inner values from themselves, not from our valuing them.
Therefore, Teh arose from Tao is able to care for, repress, or destroy.
It gives lives, but not possesses them.
It nourishes them, but not rules over.
This is the Primal Virtue.

Listen: I don’t mean to hyperbolize the significance of baseball. Baseball is not mystic, even if it is. Even if Annie Savoy talks about the “ church of baseball” it’s not like I’m saying that through baseball we can find spiritual enlightenment. Still, on a smaller scale, we can approach baseball with a similar attitude if we focus on how it’s a part of our lives over a long stretch of time. It can be a worthwhile part of the open-ended journey each of us is on. I can’t think of a single non-spiritual practice to engage in this way that’s better than being a baseball fan. With all of its history, its complexity, its nuance, its possibility, its action…you can’t help but stay on your toes, which is the best way to face ahead.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that I’m full of shit. I’m pretty sure I’ll come home in a few hours and I’ll be either a) freezing or b) drunk or c) both of the above, and I’ll wonder what the hell I was talking about. Is baseball worth it? I guess I’ll find out 50 or 60 years from now when I’m preparing to die and in that moment I can decide whether the things I spent hours and hours on were worthwhile for my life. I just figure that if baseball isn’t worth it, I don’t know what is.



Footnote 1: I’ve been writing meanderings since 1999, usually 3 or 4 a year. They’re kind of like essays, where I try to avoid structure and just move from point to point with more of a conversational flow. A lot of times points come from way out in left field. I know some people don’t like the style very much, so if you’re one of them, I hope it doesn’t turn you off to the site. But I’m doing it anyway. Hell – it’s a rain out, after all, and a full moon, and well what can I say?