The Sound of a Wave Crashing

The problem, Mr. H.S. Thompson, is that you never warned us that some waves crash earlier than others. And harder. And you were wrong that the peak never comes again. It always does, even if we will always be much too late in realizing what it is we’re witnessing. Maybe we’ll always think it’s bigger than it really is, but yet afterwards we’ll always know that it was bigger than it ever was.

     Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

     History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

     My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights--or very early mornings--when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

     There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were wining. . . .

     And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

     So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

--Hunter S. Thompson in Chapter 8 of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

If the Cubs had lost today, I was ready to write about how their wave is finally crashing, and maybe this lonely win makes no difference. They’re still minus 7 in a season where they need to be at least plus 2, and even when things go right these days rarely do several things go right at the same time. I suppose it’s safe to say that the magic of 2003 is gone. For good.

Maybe I was the only one still holding out, anyway. What can I say? A chump is a chump, and a chump who is also a romantic is probably even more of a chump than the rest.

Thompson captures so much in that passage that it resonates around my mind weeks after I finished re-reading the novel. It seems to me that what he was talking about is involved with the history of every American generation. That fantastic universal sense of right is why people moved out to the Suburbs, chasing that version of the American Dream of independence. Before that, it’s why our grandfathers enlisted, or why their fathers and grandfathers moved West. It’s why millions descended upon the lawn in Washington D.C. to listen to Dr. King. It’s why so many of my generation are moving back into gentrified downtowns, to experience and perpetuate the possibilities of the urban renaissance that we feel around us.

It’s about being a part of something bigger, and thereby knowing a sense of meaning, the kind of meaning that can’t be put into words exactly but involves the truth of experience. Maybe some people are just along for the ride, but there are also those of us who are spirited, and need outlets for those embers inside of us. Some of us want life to transcend ourselves. So, we look for those things that not only promise that transcendence, but also in fact deliver, even if nothing can ever deliver fully enough.

To some extent, it’s also why we love sports. Or, at least it’s involved with why I love baseball. I want to be astride the wave in those brilliant moments it swells, and I’m willing to handle the premature crashes. So far, anyway.

This season really, really hurts, though.

In my mind, I shaped 2006 as the end of this era of Cubs baseball, and if Baker is fired before next season, it will be. This was the year to see whether the experiment of this pitching core could lead the charge. Injuries can’t be helped, I know, but this year is the last chance for it to not be different. This was the last year to validate 2003. Even if the same exact group of guys goes out and wins 100 games next season, it won’t be linked to the era any longer; it’ll be the start of a new one. That is, unless the Cubs can find a way back into contention for 2006. That’s the only way to keep this era alive.

What now? I’m reminded of another H.S. Thompson line, one given in an interview with Matthew Hahn for the Atlantic Monthly in 1997. Hahn led Thompson with a question about his attitude towards living life one day at a time, each as if it were his last. Thompson answered: “Well, there's no plan for it. It's like going into the 27th inning in a baseball game. You're like, what the f*** am I doing here, man?”

It feels that way sometimes these days, a sense of wonder as to how we got where we are. 2004... 2005... and then they started 14-10. Even though Lee was hurt, they were plus 4. Now? 18-25. This afternoon’s game (finally) excepted, they’re playing as disenchanted as we feel. It certainly seems as though the wave is crashing.

Maybe I’m romanticizing it all too much. Maybe it’s just baseball. Maybe it’s stupid for me to invest so much in something so impersonal and ephemeral as a baseball team. Maybe baseball is not epic.

Here’s something of a test, though: I meet people, other baseball fans, and we talk about certain games, and there is that knowing look when I can say, “I was there.” I was with that team, following along, sometimes even cheering at Wrigley Field. I was writing about it, and keeping score. Maybe, someday, it seems in those moments, it will all have meaning after all.

This season? Who knows. I was encouraged today, but I also see that becoming encouraged over a single good game means that I was desperate. A stick floating by probably isn’t going to save a drowning man, but you aren’t going to be able to convince the drowning man about that when the stick is the only thing he sees. If I’m excited over the stick, it probably means I’m drowning.

The catch, though, is that you can’t ever give up. The reason Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is included in the Modern Library (putting Thompson next to Tolstoy, goes the joke) is that the sort of thing Thompson captures -- that feeling of knowing you were a part of something bigger and meaningful -- once it’s inside of you it doesn’t ever entirely leave. To risk giving that chance up just because it seems hopeless is a calculation I can’t make. In baseball, or in other arenas of this life.

So I’ll continue to watch, knowing full well that the wave is probably crashing yet hoping against hope that it’s not. Stranger things have happened. Baseball is a mystical game, and stories rarely unfold as they ought, at least until history gets ahold of them and we can make sense of it all years later. Looking back, that is, like Thompson on that psychedelic hill, Las Vegas.

If 2006 is the end of the era, I’ll affirm all over again that knowing how it would turn out I’d have still done it all the same way. I’d still have watched all those innings. I’d have dropped ridiculous money to be in the Wrigley bleachers for Cubs / Sox in 2004, and plenty of other games. And I’d have kept the 2003 NLCS Game 6 tickets I was fortunate enough to get, every time, heartbreak and all.

So maybe this era ultimately disappoints. What can you say? You pay your money and you take your chances, the saying goes. Maybe it’s always blind luck – right place, right time – when you are able to be a part of those signal moments for a generation. Or maybe it’s not luck; maybe it’s instinct and perseverance, identifying the circumstances in which such moments can happen and being willing to throw in with those circumstances, come what may.

As far as the Cubs go, I suppose we all have to decide that for ourselves.