Burdens & Onward
04 November 2004I went for a drive a few weeks ago, on Saturday the second of October, meaning to clear my head. Pulling out from my garage, I turned off the radio and rolled down the window. My window is not automatically powered, so there's something more significant about rolling it down: you have to really mean it. Nearing seven o'clock, the last of daylight was fading in the west, though I couldn't really tell since I was driving southeast on Milwaukee Ave., over to the Kennedy and down to Congress in order to make my way over to Lake Shore Drive. Lake Shore was the point, right from the beginning.
Lake Shore Drive opens itself up in a way on fall nights that it doesn't at any other time of the year, as far as I know. It's cold, but not quite so cold that you can see your breath. (Still, with the windows down and reaching 80 miles per hour I turned the heat on.) Maybe it's just my ambitions at becoming a mystic, but I've always thought that certain streets have their own personalities, and their vibe influences yours. When you're walking, or driving, your pulse subtly changes to match their tempo, sometimes, right at the instant you turn onto the road, or walk up from the subway. I let Lake Shore carry me a while, looking over Grant Park at the Congress Hotel, glowing red against the blackening sky. Coming back down south from Hollywood Avenue, the buildings sit to the west like fortresses against the coming winter, glowing with lights for thousands inside, but nobody at all is milling outside.
In the Spring, we explore, eager to try anything after Winter. In Summer, every inch of the city is fair game to use as we please. But in Fall, we retreat back home, and pedestrians are sparse, confining ourselves to travelling from point A to B without detours. Jack Kerouac wrote in On the Road that "everybody goes home in October." It's true. Forces greater than ourselves prod us in this respect. In the midwest, there's no use fighting the seasons.
The reason I needed to clear my head in the first place was the Cubs loss that afternoon, finally eliminating them from contention for the playoffs. It's particularly dreadful to lose a playoff spot by losing games you could have won, and the Cubs had lost six of their last seven. What can you say? Baseball has a way of evening things out, I believe, and so there it is: if this is true, then this -- falling short -- is what had to be. Whether or not you imagine free will in your own life, in baseball things very rarely stray from reason -- curses, hexes, jinxes and magical seasons aside, there's not much room for luck over a long season.
But it didn't feel that way at the time. The sense I got from everyone all season long was that we, as Cubs fans, were owed something -- a playoff spot, a world series, something to make up for the disappointment of last season. We were waiting for our turn, our lucky break to come. I never quite understood this, since it was all in our heads, this sense that we needed to collect on fortune's debt to us. I never understood the sentiment, but I also kept my mouth shut about it, mostly. Fortune owes us nothing, and baseball is baseball; the nature of the game is to be frought with disappointment -- especially if you frame your expectations such that anything short of a world series is disappointing. Yet, when expectations exist, it's hard to return them to hope. There's nothing quite as wearying as the burden of ability, sometimes.
Last year, hope. This year, expectations.
Before I started driving I watched Bull Durham, because I wanted to remind myself why I like this game, even more than I like the Cubs, and especially more than I like this particular Cubs team. I've been using Bull Durham as a spinning digital therapist since college. My roommate had collected nearly a hundred DVDs, and one night when he was in *ahem* a different state of mind -- susceptible to impulse -- I convinced him that the particular DVD he should be buying on the internet was Bull Durham. I wanted it for myself, though I doubt he regrets the purchase. Since then we've graduated and I bought my own copy and I've watched it at least 15 times, on days when the Cubs are rained out, or in the offseason, or last year for example, right after the Marlins won the world series.
There's as much wisdom in the Bull Durham character Crash Davis as there is in the great characters in literature -- Holden Caulfield, Sal Paradise, any of them. There's a line where Crash Davis answers his protege, Nuke, a cocksure idiot with a 97mph fastball. The question concerns why Crash doesn't like Nuke. The answer: "Because you don't respect yourself, which is your problem. But you don't respect the game, and that's my problem." That seems pretty apropos for this Cubs team. I meant to save this thought for some other writing, but I'll use it here: a reason we like baseball is that the qualities it takes to be a good ballplayer are the same qualities it takes to live a good life. That's not true for other sports in the same way it is for baseball. There's individual reliance and resourcefulness, but in the context of contributing to a structure, in balance unique to baseball. The character of Crash Davis is rightfully famous for his speeches -- Annie Savoy even points it out in the movie -- but his wisdom isn't found in the speeches. It's found in his approach to the game, and in turn his approach to life, coming to terms with his limits, and learning how he might use them to just keep going to the ballyard and playing to win.
This Cubs team certainly had its limits. All season long, it was two steps forward, but two steps back. Over 162 games, just like over decades, all things being equal, in baseball things do even themselves out. (By this measure, perhaps the Cubs are due for back to back championships in 2108.) If you had asked me in 2002 whether I would take 88 & 89 wins the next two seasons, I'd have been ecstatic when I answered 'Yes!' But success shifts, relative to an ever narrowing standard in modern sports. It's never enough to simply have a good season. Who cares whether you finish over .500 anymore, even though that used to be a decent benchmark? It's a shame, because I think that we're missing a point: frame a season in the big picture -- enjoy the moment of a big win, but don't get stuck on the movements. A good win is a good win whether you're ten games over or ten games under .500. There are times when you have to let things be what they are, and say "good enough." But we never say that. Even when Maddux got 300. Or when Zambrano almost threw a no-hitter. (I was at Wrigley that night.) If we can't get to where we enjoy these things for what they are, how will we ever truly enjoy the BIG moment when it comes? IF it finally comes?
At least part of the cause of this shift concerning 'success' has to do with frustration from the same teams vying for the championship each season, in my mind. I can imagine a time -- whether it actually existed or not -- when teams brought up their own players, and with prospects came hope, and hope wasn't tied to finances, at least not as much. But the hope surrounding this Cubs team was resting on a lineup full of transplants. Only Corey Patterson in centerfield was brought up in the Cubs system, other than the pitchers. That being the case, there's no room for "good enough." Players came in on terms of either big contracts or trades for the Cubs' best prospects, and sometimes both. Playing for the sake of playing the game as best you can while being in the moment is a bit of a lost concept in this context. Contracts like these bring expectations. There aren't too many players in the majors like Crash Davis, who head off to a tiny contract because they have their own integrity, pride & goals to contend with, all of which aren't tied to money. Maybe it was never a real concept to begin with, or maybe the deck is just too stacked, but either way it's too bad because there's a narrative structure to the baseball season that loses a lot if you can only see 161 games as prelude to what can happen starting after the 162nd. If all you can focus on is greatness and you get sour about the rest, especially if there isn't a game 163. If you think that only October is when you can get your money's worth. Of course, the Cubs story this year wasn't a good one at all, but it wasn't just the last week when the story was written.
Sometimes, the signs are there from the beginning although you don't notice them until much later. In high school I briefly dated Jenny when I was a senior. She was a sophomore. She went to a different high school, and I met her when my friend Pat set up a date to meet one of her friends at the Texan. Of course she brought friends, and Pat brought me. Pat & I met a lot of girls in those days. My friends in Saginaw understand the Texan without explaining: it's a 24-hour restaurant chain, the kind of grease joint where on any given night at 1am you'll inevitably see someone you know at the breakfast buffet because it's just the place everyone goes. I liked Jenny from the start, and I could tell she was interested. Turns out that Pat liked her too, inevitable since she was the best looking of the group, but he was there to meet her friend in the first place so I didn't feel bad calling dibs on her and making a move. Of course, I never actually called dibs -- Girls are not Possessions -- but in dating it doesn't do for two friends to like one girl so I just got her number and Pat got the hint.
The strange thing was that she asked for my number also. I gave it, but maybe I shouldn't have. Now I'm suspicious of girls that ask for my number when I ask for theirs, although Jenny isn't entirely to blame. There were exactly three times that I got a girl's number in high school when she asked for mine at the same time, and the other two definitely turned out strangely. First was Kristen, my junior year, who lived all the way down south in Dearborn, and who stalked me for about 5 weeks. By stalking I mean: calling all the time, writing me letters explaining her strange behavior (ironically, I thought the letters were the strange behavior), and saying that she could be a much better kisser if I gave her another chance. (I never actually thought she was a bad kisser; this was in her head.) The third girl to get my number immediately was Tara, from Frankenmuth, who called me the very same day I met her, completely freaking me out. But these are long stories, digressions, stories for another day since this story is about Jenny.
The next weekend, I went out to a Swan Valley underclass party, an invitation to party with Jenny's high school crew. It sucked. She knew it sucked, too, and apologized all night. I left pretty early and wrote it off as one of those nights, getting ready to write her off in the process. But she called me that week, and said that she was going to her friend's house that Friday night, and that it was just going to be her and her friend, and so Would I like to come over later on to hang out? She was plenty good looking... like I'd say no.
I drove out there around 11:30pm. The three of us watched a movie, though I can't remember what it was, which bothers me now because I used to be able to tell the story including the movie. Somewhere along the way Jenny & I started holding hands. Some of you know that I joke and use 'holding hands' to refer to all sorts of things, but in this case I mean just that. After the movie, her friend went to her bedroom to leave the two of us alone, and not two seconds after her friend left the room Jenny grabbed me to start making out. Her friend caught us a few minutes later, coming back through the room for a glass of water or who knows what, but when you're making out and you're in high school, this is just the sort of thing that happens before you learn how to create privacy. Although, Jenny was pretty embarassed. She was an aggressive kisser -- sloppy, but aggressive. You might know the type. Things progressed a little bit, to the point that I have my hand on her chest, and after a while I go under the shirt. Mind you, I'm a senior in high school and I've dated a lot of girls by now, so I'm on auto-pilot. Jenny freaked out, though. Over the shirt, OK, but under, No Deal. Honestly, I wasn't even interested in going any much further. It was just making out. But after she shut me down she asked me to leave, so I left, mostly confused and a bit resigned.
That was Friday. Jenny called me on Sunday, acting like nothing happened. I called her back later that week to tell her that Pat was having a bonfire on Friday. We had a lot of bonfires that season. Sometimes I'd take girls, sometimes I'd try to pick up girls that I hadn't met, and sometimes I went there to sit around all night and think, and like Crash Davis, "Just be." They were great parties, Pat's bonfires. There were very few fights -- not one that I can recall in fact, and not one police visit. In those days a 6-pack was more than enough to drink. Jenny already knew about this bonfire, since I guess Pat was keeping in touch on AIM with the girl he went to meet in the first place, her friend. (Pat was an AIM allstar long before it swept college dorms across the country.) I didn't offer to take Jenny to the party myself, but I told her it was cool if she wanted to come. I didn't think she would, but she did.
Not only that, but she was all of a sudden a different person. She was affectionate towards me in front of everyone, and there were probably at least 35 people at the bonfire. Before she had seemed shy, and she was embarassed when her close friend saw us making out, you'll recall. Jenny was pretty short, so she stood on one of about fifteen stumps circling the fire, and I remember one kiss in particular. I stood in front of her, facing the fire, so that leaning back my head came to just below her neck. I looked back up over my head and she kissed me from standing above. She took me back to her car later, and practically assaulted me on the passenger side. It was a complete reversal.
Over the course of a lot of trial and error with dating, I've since sort of figured out what was going on. I guess that's what dating is, trial and error. Not exactly a newsflash, right? I take it Jenny liked me, and she was trying to be what she thought I would want her to be. Girls do that, sometimes. It might have worked, too, if I had been interested in dating at all seriously, but that wasn't my thing. She was attractive and smart, and maybe it would have been fun. Still, I told her that I thought it would be brief right from the beginning, and I don't have any regrets in that respect. We all go through periods where we drift along with our assumptions about how we should be, rather than reflect or challenge them. We do this, sometimes for years.
Still, the summer after my freshman year my friend Tim came down from Bay City to hang out, and we just drove around in Pat's parents' Blazer because it was the only car we had to ride 3 people in style. I distinctly remember listening to the Freestylers CD, just cruising. We stopped in at 7-11, and Jenny was there. I recognized her, though Pat and Tim didn't. Inside she just said, "Joel?" I said, "Hey Jenny," and smiled, and walked away. I didn't say anything to the other two until after we left. Pat thought I should try to pick her up. What he really meant was that I should pick her & her friends up, but I can't even imagine what that conversation would have been like. It's strange, how vivid some of these throwaway nights can be, when nothing even really happens that affects anything else, but tangent worlds spiral away in your head, playing out what-might-have-beens.
I feel about this last Cubs team the way that I felt about Jenny. When things got good, they pushed us back, only to come back at us with a fury, then go cold again. They were a sloppy team, without any real chemistry to speak of, and plenty of immaturity and searching for identity. The signs were there from the beginning that it wasn't going to work out, but I'll still probably think about this year sometime and wonder what could have been -- not if things had gone differently, but if things had been different altogether. Still, it was what it was, and if I could just forget for a moment the expectations I had (we all had) for the season I might be able to recall the hopeful moments themselves fondly, someday, and fit them in a bigger structure of figuring out exactly what it takes to achieve something better, grander. But there's a learning curve.
Over time you start to notice things, patterns really, things that tip off what substance is beneath a personality. This is true for ball clubs and for women. I've learned that there are questions you can ask on a date to find out whether a girl might be worth dating, such as:
"What is your favorite Cheap Trick song?"
The best answer is 'Surrender.' 'Want You (to want me)' is borderline. Bonus points for knowing that Letters to Cleo covered this in Ten Things I Hate About You, which reminded me of when I really had a crush on Kay Hanley. Not knowing a little bit about Cheap Trick says a lot. It's not that they're even that great a band, or influential, but it's a point of reference. We've all heard the songs a million times, but most people just sing along and forget it.
"Where else do you want to live?"
Acceptable answers include just about anywhere, except maybe Wisconsin, but a long pause and an 'I don't know' is a dud. Even worse is 'I haven't ever thought about it.' At least give me something to work with, like 'I love living here in Chicago.')
"Do you know how to drive a stick shift?"
Hopefully yes.
By this point, I haven't even gotten into sports at all but I can probably tell whether a girl is getting called back. Not necessarily, but you know what I mean. The signs are usually there if you learn to discern. The signs were there with this Cubs team too, and not just signs from the gods in the form of injuries. There were these questions, and the answers say a lot about a ballclub:
"What's your best, or at least most stable lineup?"
The Cubs shifted lineups like Baltimore heroin dealers switch street corners. I only know about Baltimore drug dealers because I watch The Wire on HBO.
"Who's your ace?"
In turn, this went from Wood to Zambrano to Maddux to Prior, changing almost like clockwork each quarter of the season. If the Cubs had made the playoffs, it would have been completely up in the air.
"How many innings a game do you at least threaten to score?"
This was the most frustrating thing about the team.
"Who has a sense of humor on this team?"
No one on this team had a sense of humor. No more Doug Glanville. No more crazy Alfonseca. Just a bunch of wooden players who all played like they were tired of playing, definitely not playing it like a game.
In the end, what was missing was that blend of confidence & passion that sets both baseball teams & women apart. Too many women I've dated don't seem to be passionate about something in life -- something that drives them, separate from any relationship to anyone (though hopefully enhanced by whomever they love). Something that would make them an interesting spinster (though of course I hope no woman ends up a spinster unless she chooses. I just mean to illustrate a point.) This Cubs team didn't have passion for baseball, at least not collectively, as a team. They were tight, tense, and never just played the game in sync. It was like that nearly all season long. So they're not getting a call back.
Except, passion can come at a moment's notice. In an instant, you can discover that you love writing, or you can discover cooking, or you can discover that you love the plays of David Mamet, or maybe there's a career out there that drives you. Or maybe you visit Tibet and the way you imagine that the Tibetan people think makes you think that maybe there's a different way to think, and before you know it you're at peace and open to all sorts of new experiences that make you a person worth having endless conversations with. But it has to come in a moment, and the Cubs season of 2004 never had that moment, until it was too late and there would never be a moment. Even if it was a pretty good season, all things considered. So maybe that's encouragement. Maybe next year. Forget the expectations. Let's try hope again.