First Half Champs; Or, On Showing Up

I was going to write this the moment the home plate umpire called the third strike, giving the Ballers the win and the first half championship of the Pioneer League.

I was going to write this when the B’s hit a huge homer in the knockout, finding their groove. After all, the B’s had won 12 straight, seven against this same team.

I was going to write this when the PaddleHeads lost later that evening, requiring only the High Wheelers to lose for the Ballers to back into the playoffs.

But the strikeout was overturned. The knockout, this time, didn’t find a groove. The B’s lost. The High Wheelers won.

And I had the sickening feeling that I, and I alone, was the reason they lost, since heading into the ninth inning I posted that they were only three outs away, clearly jinxing them.

Instead, I’m writing this from a family vacation in Squamish, BC, some 980 miles away, just as the Ballers beat the Vibes the night after. Now they’re first half champions. Now they’re going to the playoffs. I missed the celebrations, the joy, the champagne, that was one strike away the day before. Here, instead, they have poutine. The signs are written in English and French. There are people with crowns on the money. I toured a gigantic copper mine. Drivers are advised that the road can be slippery when frosty, which is exactly how tricky I can be when I’m withholding.

It’s what I love and loathe about baseball. In its joys and its sorrows, it is the sport that most closely adheres to our lives. Yes, it’s an escape from the world, but it’s also the world writ large. There are a million intangibles that go into every result. What if the wind was blowing out instead of in? Did the requisite number of fans turn their caps upside down for the rally to succeed? What if I hadn’t posted about those slippery three outs?

I have a friend (I know, stop bragging) whose take on you can’t win em all seems more apt: you can’t win em most. If we are honest with ourselves, especially as we get a little older, we acknowledge our lifetime batting average: if you’re coming out on top a quarter of the time, if you’re getting the result even some of the some of the time, that’s pretty damn good. A third? Buy some lottery tickets. Ted Williams hit .400 in 1941 and then was drafted into the world’s most destructive conflict, so win some, lose some.  

It’s not that life is full of failure. It’s full of unmet expectations. Things rarely turn out the way we planned, and you should be—it’s sad otherwise—planning for the best. Sometimes we get more than we wanted. Sometimes our plans are crap and the universe steps in. But baseball, better than most, reminds us that we only control so much. That you should bank and build on the good for when the pendulum inevitably swings the other way. That you should learn from the bad so that it doesn’t feel so bad the next time.

It was Parks and Rec Day at Raimondi on this day of almosts. The stands were filled with camper kids in their rainbow of bright shirts having the absolute best time. They stood in lines ten deep to get Scrappy’s autograph and a picture. The brought signs saying Hit It To Us. Sure, they’re kids; they were optimistic. But they also showed up. Anything can happen when you show up. It’s all the clichés—you have to put the ball in play, a bad day at the ballpark is better than a good day at the office, that’s why you play the game—but there’s also, of course, something uniquely Ballers about it. They are a part of our community. When you walk back to your car, going back to your life, you’re walking next to the players, their cleats clacking on the asphalt, knowing that they will be back out tomorrow working and trying to make it work whether you’re here or not, whether I’ve jinxed them or not. Yes, it’s the first half championship. There’s more to be done. But good things happen when you show up.

In baseball there’s that pesky other cliché—there’s always next season. In life it’s one of the great moments of adult optimism: no matter how bad things are, you’ll always get a chance to try again. But if you’re an Oakland fan, you’ve come to know in recent history that this isn’t always the case. And this makes the B’s special above all. They are here to stay. They will show up. Another friend of mine (wow, you have two friends?), the guy who got me into baseball in the first place, is sad at the end of every campaign not because the team lost or didn’t live up to expectations, but simply because there isn’t any more baseball.

Well, there is more baseball. There’s always next season. But today, it’s called the postseason.