Not a Fair Weather Fan

Last night the Stanford vs UC Irvine baseball game started at 6:00 so it was light and warm-ish and breezy. Perfect Northern California weather for this Sunday game in the Regional of the NCAA tournament. The stadium was at its full allowed capacity of 25% which doesn’t sound like a lot of people but everyone there was cheering hard for their team so it was plenty loud. The crowd was mostly made up of family members, after all.  At some point the sun dropped behind Hoover tower, bringing a pleasantly shifting sky, pale blue to pinkish to lavender to darker lavender to darker blue to the blue that’s almost black and finally, black. With the blazing lights encircling the field the black looked deeply black, like we-are-the-only-people-in-the-world black, like the field was the world, nothing beyond its edges.

Stanford took the lead 4-2 in the 4th inning. A progression of Stanford pitchers fought to hold that lead, the Stanford batters fought to try to add to it. It was still 4-2 heading into the bottom of the 8th inning. When Irvine came up to bat (they were the home team in an arcane decision process of who gets to be home versus visitor) the field of dreams feel to the place started to fray.

The 8th inning turned into a time warp nightmare, when a third out feels ever out of reach. Walks, hits, bad hops, erratic umpiring, two balls bouncing off the pitcher into unplayable spots, it got bleak.

And it got quiet on the Stanford side of the stands.

In this double elimination tournament, Stanford was still undefeated, and had won their first two games of the weekend without a lot of drama (unless you count the good kind of drama, the kind where your catcher hits two grand slams in a single game). Winning this Sunday night game against UC Irvine meant a trip to a Super Regional. There was a cautious hopefulness to the crowd, a held excitement.

So when the Anteaters scored six runs in the 8th inning to take an 8-4 lead, hopefulness turned to despair. It sounds silly to even write that. A baseball game causing despair? But that is how it feels when the fickle baseball gods turn against you. You have let yourself care, you only realize how deeply you have let yourself care when the prize is all of a sudden not sitting in your lap but sitting in the laps of those obnoxious fans on the other side (obnoxious only because they are cheering against your boys. And have very shrill screams. Presumably they are all very nice people and want their team to win with as much desperation as you want your team to win. Which is a whole different blog post).

I could feel the collective pain of the Stanford fans as the inning unfolded. The deflation of knowing that one last at bat might not do the trick. The pain of watching an inning that seemed like it might never end.

One of the people with me said, ‘I can’t take this, I might leave.’ He didn’t but I understand. It is hard to watch hope get stolen by the other side.

I looked around and noticed other people weren’t as patient, they were leaving. In the middle of the 8th inning.

Leaving!

There were so few tickets available and so many people wanted them, and people were leaving. Before the game was over.

Right, the whole stolen hope thing. The disappointment was too much to bear for some. Watching it fall apart live, in front of your eyes, hard to not want to look away.

So I calmed myself, pulled my attention back to the place where I remember why I am there watching in the first place.

To see stories unfold, to see drama, to see one player after another come up to bat and go one on one with the pitcher. To see split second dives at balls, to see years of practice and training get used. To see young men willing to get in the arena, as Theodore Roosevelt would say. We wouldn’t watch a movie that had no ups and downs, we watch to see the characters go down and then come up. We wouldn’t watch a movie where characters just drive sedately across the country with nothing happening. We watch to see things happen.

So we better be ready to see bad things happen.  The downs that make the eventual ups so valuable.

Are we really only going to stay when the team is on the ups?

Is that how life works?

Baseball is a microcosm, between the white lines, of all that happens in life. All the ‘unfair’ stuff or the bad luck is how life works.

How do we deal with it? That is the question.

Do we let that keyhole strike zone take over our brain and fall apart or do we adjust and find a way to nibble around it?

Do we obsess about that bobbled grounder for the next four innings, causing yet another error or do we flush it and give laser attention to the next moment?

Do we stop parenting when our child is troubled? Do we leave our spouse at the first tough stretch of road? Do we leave the stands when our team is struggling?

How do we find a way to stay present, in the face of unraveling, in the face of giving up the lead, in the face of the end of the season?

Escape is of course a human reaction to suffering. We all escape, with scrolling or eating or drinking or spending or sleeping too much. And when you escape, you are rewarded in that moment because the stress/anxiety/tension goes down. But what you lose out on when you escape is even more valuable – you lose the chance to discover you can handle the stress/anxiety/tension. You lose the chance to grow, and know yourself as someone strong.

So I stayed until the end. And I let myself feel it all, the despair, the frustration, the questioning, can we get it back in time? What will tomorrow night bring? The road is much harder now. It would have been easier to win it all tonight.

Staying present pays longer dividends than escape. Because the win might not be on the field, but whenever you stay present, the whole way through something, the win is in your soul. You stayed the course. You stuck it out. You finished the game and walked out, still a human being with a beating heart and people to love tomorrow. You stay through the bitter end because you love these players unconditionally and you love the players unconditionally because you love the game unconditionally.

Because the game is life.

And the only way to get through this world with any sanity is to love life unconditionally.

The ups and the downs.

So now, as I write this, it’s Monday. The last game is tonight. And I’m feeling good about tonight, because tonight just brings more life.

I wouldn’t mind if Stanford won, though.

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