No, not Valentines Day, and I hate you for thinking that. Today is that day that pitchers and catchers report to spring training, which means baseball is back in our lives once again. As the doldrums of winter begin to loosen their icy grip, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the 2008 season before launching myself headlong into 2009 as the Phillies defend their World Series crown!
Writing isn’t the easiest job in the world, even if it’s what you love to do. And freelancing in any field can be challenging at times. It’s great being your own boss and setting your own hours, but sometimes you feel like you work harder trying to get your next gig than you do actually writing. To be successful (though I guess this is true of anything), you need to be disciplined and self motivated. It definitely works in my favor that I am naturally neither of these things. Oh, wait. Nevermind.
As a writer you have to be okay with being alone. You have to be okay with silence. Most of the time that’s what you’ll get. Silence from potential employers, editors, and publishers. Most of the time you put your hard work out there and you don’t hear anything more about it. If constant validation is what you need, you maybe shouldn’t be a writer. Fortunately for me I need constant validation. Oh, wait. Nevermind.
In life there are times when you are anxious and unsure. There are times that will cause you stress. It’s is in these times when you need something to keep you going. Something that can both inspire you and help you decompress at the same time. I need this something more than most. And for me this something has always been baseball. I’ve been involved with the sport nearly my entire life as a fan, player, or coach and it has brought me more joy and inspiration than I care to attempt to quantify. But in 2008, the Philadelphia Phillies changed my life.
Growing up, being a Phillies fan had somehow paralleled every other aspect of my life. When I was a kid I remember being inconsolable when Joe Carter hit that home run off of Mitch Williams. I was 11 or 12 years old and heartbroken for the first time. After watching some terrible Phillies teams for the years that followed my loyalties began to stray, though never completely. But being a Phillies fan made me feel like a loser, and no kid wants to feel that. The team seemed to be poorly run, though I was too young to be able to explain why. As I entered my teenage years I began to enjoy the game on a broader scale, excelling as a player and following a few different teams that (gasp) actually seemed good. But I think deep down I knew that love is never as good as the first time you feel it and that I would never connect with a team the way that I did with that ‘93 team.
In 2001 the Phillies captured my attention again as the scrappy, overachieving team under Larry Bowa spent most of the first half in first place before fading down the stretch. Even though they couldn’t seal the deal a bond would be reformed with the team of my youth and solidified the following year when I dated a girl whose brother in law had season tickets. I saw probably 60 games in 2002 at the Vet and even though the team disappointed and the crowds were sparse, I forged a loyalty to the Phillies that year that would never be broken.
In the years that followed, the Phils went from laughingstock to good but not quite good enough and if you don’t think this is all an extended metaphor for my life, I don’t know what to tell you. But in 2007 we broke through, kind of. Sure, we made the playoffs for the first time since 1993, but if you went to the can you missed it. We were swept out of the playoffs by the Rockies, but it was nice to finally taste some success. And then there was 2008.
Up until last year I had been the quintessential B student. I had the potential to get A’s but I could get a B without breaking a sweat so I never did. And eventually (to kind of quote Bill Parcells) you become what your record says you are and not what you swear you could be. I was a Philadelphia Phillie: happy to be good, never striving to be great. But watching the Phillies last year I felt like that World Series was for me too. When Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske before dropping to his knees and getting mobbed by his teammates, it was the most surreal moment of my life. For a few minutes I was completely numb. I felt absolutely nothing. And then gradually a feeling of joy crept over me that was the perfect antithesis to the devastation I felt as a kid in ‘93. Traveling back to Philly for the parade a few days later was one of the best days of my life. Seeing Philly on that day, where 2 million people dressed in red were my best friends, I knew that my life would never be the same.
The best part of that day was hearing all of the stories about what the winning the World Series meant to all the different people in attendance. You can make something like that mean whatever you want. The Phillies inspired me to take my life more seriously. To work hard and actually try to achieve something, rather than settling for something second rate. The mug I drink from when I write has a Phillies World Champions logo on it. Most of the time it just sits there, blending into the clutter that is my room. But every once in a while I’ll take a sip from it and stare at it in disbelief. Yes, this actually happened to me. I have a Phillies World Series mug in my room, on my desk, and I drink from it. And then I’ll take another sip from it, and I notice how everything inside it just tastes better. How everything in my life just tastes a little bit better. Sometimes, even though I probably have something better I should be doing, I’ll take the time to savor it.
