Baseball and Life

   I love baseball.  I love the Detroit Tigers.  They drive me crazy many times, like right now (they lost their eighth game in a row last night) but they are still my team.  1935, 1945, 1968, and 1984 are the years when everything turned magical and my team won the World Series.  I know the players.  I can still tell you the starting line ups for the 1968 World Series team that beat the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games after losing three of the first four games.  I can tell you how it was Willie Horton's throw from left field to Bill Freehan at home plate who then tagged out Lou Brock in Game Five that turned the series around in the Tigers' favor.  I can go on and talk about Ty Cobb, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Hooks Dauss, Hank Greenberg, Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich, Jack Morris, and some of the great Tigers of the past.  I suffered when they lost 119 games one year.  I rejoiced three years later when they made a stunning comeback and earned a trip to the World Series in 2006 (although they lost to the Cardinals in five games).  The Detroit Tigers is more than a team to me.  They and therefore baseball itself is a tapestry of life, filled with metaphors and lessons and entertainment and humor and anecdotes, shadowed by orange and blue and the old English "D."  

   Why do I even bother about talking about this?  There are two lessons I need to remind myself of today.  First, baseball is one of very few sports that is not measured by time.  Nine innings could take two hours or four hours.  The drama unfolds and is done when the drama is done.  It does not simply quit because 0:00 shows on some clock somewhere.  Secondly, the game and the characters and the eras have changed since 1901 when the Tigers played their first season of ball, but the goal each year never changes.  The ingredients for success include each player willing to do his part -- to hustle, to hit the other way, to stretch a single into a double, all little things -- for the good of the team.  

   My situation right now fits this affinity I have for the Tigers.  I am frustrated in the moment with my inability to eat and my lack of endurance.  But this challenge is ongoing, and it's the little things that need to be done to keep me improving.  None of what I am going through can be measured by a time clock.  It is more of an unfolding drama that must be lived out.  Will I feel better tomorrow?  Next week?  Only time will tell.  Achievement is not set on a timetable but on a continuum.  Winning games? Earning pennants? Winning a division? League championships? These are triumphs like walking all the way around the block, like eating a full meal, like making it through a day without taking a nap.  And when time marches on, I will be able to look back at the stories of the past and be able to use them to encourage others to keep going, to soldier on, even when 119 losses in a year make it hard to think that things will get better.  

   So, eight losses in a row. Maybe they will win tonight and turn a corner...