Tag: baseball

Baseball = life

Julie Fanselow

In my adult life as a baseball fan, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as excited as I do now. As I write this on the last night of September, my team — that is, my home team these past eight seasons, the Seattle Mariners — is tied for the second wild card slot in the American League. (For those of you less than familiar with baseball’s playoffs, it works like this: Each league has three divisions, which means there needs to be a one-and-done wild card game between two non-division-winning teams to have four teams ready to compete in the rest of October’s post-season games: first the league divisional series, then the league championship, and finally the World Series.)

There’s been big buzz in baseball land this week over how tight the American League wild card race has become. As of tonight, the New York Yankees are 91-68, with a two-game lead on the top wild card spot, so they’re likely in the game. The next three teams have nearly identical records: the Mariners and the Boston Red Sox are tied at 89-70 and the Toronto Blue Jays are one game back at 88-71. Between now and Sunday afternoon, a variety of scenarios might unspool to determine who will get to play in the AL wild card game next week and quite possibly a tie-breaker “play-in” game (or two) beforehand, depending on how many teams finish with the same record.

As a fan of baseball and good writing, I enjoy reading Lookout Landing, a Mariners fan site. The site’s logo shows a lone dejected man sitting slumped, head down. I’ve only been here for eight seasons, but that’s long enough to know the perennial pain that Mariners fans feel. Ours is the only team in Major League Baseball that’s never been in a World Series. We famously have the longest post-season drought in major professional sports, nearly two decades without a playoff appearance. Why should that change now?

It should change because change is inevitable, as is chaos, which is what the Mariners have been riding all year. Last April, no one gave this team a chance to make the postseason this year. As of tonight, the Mariners have scored 48 fewer runs than their opponents, and yet here they are, poised to make the playoffs anyway — or not, and in many ways, it hardly matters. Whatever happens these next three days won’t diminish the fact that this has been a magical year of shattered preconceptions and us-against-the-world camaraderie: of rookies toughing it out to learn what it takes to be in the big league … of a widely derided trade at the end of July turning out to be a brilliant move … of 33 games won by just one run … of an 11-2 record since mid-September … of 17,366 people at last night’s game sounding like twice that number.

Yesterday morning, I took a walk with the person I’ve mentioned a few times in my infrequent recent posts, someone with whom I shared some stellar days and nights over the past few months. Alas, we mutually and a little sadly agreed that our summer fling apparently wasn’t meant to last. I went home and got ready to go to my job at the ballpark, where the contrast couldn’t be more apparent, where those 17,366 fans were showing what it means to be all in, to be vulnerable, to accept risk, to risk failure and foolishness in the pursuit of something worth remembering.

I was already scheduled to work Friday and Sunday. This morning, I asked to work Saturday, too. Baseball has a habit of breaking hearts, and by Sunday night, mine might be shattered. Or not. Either way, the ride has been worth it.

Happiness as a choice

Julie Fanselow

“You always seem so happy,” my ballpark colleague says to me. “Are you always so happy?”

I’m a bit thrown by such an existential question, this change-up amid the usual between-innings banter. I agree that this is true, and I mumble something about having a hopeful orientation. Orientation is one way to put it, though perhaps not the most elegant. I wish I’d replied with my favorite quote, “Joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” (Thanks as always, Br. David Steindl-Rast.) Yet there’s little reason to overthink my reply, in the moment or in hindsight.

Am I happy? Why yes, I am. It beats the alternative.

Mixed emotions are human, and June 19 is a day that will forever bring mixed emotions for me. I mostly feel joy for the birth 65 years ago today of a man whom I had the great luck to love over the last five years of his life—though of course that joy remains tinged with regret that he is no longer here. I may have a longer essay (or two) to write someday about Tom’s last few months and the anguish I felt after he was gone.

I can’t say I was happy during those hard months. But looking back three years, I guess I was joyful even amid the depths of that anguish. Scratch that: I know I was joyful, because that’s how we survive the worst things that life and death throw our way. Joy is also how we recognize the glimmers of goodness that are always glinting in our peripheral vision—for example, people who recognize our happiness because they themselves have chosen the gift of seeing life through an optimistic lens.

(As an aside, today is the first official Juneteenth, and that brings more mixed emotions: We should celebrate how far we’ve come as a country that we can now recognize the end of slavery with a federal holiday. No, this doesn’t right all the wrongs that centuries of human bondage have wrought in our country. The work for representation and reparations will continue. But can we make it joyful, generous, perhaps even playful work? Can we curb the tribalism and bickering, escape the confines of our identity silos, and give each other some room to breathe and grow?)

(Putting my soapbox away …)

I’m uncharacteristically rambling here, so I’ll stop, but after two months without a post, I wanted to check in. Life is good: I have just the right amount of work, I’m grateful for my family and friends, I’m enjoying my new-again neighborhood, and I’m plotting all kinds of adventures for this summer and beyond. It’s a beautiful life—and yes, a happy one. I’m joyfully greeting this season of sun and light and a return to the world, and I wish that for you, too. Thanks for reading Surely Joy.

A few words about the music for this post: Last night, I went to my first live music show in about 18 months, at my fave music club. Here’s a 10-year-old radio listener lounge version of a song LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends played last night, “Everything About You.” And a few days ago, I saw the glorious, raucous, sexy “In the Heights” at my favorite movie theater. The first eight minutes are below. Enjoy!

Pandemic postcard #54: Postscripts

Julie Fanselow

When I wrapped up my series of 52 weekly posts a month ago, I said I’d write when I had something to say. Sixteen days ago, I wrote that I’d decided to move–which is mostly what I’ve been doing since then, although I’ve also managed to do a few other things. So here’s an update.

My new place is good. I moved two-and-a-half-miles and I am back in the neighborhood where I first landed in Seattle when I arrived here in 2013. At that point, I chose Lake City for its proximity to Tom and his suburban home a short bus ride away, but also for its affordability and diversity. I quickly grew to love Lake City for its human-scale character, and for the way, a couple of blocks off the gritty main drag, the streets feel nearly rural–perfect for the sort of aimless walks I enjoy each morning. I’m having a good time getting reacquainted with my new-old neighborhood, and I’ll write more about that in my next another post.

Here on the courtyard side of my new complex, I’ve mostly found the quiet I seek–though who knew a brand-new refrigerator could run so loudly, that people sometimes fly drones at the exact treetop level of my balcony, and that dogs (who may outnumber people here) like to bark at all hours. I hear one howling now, though that’s actually a much nicer complement to the birds’ dawn chorus than the staccato yips I hear around midnight. I had a few moving-in hiccups, including a minor water leak that the property manager swiftly addressed. She didn’t know about the drones, though. No place is perfect, but this place will do. I have the same sublime morning light I enjoyed at the last place, and a little more room, and a neighborhood I already know and like.

What else is new? I wrote five weeks ago about my then-uncertain prospects of getting vaccinated anytime soon, as a healthy 59-year-old in a state where there was then no timetable for anyone under 65 getting their shots. By early April, Washington state (spurred by leadership in the other Washington) had finally announced that everyone under 60 would be eligible on April 15, so I’d been prepared to wait a looooong time for my first jab–and likely not be fully vaccinated until well into May. But then, on the very day I gave notice that I’d leave my former apartment, I got an email from the property managers there noting that a mobile clinic would be on site to offer the one-and-done Johnson & Johnson vaccines that Friday. Everyone was welcome. So just like that, I got my shot. Of course, a few days later, the J&J “pause” was announced, but as a post-menopausal woman, the news was a mere stress blip on my moving-focused radar. I am grateful to be vaccinated; I tucked my CDC card into my passport, for it represents the same kind of freedom and sense of possibility. It’ll still be a while before I go abroad again, but it won’t be another full year.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken one more step back into life as I knew it pre-pandemic. Last Wednesday, 13 months to the day since I’d last seen a film in the theater, I returned to my favorite movie house and saw Minari. I was the only person there for the late-afternoon matinee, but I left my mask on anyway. That was weird, but it was delightful to see a movie on the big screen. Four days later, I returned to watch Nomadland, this time with a handful of other folks. (Although I’d already seen it twice on Hulu, I couldn’t pass up a chance to see its gorgeous cinematography of the American West in widescreen splendor.)

Yet more signs of spring: I am going to a ballgame today–I have one of about 9,000 tickets to see the Mariners and Dodgers play from socially distanced seating–and I return to my ballpark ushering job next week. A friend has invited me over for a small dinner gathering of five fully vaccinated friends this weekend, and I was delighted to be able to say, yes, I’ll be there.

Best of all, just a few weeks from now, I will be on a road trip to see my daughter for the first time since last July and to hug her for the first time since December 2019.

It won’t get any better than that.

We haven’t left the pandemic behind yet, but with fans in the stands and newly vaccinated folks reuniting every day, it feels like we’re on the way.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device).