I
was only a week or two into my Lamaze classes in
preparation for the birth of my first child, my now 12-year-old
daughter Sarah,
in the late winter of 1995. As a first-time-parent-to-be who came from
a small
family with only one sibling 9 years older than me, I had no idea what
was
looming, and that scared me to death. The
hot show at that point in time was ER, when it was
fresh and stunning and still capable of truly surprising you. The night
before
class, ER aired what was to become a landmark episode in which what was
supposed to be a routine birth spiraled out of control on Dr. Greene
and he
lost a young mother in childbirth. It was a gut-punch episode. It
finished with
a dazed and confused father holding his newborn first baby trying to
wrap his mind
around the death of his wife. It was one of those shows that leaves you
speechless. The
next day at class I recognized that father’s
expression on every couple in the room, and I know I wore it as well.
It took
most of the class for our teacher to talk this gaggle of inexperienced
pre-parents off the ledge. I
can’t even truly remember if it existed in the
episode or not, or whether I simply have spliced it into my own mind as
a part
of my own personal “directors cut”, but the scene I
pull up from my mental
depths when I think of that show is an overhead shot of the now
darkened trauma
room which, for the bulk of the episode, was the epicenter of a pitched
battle
to save the mother’s life. The only signs of that battle, in
the peaceful
gloom, were the tape, and gauze, and debris strewn around the floor,
and a
tangled mass of sheets on the gurney. Mark Greene opens the door and
takes in
the scene. I know he is thinking what we all were thinking, and yet I
can’t
express it. There are no words to describe psychological shock, I guess
by
definition. Words are the results of cogent thought. Shock short
circuits
thought. That
scene would be a fitting image for the end of my
fantasy baseball season. My
beloved Hellmets finished first in the regular
season in our head-to-head league with a 110-50 record, the second
highest win
total in our league’s 21-year history (I won 119 last year).
We crushed the
competition in rotisserie style scoring, winning all 5 offensive
columns and
one pitching column. And we were rolling into the post season
with a
24-game lead as winners of 46- of our last -60 games, tying a league
record. We
qualified for our two-week World Series rather
comfortably and then the wheels came off … After hitting
.288 during the season
and .295 over the previous six weeks, the Hellmets hit .227 in week #1
and it
would be Thursday of that week before we were over .202. Yes, we were
battered
a bit with Gary Sheffield, JasonBay, and
Albert Pujols
all hurting. My bullpen was crumbling. At one point, I had 6 primary
closers on
my roster but after injuries to Chris Ray and Danys Baez, the total
unraveling
of Bob Wickman and Brad Hennessey, and Jonathan Papelbon’s
meltdown against the
Yankees, I could barely start two closers in the final week of the
Series. Still,
the Hellmets fought back, at least offensively,
hitting .310 in week #2. In the end, our 2007 World Series came down to
batting
average. I
lost by .003. Baseball
is 12 months a year for me, but let’s say
conservatively I put 8 months of work into my team. My hitters had
7,800 ABs
this year. There were 1,211 ABs in our World Series, and it came down
to two
hits. Two
hits. If
I get two more hits in my 625 ABs, or he gets two
less hits in his 586, or alternatively, if I get one more hit and he
gets one
less hit in these two weeks … the Hellmets win. Hey,
I have won 7 of these things and my World Series
opponent just won his 3rd, the second highest
total in my league.
There is no real need to mourn here. I have had my share and there will
be more
… I am just taking a moment to look over the remains of the
battle. It was
fierce too. Like that birth, my team just started spinning out of
control, and
short of thawing out Teddy Ballgame for Week #2 there was nothing I
could do
about it. I tried. And as a result there is a lot of debris around the
death
scene. Nevertheless, in the end, what was going to happen, happened. Interestingly
my son is 8 years old and this is the
year he has fallen in love with baseball. He had his first little
league experience
this spring but in his age group they don’t keep score and no
one strikes out.
He and some of his teammates kept score during the games though, and
they
tasted defeat for perhaps the first time for many of them. I imagine we
have
sheltered our kids well, but when he makes a bad play, or drops a ball,
or
loses a game, my son now has to face it. He
plays Backyard Baseball on his computer and would
have been perfectly content playing rookie level and beating every team
35-2 on
the way to undefeated glory every year, but I pushed him out of that
nest. I
told him to up the level of the game and be challenged. And then I was
punished
for good parenting by having to watch him feel frustration and cry if
he lost
just a little too much in the beginning. He
is of course a Red Sox fan and he will have to deal
with defeat there as well. If the Sox do not win the World Series this year an
8-year-old New England
boy, on his maiden MLB
baseball season journey, will be heartbroken. That is part of life,
especially
as a Red Sox fan. I
took him to Yankee Stadium at the end of August for
the final game in the Yankees sweep of the Red Sox and I tried to
prepare him
as the lions in the Bronx
were ramping up to
feed on us lambs as the final game lurched towards conclusion. I told
him that
the Yankees fans would be woofing at us all the way out of the ballpark
and
they had a right to. Their team played well.
I said, just listen and let them have
their fun. That is what being a fan is all about. We were still 5 games
up I
told him, and when the Red Sox clinch the division in a few weeks, we
will
remember this walk out of The Stadium, and all the ribbing we took, and
that
will make the victory so much sweeter. That is the unseen benefit of
losing
after all, is it not? You cannot truly laugh until you have cried. You
cannot
truly experience winning until you have lost. As
I try to find ways to wrap up my disappointment
about this season and move on, I was curious about what my son would
think
about it. His relationship with winning and losing is still new. I was
sure he
would have an interesting perspective. This
morning I asked him …. “Aiden, when you lose in
little league or have a bad game, or when you lose in Backyard
Baseball, and
you are frustrated and upset …what do you do to feel
better?” He
put his hand to his chin and he thought for a
second …. Then he looked at me and said …
“I go win the next game.” Amen,
young man …amen.
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