(imported from tumblr)
The Blue Jays played their 162nd game of the season yesterday.
There won’t be any more this year.
Good riddance.
—
I broke up with my boyfriend in the wee hours of Opening Day. As far as auspicious starts to a season go, it wasn’t one. It wasn’t planned like that, of course; it never is. But that’s how the day arrived—in gaping silence mirroring the darkness outside my windows, a crushing weight on my chest. There was a stack of baseball tickets sitting on my desk, ones we were going to use together to watch this newly transformed team ride the waves of contention. It felt like they were staring unblinkingly at me. Challenging.
The Jays’ disastrous spring made it difficult to use baseball as an escape. That evening, I watched the brand new roster fumble and stumble and bloop their way to a disappointing opening loss, and we all know how it continued: on and on, and on, and on. When I watched them lose to Boston under the dome that weekend, I barely made it through; my already tumultuous emotional state didn’t allow for just watching the game. Instead, I felt it. Every bad bounce, every Red Sox player crossing the plate reverberated somewhere in my heart. Bad baseball is sometimes too real.
A lot of things don’t turn out the way we imagine they will. I hadn’t planned on being so cowardly, picking up the phone and stammering out an ending that had been coming longer than I’d let myself accept. I hadn’t expected to see another team celebrate game 162 on our field as we lost our 88th, either, a record the opposite of what we’d imagined. Everyone will find someone or something to blame in distress. When you endure such crushing disappointment, it’s hard to look at things rationally; you need to channel that somewhere or you’ll break. I understand that.
No, we didn’t imagine any of this. But for quick flashes, this crew did become the team we desperately hoped for. For eleven straight games in the middle of June, the Toronto Blue Jays were unbeatable, unstoppable, a firestorm of happiness. There were walkoffs. There were come-from-behind wins. There were routs. There were different heroes every day. It was everything we hoped for, and though that was only a tiny fraction of the season (just under 7%, in fact), it was the baseball we all came for. The standings tightened up. The races became real. Finally, we said. This is it.
It wasn’t it, of course. The freefall came back, swiftly, plunging our hopes back into the ground, possibly even more painfully than the first time—because we’d allowed ourselves that moment to dream of a new start. If only one more thing had gone right, just maybe. What if. If he had just. If he hadn’t hit. If.
But even in that mire of disappointment, September brought a new energy, somehow. The crowds felt larger and better and more involved than they had been in the summer. Perhaps it was that everyone had planned for September games in spring, hoping they’d mean something big, and then when they only mattered to the opposition, showed up anyway. Or perhaps it was just me, deeply wanting to believe it. (I don’t think so.) We had perfect weather, open dome games all the way through the last weekend of the year; maybe that helped some people find their joy again, the reminder that sometimes you just go for the sake of watching this beautiful and cruel game. And when a guy you might barely have heard of hits a single on the last day of the season, you cheer because you are there, and all that matters is that you are ten feet from the turf and the runner on base is in white and blue.
And so, after winning only 74 games and barely bobbing above .500 all year, you still can’t regret what brought us here. You can’t regret the biggest trade the team has seen in twenty years, not when the city practically overturned itself in excitement. You can’t regret inspiring the whole fan base to pick up their blue caps throughout the winter, warming themselves with the thought of competitive baseball. And even though the Mets broadcast extols Noah Syndergaard’s virtues at every turn, while the Jays spent the season mired in ineffective starting pitching, you can’t ever regret taking R.A. Dickey. He’s a terrific baseball player and a better human being, and one of those will last forever. The other one is tremendous fun to watch while you have it.
This season taught me to let go. It taught me to understand how sometimes—or more than sometimes—things don’t break your way, but you do what you can to control them. Sometimes you don’t control them. It happens. I learned to get over those things, to make a decision and stick with it, to understand that sometimes you have to deal with a lot of gut-wrenching pain in order to come out better. It taught me, too, that if something doesn’t give you joy you have two options: find some, or leave. I can’t say that I blame those who left.
For so many players, not just those who will more quietly hang up their cleats in November but everyone involved, the unspectacular contest we witnessed was one more game, one more game in one more August … It was my last live baseball of the season. I didn’t get to see anything I wanted, and statistically, that’s more usually the case than the alternative. But I might have—we always might—and that’s a fact. —Holly Wendt
We always might.
Next year we might.
I can’t let go of all that.