Thursday, April 27, 2017

I’ve been meeting with a small group of guys on Thursday mornings since late 2002. None of them are big baseball guys, but they are gracious and good listeners. I don’t always talk baseball, but I couldn’t contain myself this morning. I had three great baseball moments that had to be shared.

I’ve been waiting since opening day for a game like last night’s 4-3 Giant win over the Dodgers. Granted it was not a game for the ages, (it’s only April) but it was the best game yet this year. Obviously there is a lot of baseball left in this season, but this game might well end up being the game I remember most when I think of 2017. In my youth, I might have viewed this game as perhaps the moment when a disappointing season turned around. What I have seen from the Giants thus far makes it hard for me to believe that, but I will savor the memories until they fade.

Three players and three moments helped to wash away some of the frustration of the previous 14 losses in 21 games. And if six games out of first wasn’t bad enough, add to that a series of costly injuries. Stuff happens in baseball, I just wasn’t aware that stuff included dirt bike accidents involving your best pitcher. But I digress…

I was listening on the radio last night while helping my wife Brenda move some furniture. With a Giant Dodger game on TV, listening to the radio, and moving furniture are both indicators that the season is not going well. After five innings the futility appeared to be continuing. The Dodger led 3-0 and the Giants were hitless. At the end of six, the only change was that the Giants had picked up a hit. Then came the first of the three magical moments. In the seventh inning rookie Christian Arroyo, playing in just his third big league game, hit his first home run, driving in Buster Posey to make it a one run game. His mom, in the stands, celebrated while deftly hanging on to her plate of nachos. Athletic skill must run in the family.

Enter Michael Morse, of 2014 Giant lore. His dramatic eighth inning pinch hit home run to tie the game with St Louis in the NLCS, helped to propel San Francisco to their third World Series in five years. (Of course you can’t mention that game without a salute to Travis Ishikawa and his walk off game winning home run). That post season may well have been the high water mark of Morse’s career, which included his, go ahead RBI in Game 7 of the World Series victory over Kansas City. He was out of baseball last year and almost on a lark, accepted an invitation to the Giants spring training camp. The invite to Morse came from the Giants General Manager Bobby Evans while both were attending the wedding of former Giant teammate Hunter Pence, (more on Pence later). Morse was close to making the team when he suffered an injury. He decided to stick with it and was playing in the Giants minor league system when he got the call on Monday past. In an appearance strangely similar to his 2014 post-season heroics, Morse again pinch-hitting in the eighth inning, crushed a home run to tie the game at 3-3. It was his first at bat since being called up and the results were as thrilling as they were improbable.

So after fireworks in successive innings, the game remained tied into the bottom of the tenth. With the bases loaded and nobody out, up came, unquestionably the Giants most unique player. What Hunter Pence may lack in artistic grace, he more than makes up for in character and intensity. If you have played the game, you will know how difficult it is to handle a high fastball and if you are prone to offer at such a pitch, the strategy is to keep throwing the ball in that location and even a little higher each time. Dodger pitcher, Ross Stripling was fully committed to that approach. After a swinging strike and a foul ball, Pence had fallen behind in the count. He would work Stripling to a 3-2 count, fouling off four more high fast balls, and then on the tenth pitch of the at bat, he hit a sacrifice fly to give the Giants an amazing come from behind win.

Three players, three memorable moments; for a rookie who will tell his grandkids about his first home run, for an aging veteran who now knows why he decided to try it one more time, and for the wild eyed, emotional heart of the Giants who showed all of us one more time that being conventional might be overrated and that’s why he absolutely never gives up. As one friend, a former college teammate of mine said of this game, “It had everything that I love about baseball.” I know what Jim means, this game made me smile.

And thanks to my Thursday morning group for letting this Giant fan relive these three moments. Perhaps it is fleeting.  The Giants lost today 5-1 in ten innings, but that’s okay. This one was good enough to enjoy just a little longer.

Monday past started with some unexpected rain. At least it was a surprise to me, but it seemed like a good way to start the workweek. People moved a little slower, the coffee shop felt a little warmer and the hard edge of a workday was softened just a little. I had just returned from a weekend in Portland, where I’m quite sure that my Rose City friends would have preferred a bright sunny Monday morning. Here in North Central Washington, where the sun is much more the norm, rain can be an excuse to reflect a bit, to listen a little more closely to others, or a reason to dream, if only about what it will be like when the sun returns.

Granted, rain can ruin well-crafted plans, but gray skies really are a good backdrop for contemplation. Even a few minutes of silence can be a gift to embrace in our crazy, digital, always on, 24/7 existence. Changing plans enhances our ability to flex, adjust, and modify, which I’m sure are all good practices.

In the best of all scenarios, the rain showers are brief; long enough to catch our attention and refocus the mind, but then the clouds begin to part. Suddenly great swatches of blue appear, steam starts to rise from the warming ground. Perhaps you can even revive previous plans, but if not, you have cleared your mind and you are ready for whatever the day will hold. A little quiet is a good idea, maybe even on a sunny day.

Ok – I admit it. I am forgetful. This has been evident to others for some time. I played baseball through college and have managed to lose three really good gloves. How does a ball player lose a glove? Simple – forgetfulness. I could make up some lame excuse but my wife Brenda would never buy it. Nor would my friends in Portland where I have left enough things, that if they had not returned them, would have made packing unnecessary the next time I visited. Brenda is a good sport. She only chuckles when I invariably come back in the house, at least once, usually twice, to get something I forgot. I do contend though that it’s not technically forgotten until you actually leave.

The other morning, ten minutes into my thirty-minute drive to our local ski area, I realized I had left my gloves at home. My first thought as I turned back was I should have left that extra pair of mittens in the truck like I had thought about doing. Next, I looked down and saw my “Ski Checklist.” Of course intentions not acted upon, and checklists not consulted yield no value. I was lucky. My buddy, who I was planning to ski with, got all the way to parking lot before he realized that he had forgotten gloves, helmet and ski pants.

As I rode the chairlift, waiting for Scott to arrive, I thought more about checklists and particularly my failure to look at mine. Why is that? After all, I had gone to the trouble to create the list, print it out and even place it where it would be easy to use. The answer is that I had not built the habit that would make it second nature to take a quick glance at what I needed to have with me for a good time on the mountain. I failed to follow the maxim from David Allen, (author of the book Getting Things Done), “The mind is great place to have ideas and terrible place to keep them.” (For more on the value of checklists read The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande).

Speaking of checklists, I have two friends that are pilots. One is probably more skilled than the other, but the less skilled pilot is a stickler for using his checklist. If I knew that a flight would end in a crisis, then I’d choose my more talented friend. However, it is quite possible, that the very reason for the crisis was that he somehow forgot to check the fuel gauge. The checklist is only one example of the “external brain,” but there are many ways that we can work to off load stuff from our minds in order to free up space for higher and better uses of those brain cells. I am a huge fan of the aforementioned David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. It is all about developing a trusted system that will enable you to accomplish more with less stress while using your mind in way that fosters creative thought in every area of your life.

Yes I am forgetful, and I must acknowledge that I did not heed my own advice, but I am resolved to make it habit to consult my Ski Checklist and I vowed not post this until those mittens are in the truck! Here’s to all kinds of good ideas with minds that are freed up to think!

Everything rational tells me that disappointment should be reserved for important things. I’ve had my share of legitimate disappointment. Parenting ensures large doses of it, not to mention the regrets attributable to my own poor choices in life. Knowing all that full well, I must admit that my most consistent experience with disappointment has come because I am a baseball fan. Every serious fan will resonate with the low grade level of sadness that accompanies the every day twists and turns of a baseball season. If your team is even above average to quite good, you will still have to face the reality of plus or minus 70 losses. Those losses can take the spring out of your step, turn a partly sunny day into partly cloudy and make every glass look half empty. Of course when your team wins or better yet strings together several wins, the opposite may well be true. Yet barely below the surface lurks the gnawing memory of past disappointments and the knowledge that they will return.

A loss, a losing streak, even worse, a season that is written off by Memorial Day, are all part of every baseball fan’s experience. There are still deeper baseball disappointments, and if you’re fan of the San Francisco ball club you might well call them “Giant Disappointments.”  The 2017 season got off to an illustrative start, producing baseball’s unique version of emotional pain. The Giants blew three separate leads,  but still were within one out of starting the year on a winning note.  It was not to be, and the sad fact is that it will happen again and again in varying ways throughout the season. It should be noted that San Francisco’s starter, Madison Bumgarner became the first opening day pitcher to hit two home runs in a game, yet the loss takes much of the shine off even that.

My first lasting memory of this kind of disappointment was the final out of the 1962 World Series between the Yankees and the Giants. Game seven came down to the bottom of the ninth with the Giants trailing 1-0. (The Yankees had scored their only run on a double play). With two outs and runners on second and third, Willie McCovey scorched a line drive. Before I could exhale, much less jump off the couch, the ball found the glove of Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson and it was over.

The Giants had great teams in the1960’s but managed to finish second four years in a row from 1965 through 1968. (Dodger and Cardinal fans celebrated without regard for my pain). In 1969, the first year of divisional play, it looked like the Giants could make it to the post season. I purchased a ticket to the play offs, which arrived in the mail. There in my hand was my very own playoff ticket. It looked so official because it was – nobody even thought of counterfeit tickets back then.   I was cautiously excited, only to return my ticket for a refund when the Braves reeled off a streak of ten wins and the Giants finished second for the fifth straight time. *

Perhaps the most crushing defeat in my many years as a Giant fan came in 2002. San Francisco, led by Barry Bonds, was back in the World Series taking on the Anaheim Angels. The Giant’s offense was prolific and their pitching more than adequate. They took a three games to one advantage into Game 6. I was watching the game at my parent’s condo, which was quite fitting. They had been at Game 7 back in 1962. My folks were actually out of town, which as things played out, meant they would be spared sharing another Giant meltdown with their oldest son.  With the Giants leading 5-0 in the seventh inning, it all unraveled in a most inglorious fashion. I won’t go into the painful details and I won’t assign blame. There has been plenty of that over the years. (I must say though that my high school coach never did anything that resembled a pre mature celebration). For those who want to relive the pain, you can search the internet, but once San Francisco lost Game 6, I knew what Game 7 would bring. It did, and when it was over I was still waiting for the Giants to win their first World Series since 1954, the year I was born. The team had been in San Francisco for 45 years and been to three World Series, without bringing home the big prize. When they lost in 2002, I was almost 50 and I began to think I might not ever see the Giants win a World Series. Of course there was that one in 1954 but it was hard to enjoy since I was all of six months old. I know it is often popular to say that something is not a zero sum game, but any way you slice it, baseball is a zero sum game. One teams wins it all and everybody else loses. In that respect, there is plenty of disappointment to go around.

Speaking of more disappointment, the Giants had also been in the 1989 World Series in which they lost four straight to the Oakland A’s. It was painful to watch them struggle against their cross bay rival Oakland, but this was tragically overshadowed by the Loma Prieta earthquake and joyfully eclipsed by the birth of our second son Luke. Even a hard core fan like myself, at least when looking back, can see the relative insignificance of my dismay in the face of what was quite literally life and death. It is all about perspective.

With perspective you begin to look outside of your own pain, experience, sadness and disappointment. You take a wider view and see what is truly important. Baseball is a great game, okay, the best game, but even baseball pales in light of true suffering like many experienced in the earthquake back in 1989.

The birth of a child also lends perspective. Even the childlike joy that would I later experience when the Giants went on to win three World Championships in the space of five years, (2010, 2012, and 2014) is nothing compared to holding your own newborn baby. I am glad that we live in a day when major league players regularly leave their teams to be at the birth of their children. The bright light of perspective has done its illuminating work and lots of baseball families are the better for it.

I’ll probably always have that low level experience of sadness when the Giants lose, (like after this season’s opener), but I’m thankful for perspective. It is a gift in the midst of both pain and celebration. Bring on that next game.

*Cubs fans received all the sympathy in 1969 as Chicago managed to blow a mid August lead of nine games and fall to the Amazin’ Mets.

In 2016, I’d like to say that I whole heartedly celebrated with Cub fans this past season when they won their first World Series since 1908.   The truth is my congratulations were tempered by the fact that the Giants lost to the Cubs in true disappointing fashion in the Divisional Series. 

Perspective says a team should win at least every 100 years or so.  Go Mariners!