FanPost Friday: An ode to practice, part II

Some amount of joy and beauty are set to return to a world in deficit of both

Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday. Five years ago, I wrote a piece from an AirBnB in Tempe, AZ, while on a friend’s bachelor party trip to Mariners Spring Training. Earlier that day, Ichiro had walked right by me not five feet away in the Peoria back fields. About five days later, it was becoming clear that COVID-19 was going to be world-altering problem. I think about that trip (and how it was unknowingly this last wildly fun and care-free experience before the grim reality of the rest of 2020 kicked everyone in the teeth) more often than I think about most vacations I’ve taken in my life. There’s a clear demarcation in time and I’m afraid part of my brain will never let go of what life was like before that, not only because of the pandemic, but also because we had our second child during the pandemic and raising two small kids through those dark years of isolation has forever altered how I see the world. I lost friends and family members during those years. By all accounts, it’s been a bad time.

I think about that article I wrote defending the simple joy and whimsy of Spring Training practice baseball and the ensuing shit show in the comments section (sadly gone forever thanks to the Coral transition, of course) that centered around “well, actually Spring Training is a bad thing because x, y, z.” I like to joke that this cesspool of negativity in the comments section aimed at something so relatively trivia was the last straw in throwing our reality into needing a hard reset and hence, a horrible, deadly pandemic. It’s a glib, bad, and incredibly esoteric joke and obviously there is nothing funny about millions of people dying worldwide from a respiratory virus and all of the cascading, compounding problems it caused for daily life here in this country.

All the same, I am stuck on and fascinated by this brief window of time in 2020, before the world we knew utterly went to hell (and has stayed there), when I was so full of relative optimism and was touting such an even-keel, positive perspective on baseball and life. When I re-read the piece, I desperately still want to believe in what I wrote. I certainly still stand by these words:

The act of practicing baseball, to those who do not play baseball for a living, has an inherent level of whimsy to it once you reach adulthood. Whenever you have the chance to do it as part of your softball or wiffleball team, or just having a catch with a friend, it’s a ticket to ride back in time for many people. Back to childhood or teenage years when things were simpler even though it probably didn’t seem like it at the time. It can also be a new experience, or maybe completely foreign and uncomfortable, to those who didn’t play baseball as a kid. Experienced or not, practicing baseball as an adult is an activity rooted in joy.

And yet, five years later, the game of baseball itself feels a bit like a stranger to me, or an estranged friend. MLB owners & Commissioner Rob Manfred allowed billionaires to steal the storied Oakland Athletics from Oakland, a city with an actual soul and beating heart, and move them to the soulless sports gambling capitol of America. To a scorched, festering, water-depleting city constructed out of false aesthetics. Mariners ownership refused yet again to spend money to address the roster’s deficiencies that kept otherwise quite good teams in 2023 and 2024 juuuust on the wrong side of a playoff berth. Remember 2022? Remember the joy? The tears? Did it really happen or was just a mirage in the sandstorm of tragedy and fuckery of the last five years? Why would you not do everything within your power to give the team the best chance to make that happen again? How is the potential regional civic joy and achievement not worth the financial risk?

Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images

To say my interest in baseball and the Seattle Mariners is at a low point would be an understatement. I know I’m not alone in that. It genuinely sucks to lose interest in a hobby you’ve had for as long as you’ve had memories of being alive. It has actually caused a bit of an identity crisis for me and made my imposter syndrome as a writer nearly unbearable.

But, reading my piece from 5 years ago makes me feel some things that give me a spark of hope. Thanks to the meds I’m on, it’s difficult for me to feel any highs or lows emotionally, but I’ll be damned if the thoughts of warm sun and the sound of baseballs thwacking leather gloves doesn’t have me feeling something. Have you gripped a baseball lately? Go grab one. Feels good, right? Have you picked up a baseball bat in the last five to 36 months? Go do it. Feels righteous, doesn’t it? Feels like taking back the authority over my own sense of joy. Whimsy. Tactile connection to past feelings and experiences. The sense of “what if?” The power of possibility (okay, chill out Brene Brown).

These feelings, these senses are still there, even if buried under miles of muck, depression, compounded grief, lingering post-partum disassociation, and generally sour vibes.

I think it’s beautiful. Whether it’s practice baseball or low-A minor league ball in West Virginia, baseball is gorgeous and joyful and we who are fortunate enough to have the time and space in our lives to witness it are nothing if not blessed.

Not to be a self-aggrandizing wanker, but I dunno, man. I think I kinda hit the nail on the head there.

PROMPT: Allow yourself to enjoy Spring Training baseball today. You earned it.