Heels On The Field: A Baseball Blog

The Emotional Connection of a Baseball Life: Part Two

The Emotional Connection of A Baseball Life: Part Two

March 28^th, 2019.

It was an early beginning of the baseball season, with all 30 teams playing that day. Bryce Harper made his Phillies debut. The Dodgers hit eight home runs, an Opening Day record. Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer dueled on the mound, with deGrom winning the battle, going six innings, throwing just 93 pitches, allowing five hits and one walk. The Nationals lost 2-0 to the Mets, and most of the news focused on a Harper-less lineup (with the big acquisition of Robinson Cano); a Harper-less lineup would be the focus of conversation again for a different reason, when, on October 30^th, they became World Series champions.

March 28^th, 2020. There is nothing to recall.

As April begins, baseball fans consider the emotional impact of a baseball-less month, when we’re so used to these days filled with early anxiety, excitement and, in some places, lingering chilly, rainy weather. That strangeness has been replaced with what seems far to similar to classic Twilight Zone episodes of displacement and confusion.

“It’s just that I cannot remember an April where I haven’t gone to a ballgame,” says Twitter user @brett535sports,” Watching these replays can’t replace that anticipation and release of the first time seeing the park and the field. I started going with my father. Then by myself after my divorce, then later with my mother, and back again, by myself, after she passed away. So, I think of them both when I’m there. I will miss that connection.”

Protecting our health and the lives of everyone around us has become a tedious effort, full of fear of touching something infected, or breathing the air of someone who’s been infected. We’re now wearing masks en masse, as the air turns warmer, the skies bluer. Baseball is not our way of connecting or soothing ourselves right now. Staying home in a cocoon of safety with lots of paper towels, Netflix, and home-improvement projects is. But our longing is not a distant bell. It’s genuine and meaningful. Things that bring us joy are important. Things that accompany us while healing, whether physical, mental, or both matter.

“A year ago, I shattered my hip at work. 29 years old, in a hospital with a shattered hip. Fun times,” said Christopher Healey,”But being able to watch the Mariners as I was laid up, and then fighting through rehab, gave me a break from reality, and the strength to keep fighting.”

In her 2017 piece for Baseball Prospectus Toronto, Rachael McDaniel wrote about the “intersection” of baseball and depression in her own life.

“My experience of baseball as an adult has been inseparable from my experience of mental illness. The 2015 Blue Jays were instrumental in pullng me out of the single worst depressive episode of my life. While I’ve never been quite that bad since then, baseball is something I would feel pretty lost without.”

On March 13^th she wrote “Un-Opening Day” for Fangraphs, that she wasn’t “overly sad about it,” because we have to be responsible for ourselves and others in the face of this pandemic, but goes on to say what so many baseball fans are feeling,”Our most reliable antidotes to sadness, too, have been canceled.”

In the face of tragedy, whether in a community, the country, or in our personal lives, we can turn to the game of baseball, like a warm blanket. It’s a sport defined by warmth: the air, the arm getting “warm,” as we eat a hot dog or soft pretzel, then turning to a soothing cool down from a soda, or beer or ice cream in a mini helmet. We bask in the quiet, comforting glow that greets us in April and May, just before the intensity of the heat and the season turn up a few notches, reaching fever pitch in July and August, when we’re wringing our hands, hoping, yelling, sweating, literally and figuratively.

Not being outdoors, to enjoy each other’s company, and take in a ballgame, isn’t the end of the world, we’ll survive. But not having it there also isn’t the smallest of things. Its absence is tied to a deeper sense of ourselves and our lives, wrapped up in our identity, and our way of life.

“I’m having a horrendous time now, dealing with the isolation and no sports. It was my way of decompressing and de-stressing,” said Twitter user @Vibrantankles. He went onto say that baseball was his way of connecting with his dad as an “awkward teenager,” as they yelled at cheered watching games at home or at Fenway. “The thrill,” he said, “of walking down Yawkey Way (now Jersey Street) before a game.”

Family is so often mentioned in the thread of our baseball lives. We can’t overstate the power of bonding through sports, and baseball has bonded families throughout time. We can’t dismiss the power of the game to give us something to talk about or love, with a family member that we might not have much else in common with, or family we love but don’t see all that often.

“We plan our reunions for Phillies games,complete with homemade Phanatic cupcakes,” said Katie Shelley. “We have group texts to watch the game “together,” all over the world. We still wax nostalgic about previous seasons, but I would love to be watching new ones right now.”

There are also unique ways baseball fans have found the familial in their lives.

“I got a son,” said Twitter user @BaseballBetsy, who authors a baseball blog, and does photography work, under the same moniker.”I met a GCL [Gulf Coast League] kid when he was 17, and [we became friends.] He now calls me and my husband, Mom and Dad. I’m the “abuela” to his baby daughter. When he ruined  his knee, he called me. When he was rehabbing, we ate dinner together and celebrated Christmas together. He IS my son.”

We’re left now without live baseball, but, instead, a reflection on what it’s meant to us. We’re not able to see what we love as we have. But that doesn’t erase the feeling. We’re looking not just for baseball, but for the connection baseball provides.

This is our April.

The Emotional Connection of a Baseball Life: Part One

 

The Emotional Connection of a Baseball Life

By Jessica Quiroli

 

The sounds of baseball are distinct.

The pop of the bat, the hard slap of the ball in the glove, a fielder yelling, “I got it! I got it!” to his nearby teammates. Vendors making the rounds, walk-up music that becomes familiar to home team fans when each player makes their appearance. Then there’s the distinct sound of baseball silence. It’s a low key hum, the buzz of the next moment unfolding slowly: player steps out of the batters box, his name announced, he takes a moment at the plate, as does the pitcher. We are generally, usually, seated. Waiting. There’s something coming, but it doesn’t happen in an on-field huddle or echo off of a hardwood floor. It simmers. Then…the pop. Or a crack. Bat. Glove. Some sound that lifts the crowd in anticipation, groaning or cheering, willing it their way.

As quiet as the game of baseball is, it’s distinct sounds are embedded in the minds and hearts of baseball fans. To not hear those sounds, on an April afternoon scheduled to be opening week, is a silence that feels brutally relentless and entirely unfamiliar. Coronavirus, a global pandemic, has stopped human existence as we knew it, for the time being, with no timetable yet clear.

How strange this world to a baseball fan, in the spring, the season of baseball’s new life, we're sitting and staring out a window, as if it were winter in the Rogers Hornsby quote; that quote, so famous for capturing the holding pattern of winter for anyone who loves, plays or works in baseball.

There’s a deeper meaning to baseball’s presence in many fans lives. It connects them to memories of family, to their children as they grew up, and, even, to weddings.

“My husband and I fell in love bonding over baseball,” says Heather Linington-Noble, an Orioles “super fan and writer. “We had an Orioles/Dodgers wedding.” [as seen in photo]

But, as Heather also points out, the depth of the connection to baseball is far more than just romantic or fun, and it’s more complex than just being escapism. Baseball is an elixir for those suffering from depression, anxiety and difficult moments in life that feel overwhelming. I’m among them. And I’ve been open about that in the last few years.

“Baseball is my safe space,” Linington continues,” It’s what grounds me, and keeps me centered and sane, however chaotic the rest of my life is, and no matter how depressed I am, I know I can find comfort in baseball.”

In 2014, Eric Simons wrote “What science can tell sportswriters about why we love sports,” examining the emotional behaviors of sports fans, and why it all means so damn much to us. He cited a lot of solid research, some of it fun, some of it inconclusive, and a lot of it very enlightening.

“There is no single answer to why people watch sports, because the answer doesn’t lie in the game; it lies inside the individual,” he wrote. He went onto write about mirror neurons, neurons that fire when an animal acts, and when the animal then observes the same action performed by another. In other words, we connect with those who are like us, and love the same things. We see ourselves, and we feel seen.

One example that kept coming up when I asked baseball Twitter about their emotional connections to baseball was loss. When we share that love, and a person we shared it with is gone, the experience shifts to mean something beyond being a fan.

A baseball fan known as @christy_doc, answered in a few short, heavy-hearted words.

“My oldest brother took his own life two years ago in March. His birthday is October 30^th. I’ve been a Nationals fan since 2012,” she wrote.

The Washington Nationals won the World Series on October 30^th, 2019.

“I will always remember that night no matter what,” Christy said. “I was bawling my eyes out on the living room floor that night.”

Her experience isn’t unique, but it’s an intensely private pain that puts our love of the game in perspective. We’re tethered to teams in many ways, sharing our suffering when they lose, while also feeling the power of a loss of someone through the game. When the Nationals won the World Series, Christy’s partner in the love of the team wasn’t there. Our mourning of loved ones can be deeply tied to our baseball memories.

In answer to that, how does baseball heal us? What does it provide us spiritually? And what impact does watching, and being part of the baseball community have on depression?

Karen Soutar, a one-time contributor to All Heels on Deck, and current staff writer for Jays From the Couch, recalls a particularly challenging period of her life when baseball had meaningful impact on how she coped.

“I suffered from depression years ago, and took medication to get better,” she responded on Twitter. “The absence of baseball is threatening to send me “down that rabbit hole” again. I’m just trying to keep busy and focus on as many positives as I can.”

As April begins without a baseball game, without those sounds, we’re seeking each other out, as partners, as friends, as a community support system. We’re seeking the positives, but also a way to keep close what we love.

In Part Two of this series, we’ll share more of those loving fan memories, and explore more of the important ways baseball has been a way to manage depression.