On Frustration

The green on the trees is still full like summer, but the light of the evening sky tells us that something has changed, the season's transition is in full force, even with the heat and the green. Normally at this time of year, we're going about our business, watching an occasional baseball game even though our small market teams are out of contention once again. The obnoxious hum of the locusts sends short pangs of nostalgia through our veins; another summer's end is approaching. There are still fifty some games, yes, but two-thirds of another glorious season has passed into the annuls of history. Autumn's whisper speaks to us through every breeze, every time a leaf rattles, every time we look out the window on an evening and see there isn't as much light as there was yesterday.

In August, we try to cram everything we didn't get to do during the summer into one busy month. We take vacations that are more stressful than relaxing, we cram family gatherings into a day's picnic, we even stain our decks or paint our houses or mend fences if we have those things to do. We jump in pools and lakes and oceans trying to savor every bit of another summer that we can, because we know, even if we don't contemplate it, even if it is stuck somewhere in the throes of our subconscious thoughts, that we are all getting older, that another summer is gone forever and has become a mere photo taken by that faulty camera in our minds. The end of summer tells us that; autumn's nostalgia visits us even as we try to ignore it.

It is exciting if our team is still in the pennant race. We have been irrationally frustrated at times. We blame everyone we can, whether the blame is warranted or not. (Narron's is warranted!) We want to make it, we use all of our passion, all of our trivial hope in root, root, rooting for our team, even if our team is no longer the home team. We have heated arguments about who should have pinch hit, who should have come out of the bullpen. Some of us are right, some of us are wrong, some of us just argue for argument's sake.

Is there any real glory in winning a game for your team when soldiers and civilians of all ethnicities and nationalities are slaughtered on a battlefield on a daily basis? Is this even a question we should ever ask ourselves? We all know that baseball is a diversion, an escape from the horrors and problems of daily life. We all relish those three or so hours when we can root for our mighty sluggers, pretend they are heroes in life, go back to the days of our childhood, our innocence, summer vacation, lazy days when we could build tree houses or ride bicycles into the nine o'clock daylight, play endless games of catch with anyone who had a glove.

It's August, the last month of the summer in another year gone by faster than we could keep up. This autumn, we'll have something to root for the first time in a long six years, but the closer it gets to the time of excitement, the time when balls sailing through the autumn night under the incandescent glow of the stadium lights, when every pitch counts, the closer we are to the end of another season, another year in our brief lives. It means nothing, yet it means everything, because in the end, all we have are memories of the thrill of a Junior Griffey homer, the adrelaline of a win against St. Louis, a Harang strikeout, or a Phillips grab that violates all the laws of physics.

Keep some perspective. After last night's game, it's tough; I'm struggling to do it. I feel depressed, like we have lost the World Series or something. It's just one game, though, and we're still in it. So we just have to get back up again, get down to the ballpark if we can, get in front of our television or computer screens if we can't, and regenerate the excitement that was ripped from us last night. Three games left of the series, we still have two of our best pitchers to come.

Go Reds!