The Nationals Go Home

When I saw this cover in March on Sports Illustrated's baseball season preview issue, I knew we were doomed.

I'm not superstitious. There are no "baseball gods." But if there were baseball gods, this would have been a sure sign that the Washington Nationals were going to lose their favor.

Ironically, Max Scherzer and Bryce Harper (the guys in the picture) both had spectacular seasons. Unfortunately, nobody else did.

I haven't said much about the Nationals this year. It was an eventful summer for the Janaros. We didn't even get to go to an actual game, though we tuned in to all or part of most of them on television during the season.

I also haven't said much because I've decided that if I can't say anything nice about my team, then I won't say anything at all.

<crickets>

Haha, but really, the baseball season is a strange thing. In April you think that this a great team "on paper." But things don't play out as expected on the field. You start out slow. There are some injuries. You hang around first place, then lose some key games in August, another team gets hot while you stay lukewarm and then... it's the end of September.

I don't want to get down on anybody. These guys are under a lot of pressure for six months -- much more pressure than I could handle. I'm not going to rip on anybody.

The Mets deserve credit along with several other surprise winners heading to the playoffs.

For us it has been a long, melancholy season.

But it won't stop us from coming back fresh and full of dreams next Spring.

Jeter Finishes; Nationals, We Hope, Have Just Begun!

I haven't blogged about sports recently, but on this final day of the 2014 baseball regular season, there are several things worth saying.

First of all, some well deserved "RE2PECT" for Derek Jeter, who played the final game of his outstanding Major League career today. His hit in the third inning brought his final hit total to 3465. Only five players have more hits in Major League history. He finished his 20th season with a lifetime batting average of .310, and he played all of those 20 seasons with one team, becoming a legend in his own right on the legendary New York Yankees.

During an era when sports players have not always put their best faces before the public, Derek Jeter has been a consistent class act, a sportsman, a vigorous competitor, and a gentleman. He has represented baseball well, endeared himself to two generations of Yankee fans, and earned the respect of rival teams and fans, including the zealous enthusiasts of the Yankees' perennial archnemesis the Boston Red Sox.

After he left today's final game against the Red Sox at Boston's Fenway Park, the Red Sox fans gave him a long loud standing ovation. I don't think any New York Yankee has ever been treated to such a display of affection in Boston in the 150 year history of baseball in these two cities.

It was class all around.

Of course, Derek Jeter was not the only story in baseball today. Our own beloved Washington Nationals finished the season as National League East Champs with the best record in the league. In the coming month, Daddy and Mommy and John Paul (and all other Nats fans) will experience either the thrill of World Series victory or the agony of defeat at some point in the playoffs, but at least we are back in the running.

And Nationals' pitcher Jordan Zimmermann closed out the season with a magnificent pitching performance, throwing a no-hitter against the Miami Marlins.

We are ready for some "Curly W's" in the weeks ahead! GO NATS!

You Don't Have to be a Freak About Anything

I have so many thoughts running around my head. I can't focus on a topic to write about. Themes and ideas pass through my mind; images and impressions, memories and hopes and fears.

Stop!

Go out and play ball.

That is pathetic. That's not a batting stance. That's a slouch! Where are your feet supposed to be? And what are you wearing???

That's not a slouch. That's just curvature of the spine.

Oh don't start whining. Move that creaky body and pay no attention to its complaints. Well...don't overdo it. But do it!

Human beings need a variety of activities: we need to read and study and think. We need to talk and to listen. We also need to eat, play, dance, make music, breathe deeply, walk, run, plant things in the ground, explore, and laugh. We need to look at beautiful things. And, of course, we need to sleep.

We need to lift up our minds and hearts and bodies to the One who gives us life, the One who loves us and draws us to Himself. We need to pray. We need to love, and to let ourselves be loved.

We move our bodies and we also move our minds. A healthy human life encompasses this variety in an organic way. You don't have to be a freak about anything. You simply have to live.

Children have a natural sense of how to live. Its one of the many reasons why its good to have them around.

Sadly, in our culture, we don't "live" well. We vacillate between distraction and obsession. This is what's killing us. We think we're all alone with this crazy life and we don't know what to do with it!

But we are not alone. We are never alone.

So give yourself a break.

Surviving a "Nationals" Disaster

Saturday morning was gloomy outside, but especially gloomy inside the Janaro home.

John Paul finally broke the silence: "So, do you think that was the worst sports disaster that I have ever seen in my life?"

John Paul likes to rank things and various aspects of his life, not only according to "best" and "worst" but also in an orderly sequence of preferences. For example, he has a ranking for all 30 baseball teams, from favorite to least favorite.

The St. Louis Cardinals used to be his third favorite. Not any more.

"Well," I began to say, "that was just baseball. Things like that happen in baseball."

Of course they do. I am almost fifty baseball seasons old. I've seen every kind of crazy thing. I know well the truth of those famous words of Yogi Berra: "It ain't over...till its over."

"We were one strike away," John Paul groaned.

"I know," I said miserably. "And he threw strike three and the umpire didn't call it!" Certainly not. No smart umpire is going to decide the outcome of a playoff series on a called third strike at the knees.

It was painful to watch the end. It was terrible! Even Eileen suffered (she's now thoroughly hooked on baseball). We felt that awful pain that the old sports show famously described as "the agony of defeat."

Baseball is a kind of drama: a living stage on which intelligence, human effort, and even a kind of heroism combine with the uncontrollable forces of material contingency. Sometimes the difference in a baseball game is a breeze that blows at a certain moment, or (literally) "the way the ball bounces."

Of course, 24 hour sports talk analyzes every single detail, on and on and on. Fans get angry at players and call them all sorts of names that they don't really mean: "He struck out! What a moron!"

Uh...no. Actually, he's a trained professional athlete with outstanding capabilities who was trying to do something very difficult. He was trying to hit a baseball at 90 miles an hour and he missed three times. There is nothing "moronic" about this at all.

But our emotions are invested in the game, and the players take on roles in a drama of winning and losing, triumph and tragedy. We experience a kind of catharsis. We also affirm civic or regional loyalties, and sometimes even the bond between generations.

We also go way overboard. Sports--like almost everything else in our culture--are bloated beyond proportion. They have become part of the all-absorbing distraction that we call "entertainment." They are a monstrous parody of their natures, and people drug themselves or otherwise do disproportionate damage to their bodies in their efforts to achieve success.

It is difficult for any of us to find our balance in the whirlwind that is everywhere blowing our culture beyond all boundaries. But that does not excuse us from the effort to live the game according to its real nature.

We must learn to play, even in the whirlwind. This requires special personal skill, which the ancients called virtue. Not many people in the world care about virtue, and those who do generally find that its hard to get very far in acquiring the skill to live well. We must try to help one another. We need to learn how to play the game hard, and then let it go.

That's never been easy for me.

When I was a kid, I used to throw the radio across the room (thank goodness it was just a radio back then) when my team blew a lead in the ninth inning.

But I'm much more "mature" now (haha). On Friday night, when the Cardinals rallied with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to defeat our beloved Washington Nationals and bring their splendid and surprising season to an end, I didn't smash the television.

I felt like smashing the television.

Nevertheless--although I have hardly developed anything in the way of virtue--I have acquired a veneer of civilization over the years. So I swallowed my frustration at the always-unpredictable tricks of the little white ball. I simply rose from my chair, went to my bedroom, and--putting on Vivaldi's Four Seasons--laid down and closed my eyes, The first of the seasons, of course, is Spring.

Spring. It will be here before we know it. "We'll get 'em next year!"