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IN THE MIDDLE OF COLLAPSE |
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Written by Jimmy Scott
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Wednesday, 17 September 2008 |
 We’ve all been part of failure. That’s how we live our every day,
through little victories and little failures. Of course, the little
failures always seem to hurt incrementally more than the little
victories, but welcome to the world of pain, I guess. It’s out of pain
that we learn how to achieve our next victory. The cycle continues
from there.
Losing blows. Losing sucks. Losing stinks. But losing in September…
Losing in September takes on a whole new meaning; a completely
differently feeling from losing 5 in a row right after the All-Star
break.
There’s a lot of talk at this time of year about “September swoons.”
If this were May, not winning games would be called a losing streak.
With two weeks to go in the season, it’s called a collapse. Is my team
currently in the middle of a collapse? We’ll know the answer on
September 28. I’ve been a part of my unequal fair share of
poorly-timed failures to win. Here’s what it feels like.
When things aren’t going well, you can’t escape the potential reality. Waking up in the morning takes on a whole new meaning when the instant first thought you have is about your failure the night before. The pit of your stomach twists and turns and you’re not even sick. Distracting yourself doesn’t work because there’s no joy in anything. Appetites are lost. Breathing is a challenge. Dread refuses to leave your side and it’s only 9:30 in the morning.
Knowing you may be a part of something historical, from an extremely negative perspective, doesn’t leave your mind for more than a few minutes at a time. The burden of expectations weighs down on your shoulders until you can barely move.
You ever try to motion your arms under water? It’s hard, right? The extra pressure makes it more difficult for them to redeploy as quickly as in the air. When a pitcher is on the mound during a supposed collapse, he’s pitching under water. The baseball in your hand feels like a 15-pound cannonball. Mistakes you got away with not too long ago are taken advantage of now. Your stamina wanes and the ground balls your accustomed to fly over fences that are suddenly too close and too low.
Relationships between player and spouse/girlfriend/parent/friend/teammate go completely on hold. You’re in limbo until you can string a couple of victories together. You forget about the millions you’re making and focus on your inability to perform what had come so simply only a handful of days before. You make mental mistakes in the game and clubhouse. Your mood suffers and is taken out on every living creature you come in contact with. Injuries are slower to heal; bumps and bruises from the course of a game feel like bullet wounds and open sores. Hope is only a word. Defeat has become your religion.
Your only buddy, the one who’s always there for you and will never leave your side, is the cliché. Their power is strong now, since you can’t publicly state how terrible you feel about yourself, your teammates, your manager, and the general state of the world. “We’ve just got to keep grinding,” you say. “We’re battling every day,” is a good one. “There’s no talk of failure in this clubhouse,” somebody rattles off after perusing through the Baseball Clichés for Dummies manual. And you know there’s no talk of failure in the clubhouse because nobody’s talking to each other. Sure, we’ll say Yo and ‘Sup and all that. But we tend to avoid talking about the game. About how we feel. About how out of control this whole thing has gotten. About how we know how this is going to turn out so could someone please just turn out the lights so we can wake up in spring training, with sunshine and warmth and hope being more than just a word?
A collapse overtakes you, just like the other team(s). One victory in your last nine is all you take from your season. Not the contract extension you’re likely to receive. Not the statistic you led and never knew existed until Elias needed to justify paying one more Harvard grad for his analytical skill set. You don’t remember the 10-game winning streak in June and the magazine covers in July and the coronations in August. You always remember your failure. You always remember how you did not come through; you didn’t perform. You didn’t do what the fans wanted, what your mother prayed for, what your wife needed from you and management paid you to do. You were part of The Collapse, so bad it earns the capital letters you just witnessed. Why? Because you failed.
The pain from a total team breakdown is something you never recover from. Victories the following year take longer to enjoy. They come too late. You get mad at them. “Where were you last September, when I really needed you?” But by June, you understand that last year is last year. You need this year’s wins, and loads of them, as soon as possible. You need a cushion. You need your insurance. You need a sure thing. Because the last thing you ever want is to be part of another collapse. That would be terrible. That would be awful. That could very well be the defining moment of your entire life.
Two weeks to go in the season. I don’t want to be remembered like this.
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