On graduation

I think that one of the hardest feelings to describe is the one that you get when you go back someplace that you used to belong but have now outgrown.  The first time I remember feeling it was when I watched my high school's basketball team play for the first time after I graduated, but since then it has come and gone in a predictable fashion.  When I walk past my old dorm room, or go to a restaurant I used to take an ex to, or even just drive down a street in my old hometown it always hits me.  Everything is the same except for me.  The faces change but the jerseys on the players and the colors in the bleachers and the bunk beds and the menus don't.  It's a humbling reminder that the world rolls on without me.

It isn't really a bad emotion, but it does make me feel a little inconsequential.  Although President Obama would surely disagree, the world doesn't need any one person to function.  It would absolutely be slightly different if any of us were taken away.  Not everyone can be George Bailey, and while I feel like I can bring some solid stuff to the table every once in a while there isn't really a time when people say, "Wow I really wish we had a wannabe writer slash fizzled-out athlete slash unsure-of-how-he'll-get-where-he-wants-to-be-in-ten-years single dude with terrible hair right now.  That's exactly what we need."

Having recently graduated from the University of Notre Dame, I know that this feeling will come back every time that I go back to campus, which I will surely do probably hundreds of times for football games, to see my brother, to see my children when they attend (oh they will), etc, etc, and on and on forever and ever.  I'll think of all of the location-specific memories that will spring up on almost every square inch of that campus, from the quad to the bookstore courts to the stadium to the grotto to the lakes to the library.  It's not like they are things that will really go away either.  Sure, they'll obviously blur and the inconsequential details will go away, but the meaning of the moments will stay.  The nights spent on our balcony or on South Quad, the long walks back from the library at 4:00 am during midterms week, the times I've laughed and cried and smiled at the grotto, I can tell you when and why each place on that campus means something to me, but now when I come back, there will be someone else in those places, probably doing those things, and I wonder how it will make me feel.

The best backyard in the world

But before this turns into a look-at-me pity plea (which I do love to do), I'd like to describe just how not-sad I've been in the past few weeks and months.

I had been mentally preparing myself to be very sad before, during, and after senior week and graduation, and while there have been some moments, like the first day of spring and the hours after my last test, that I have gotten nostalgic, for the most part I have been able to be very even keel.  I know that I'm not representative of everybody in that regard, and I know that there will be more moments like the ones listed before, but even though I know that I'm done at Notre Dame, I also know that Notre Dame isn't over.

This seems silly and contradictory, I know, but let me explain.  The last person that I went to see at Notre Dame was one of my favorite priests (also: favorite people).  The first thing that he asked was explicitly, "Are you sad?"  I told him what I just told you, and he didn't seem surprised at all.  He went on to talk about my friends, and how good of people they are, and how he was sure that we would keep track of each other and, in doing so, take care of each other.  He talked about all the ways that Notre Dame had fostered (and stressed the importance of) community, and how I was (and presumably we were) more prepared for success than I could imagine.  That advice (and whenever you get advice it really should come from either your family or a priest, right???), combined with a three hour drive home, got me thinking, and I think that I finally understood why I haven't been all that sad.

First of all, like Father said, I have developed a friend group of incredible people.  At freshman orientation they tell you that you're going to make lifelong friends in college.  Friends who will be in your weddings, friends who you'll talk to every week, friends who...blahblahblah, and everybody kind of believes it by default because you'll be with them for four years.  It'd be impossible to not make a couple of good friends during those four years, but everybody also believes that statement is a little exaggerated.  Some of the closest people in my life are from home.  People who I've known for over a decade.  Some who I've known practically since my first conscious memories.  How could these people come even close to that in four years?

To be honest, I don't completely know when it happened, but at some point during the lunches and dinners and studying and slacking when we should have been studying and praying and playing and stress and fights and wins and losses and drinks you realize that you've stumbled across a group of people that genuinely love you, and that will do just about anything for you.  I consider people from Massachusetts and Missouri and New York and Virginia and Wyoming and California and Nebraska and Texas and Kansas and Florida and Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania who are going to write novels and save people's lives and do service work and help children and launch rockets and build airplanes and design buildings and make combined billions in investments and play professional sports to be among my closest friends, which is amazing, but on top of that they're also among the very most kind, caring, humble people I know and they'd all be willing to fight for me and vice versa.  That's pretty cool.

I also thought about the education I've received.  I've learned at the top Catholic institution in the world.  Only 2000 people every year get a chance to say that.  It's not something to be undervalued.  I've received a broad education as well, as has everyone at Notre Dame, due to their requirements of theology and science and math and literature.  College is a time for growing up, but it's also a time for expansion, for growing up in every area, and I've had an opportunity to do that, even if I didn't realize it exactly as it happened.

The point of education is not to receive a degree or a certification or whatever symbol of accomplishment is presented.  The point of education is empowerment.  Empowerment to do a job, yes, but also to do good things, to take care of people, to continue to learn, and to reflect all of the things that have been projected on me, explicitly and implicitly, over the past four years.  So while it may be clear that the world will roll on without me, and some 18 year-old, yet-to-be-humbled, ignorant kid will take my place at Notre Dame in the fall, and will walk on the quad that used to partially belong to me and pray in the grotto that used to be the nearest sanctuary for me, that doesn't mean that Notre Dame is over for me.  Notre Dame transcends its campus, as do all colleges.  Notre Dame is in the way that I've learned is the right way to treat people.  Notre Dame is in the brothers I've gained.  Notre Dame is in the success I've had.

I had it backwards.  For the past four years I wasn't a part of Notre Dame that could be replaced in any way but the physical sense.  For the past four years I've allowed Notre Dame to become who I am.  So graduating isn't defined by me leaving, but rather by me going forth with what I've been given and showing the world exactly how special all of it is.

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a strong mind." 
- 2 Timothy 1:7

On flushing it and hitting your free throws

Opening Day is one of my favorite holidays of every year for a few reasons.  First, the Indians are still in the hunt.  Second, there are few things more beautiful than those pictures of gigantic American flags being rolled out in the outfield while grown men line up in their whites and grays to play a boy's game.  Third, because it makes me fall in love all over again with the most beautiful pastime there is.

Opening Day 2013 in the Cathedral of the Bronx

My earliest memories are from the baseball field in our side yard, and the majority of my most important moments have happened on this and other ballfields, other places of learning.  Learning how to wait on a curveball and how to read a fly ball off of the bat, learning how to round first base to stretch a single into a double, learning how to wear my socks at just the right length below the knee, learning how and when to use a takeout slide, and most importantly, learning that nobody is above failure.

Every coach that I have played for has understood that failure is part of the game.  My high school  coach used to tell us to Flush It whenever we came back into the dugout after really screwing up.  Not like if you hit a line drive that turned into an out, but rather times when you made an error, or threw to the wrong base, or got fooled by a bad pitch, or hung a curveball that got belted into the stratosphere.  When these mistakes happened, my coaches made me realize that either I could dwell on them and let them eat at me, or I could face up to what happened, figure out why I had made the error, understand that there was nothing I could do to take back the throw that I'd made into the third row, there was no way to get the ball back.  Flush and move on.

Young William with a Flush It play (but great calves) - June 2008

Like all lessons that you can learn from baseball (which is only a game because it couldn't be a philosophy), the ability to Flush It can be applied in every setting in the world, from school to romance to work to anything else, and as I reach what is the biggest turning point that I've faced so far in my life (going from college into the real world/childhood into adulthood/with a support system to on my own), I've found it useful to think about when I look back on the most recent phase of my life.  In my years at college I've screwed up academically, athletically, and socially (not necessarily in order of frequency or severity), and I've done it more times than I can count.  I've bailed on potential relationships because I've been afraid to commit, I've lacked interest in subject matter to the point where I bombed tests and backed my way into passing grades, I've tested friendships because I don't have an off switch on the basketball court, I've been cut from the baseball team, I've lied, I've cheated, I've given up, I've compromised my morals, I've done pretty much everything that everyone would tell you to avoid doing.

College is a period of difficult transitions, and I've grown up more in this time than I ever thought I could have before I came here.  I've accomplished some things and I've screwed some things up, probably at about a .290 batting average with my slugging percentage is floating right around .500. But these numbers, in whatever dimensions they exist, belong to the past.  The damage has been done, or not.  There's nothing that I can do now except to accept that it's gone, Flush It, and then learn from it.  The people around me may or may not accept it, but I can become better, and in the end, that's what's important.  What's done is done.

Okay Young William, so what do you do after you flush it?

Young William at the stripe - February 2007

Because I'm unable to talk in any way but through sports analogies, I'm going to pull from the arsenal again here, but I'll spare baseball.  As my older brother once told me, "Sometimes you get to be Maverick, sometimes you have to be Goose, and sometimes you crash."  I've crashed my fair share, I got to be Maverick on the baseball diamond, but on the basketball court I was always Goose.  My senior year I led the team in minutes because it didn't really matter if I fouled out.  The only other statistical categories that I think I've ever led teams in are fouls and charges taken.  I stayed in games because I played good defense, I didn't turn the ball over, and I made my free throws.

There's nothing like free throws in any other team sport.  Nowhere else are you presented with an opportunity in the form of an unguarded attempt to score points on any regular basis.  There's just you and the hoop, the shot is always the same distance away no matter where you go, and so theoretically, if you've practiced enough, you should be able to make it every time with your eyes closed.  Watch any game in which a team shoots 50% from the free throw line: the announcer is right: free throws are of eternal significance.

There are free throws in life.  There are things that we know will occur and that we can control.  We need to be successful in these things.  We need to be nice to our girlfriend's parents, we need to be confident in interviews, we need to love and take care of our family and friends.  There are very few things that we can actually control, so when they're placed in our lap - when we're fifteen feet away and unguarded - we need to be automatic.

The world is a scary place.  It's manipulating, it's demanding, it's forceful, and it's cruel, but that does not mean that it owns us.  When the world beats us down, we can flush our mistakes and move on.  When we see openings to success, we need to make our free throws.  The world is hard but it is not impossible, and if we are willing to learn from things and then flush them, and if we can make our free throws, the future doesn't seem so daunting after all.

On senses of entitlement

Earlier today, I had a test in my Labor Econ class (it was tough, but I think it went well, thanks for asking!).  Before the test, the professor wrote "Stay calm and THINK" on the whiteboard in the front of the room.  It was interesting to me because of its simplicity and its power.  We, as a collective country (world?), fail to do at least one of those things, and all too often we fail to do both.

Later this afternoon, Notre Dame announced that the commencement speaker in May for the Class of 2013 would be Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, one of the most powerful people in the Catholic Church, and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2012.  Of course everyone was ecstatic.  Here we were, at the best Catholic university in the United States (and I'm assuming world but I can't back that up), getting the Cardinal of New York, a longshot candidate of being the next Pope, as our commencement speaker.  Live and in person.  Wow!

Wait, that's not what happened at all.

Before I get into the actual result, let's give a brief history of Notre Dame Commencement Speakers of Recent Memory (NDCSRMs).

2012: Haley Scott DeMaria, a former Notre Dame swimmer who was severely injured, and survived, the brutal 1992 bus crash that killed two of her teammates.  On the 20th anniversary of the incident you would think that Notre Dame students would be excited to hear her inspiring words of perseverence and the strength of the Notre Dame family.  Nope, everyone complained.

2011: Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, leader of two wars, former President of Texas A&M, the 7th largest university in the United States.  Pretty cool, right?  Nope, according to Patrick McDonnell, "I saw that a few students were excited, but most reactions were of indifference, simple acceptance or slight disappoint."

2009: Barack Obama, newly elected President of the United States.  The Leader of the Free World!  Whether I voted for him or not, this is amazing!  What an opportunity!  Nope, we complained because he was pro-choice.  We complained about the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD.  Would we complain if Jesus came back down from Heaven to give the address???

Notre Dame complaining about having to sit through a boring lecture from the President

Now let's try to stay calm and think for a while.

The point of college, when you strip it down, is education.  See: The University of Phoenix.  At the end of the day, we are paying for the quality of education.  Higher quality education = higher tuition costs.  Tuition is also inflated by research that the school does, the social and charitable work that the school does, and the quality of life on campus (basically all non-school, non-charitable benefits to a student) to break it down to an extremely basic level.  Let's see how Notre Dame does at all of those:

Education

• 17th best University in the U.S. - US News and World Report
• 12th best College - Forbes
• Best Business School - Bloomberg
• 10th highest median starting salary at $53,400 (across all majors) - PayScale
• An 11-1 student to faculty ratio
• 65 degree programs
• Excellent Career Center and Career Fairs
• Signaling effect to employers from a Notre Dame degree

Social/Charitable

• 53 Student Service Organizations
• 9 Student Religious Organizations
• Events such as Bengal Bouts and Bookstore Basketball that support worldwide charities
• Connections to local community service institutions
• Access to hundreds of Holy Cross priests

Quality of Life

• 19th best Food Services in the Country
• Prettiest campus in the world
• 385 clubs and organizations
• Over 20 Division 1 sports teams
• The 2nd best football team in the country in 2012
• New facilities (Mendoza, DPAC, Jordan, Rolfs, Purcell Pavilion)

When we pay for college, we pay for the access to all of these things.  We aren't entitled to any of them, we aren't guaranteed any of them, we are simply given access to them and the opportunity to use them.  Everyday, Notre Dame students take advantage of these opportunities without gratitude because we feeling entitled to them.  And maybe we are.  Maybe we deserve them because of the check that we write every six months.   I don't think that we deserve any of this.

The four years that I have had at Notre Dame have been, by far, the best four years of my entire life.  I've grown in academic ways, in social ways, in religious ways, and in personal ways.  Did I know I was going to go to a great school in August of 2009 when I first arrived at Alumni Hall?  Yes.  But I had no idea that I would become a better, more well-rounded person who was better prepared to go out and face the world.  I will be eternally grateful for what Notre Dame gave me.  College isn't about buying a diploma so you can get a job.  College is about growing as a person, and Notre Dame, more than any school in the entire world (research not needed, differing opinions ignored), allows, and forces, students to grow as people.

So back to my first point about Cardinal Dolan.  Every single review I saw of the choice of him as speaker was negative or sarcastic.  They pointed to how he wouldn't be funny.  They called him a homophobe.  They said it wasn't as good as Brian Williams from three years ago.

There are things that are wrong with Cardinal Dolan.  Most notably, he's a strong opponent to gay marriage, but so is the Catholic Church and we've all decided to go to their school.  He's strongly against abortion, which Notre Dame and the Church also agree with him on.  He investigated a sex abuse scandal and took priesthood away from the offenders, which we're all in favor of.  At the end of the day, he's a successful, and very powerful, religious man that we can all learn from.

So what do we think we're entitled to?  I've heard multiple people complain because Stephen Colbert turned us down (may or may not be a rumor, I have no idea), who was a former commencement speaker at Knox College and at Northwestern.  How dare he turn down prestigious Notre Dame?!?!?!  Who would have the gumption to do that?!?!?!  Now we're stuck with this Cardinal?  I can't believe I'm paying $50,000 for this.

If Notre Dame wanted to, they could mail us our diplomas and not have a ceremony at all.  That wouldn't change our standing as graduates, and it wouldn't take away what we had done, and how we had grown, during our time here.  Instead, they're throwing us a party on a beautiful May morning in the most storied football stadium in the world and we can invite whoever we want.  If you want a different speech, that's fine.  Here's Colbert.  Here's Will Ferrell.  Here's Brian Williams.  Here's Steve Jobs.  Are they any less meaningful words because they were directed at Northwestern or Harvard or Stanford and not the 2013 Class at Notre Dame?  Is Cardinal Dolan not going to say something interesting or inspiring as well?  Isn't a new speaker better than hearing a backup speech from someone who has already done it somewhere else?

What I'm trying to say is that we aren't paying $50,000 for a 20 minute speech at our graduations.  We aren't paying for our graduation.  We're paying it for our four years of experiences, of which graduation is simply a period on the end of a chapter.  Anyone choosing to speak to us should be something that we're grateful for, not that we feel entitled to.  So instead of complaining because we didn't get more whipped cream on dessert at the end of a beautiful, gourmet meal, how about we appreciate what we've been given already, and look forward to what Cardinal Dolan will say.

On Springtime

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Three minutes ago I was trying to figure out just how to get away from South Bend, which is ironic considering what I’m about to write but not so unbelievable considering the conditions at the time.  For the past week, in every spare minute I’ve had (and in some minutes that really shouldn’t have been considered “spare”) I’ve been refreshing Indians.com and @MLBastian’s twitter feed in order to keep myself as up to date as I possibly can on the Tribe’s progress in Spring Training.  It’s been the most exciting and productive offseason in recent memory, and I’ve been counting down the days (40!) until they open the season in Toronto.  The fact that they’re in beautiful Arizona with its sunshine and mountain backdrops while I’m in South Bend with its sleet and haze has only made me want to mentally move from here to there that much more.

That’s how we get back to me wanting to leave South Bend.  I went to map out the distance from South Bend to Goodyear, AZ, but before I could find anything out (1840 miles, 27 hours according to the speed limits) the picture below popped up to remind me where I am.

When I saw that picture I got a feeling not unlike the one that you get when you see a girl you’re into flirting with another guy.  Gravity loses a grip on your stomach, your shoulders fall, and you’d give anything to just be able to turn and look away but you know it’s pretty much useless to even try.  There’s a time bomb in your pocket and no matter what you do or say you know that eventually you’re going to lose them.  On this cold, windy, snowy-but-not-pretty-snow day in South Bend that picture showed me the warm-weather Notre Dame that's going to appear in a few weeks, and while I love everything about Notre Dame, that's the Notre Dame that I love best, and that's the Notre Dame that I'm going to miss.

Notre Dame is special in the springtime more than any other time of the year.  Springtime is when basketball games move outdoors, organized events slow down and free time builds out, and futons move onto the quad just in time for Sundress Day.  Springtime is when the afternoon sun hits the stained glass of Alumni Chapel perfectly, warms the balconies enough for a rooftop happy hour, and then slips over the top of the Rock in the prettiest sunset in the world.

Beat that.

Springtime is when you spend more time with your friends because you know you won't see them in months, it's when you stop spending so much time studying, either because you don't care or because you have the class pattern down, it's when you walk just a little slower to lectures because it's that nice out.  Springtime is when reading moves from library tables to lakeside benches, it's when Fridays and Saturdays become one long various-shades-of-drunk bonding session, and when you start to hear the bagpipes on the breeze in the late afternoon. Springtime is when shirts turn to tanks, it's when you trade cab rides for group walks, and it's when God washes over campus in the form of cool evening humidity.  Springtime is when Notre Dame comes out in full force to really ensure that you miss it all summer.  I've always loved it, except this time the summer away that follows South Quad Spring won't turn back into Football Fall.

Starting three months from now, South Bend won't be home ever again.  There will be springs wherever I go and I don't know what they will be like, but whatever they are, they won't bring what's coming in the next few weeks, and I hate knowing that, but at the same time, I've been blessed with the experience of springtime here that only a few get to know.  So while I'm going to have to part ways with it eventually, and while that feeling in my stomach might come back, I still can't wait for it to come.

On shifting lanes and holding on

I went home this weekend for the first time since I moved to Minneapolis last month.  Obviously, the main reason was to see friends and be with my family, but on my drive home I was struck with another craving that I had seemed to have been pushing down.

While what follows may seem off topic, I promise that A) it isn't and B) I'm going somewhere:

If you've never driven through the Great State of Wisconsin you need too.  If you have driven through Wisconsin but never at dusk, you need to do that too.  I left the Cities at about 4:00 on Friday night.  The air was about 90 degrees with what was probably 99% humidity, and I hit traffic leaving town.  It looked like it would be the worst drive in the history of the world, and as the ETA on my GPS climbed steadily while I was stuck on 94-E, I must say that I started to get a little antsy.  But after I crossed the border and headed southeast through the hills and fields of Wisconsin, everything changed.

I had finally left the "cabin traffic" of people heading north for the weekend for a getaway and had the road mostly to myself.  I was out of the city, so I rolled down the windows, opened the moonroof, cranked the music, and just absorbed the world around me.  The sun began to fall and the wheat glowed amber.  The hills were covered in long shadows, and the road slipped and snaked for miles ahead of me.  The wind blew warm in my face and for a beautiful few hours I was completely alone and completely in touch with the entire world.  It was in this moment, and here's where we connect back to the cliffhanger off paragraph 1, that I realized I missed going to church.  Albert Einstein once said, "My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the universe," meaning that the universe was designed so perfectly that there was no way that it could exist without an almighty power.  I had a similar experience on Friday, and I realized that I needed religious experiences in my life.  While adjusting to a new community and a new life, it had been easy to let slip for four weeks, but with the trip home I would be able to return and I was ecstatic.

My boy Al either praying or simply contemplating why he didn't do something more fun with his life than practice physics

The weekend came and went and Sunday morning rolled around and we went to church, where one of the readings was from the book of Wisdom, and went like this: 

Because God did not make death

nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.

For he fashioned all things that they might have being,

and the creatures of the world are wholesome;

There is not a destructive drug among them

nor any domain of Hades on earth,

For righteousness is undying^.

 

While I very much may be wrong in this interpretation, I heard this as telling me that even though things suck sometimes, they are not the work of God, and dammit if He isn't trying his hardest to try to swing the world in my favor.  He built the world to be good and it's not going to go down the tubes on his watch. 

So swing forward 3 hours and I'm back in the car headed north, back through beautiful Wisconsin, and I'm cranking New Radicals (who is, without a doubt, the best band to produce only one album ever) on the CD player in Mom's minivan (and no, it doesn't get any cooler than that).  New Radicals most popular, and second best song, is You Get What You Give, and while I've listened to it probably over 100 times, I've never really paid much attention to the lyrics.  Gregg Alexander starts out singing about the young and carefree life, but then hits us with, "but when the night is falling / and you cannot find a light. / If you feel your dream is dying / hold tight."  Fairly standard "don't give up" advice, right?  But it delves deeper.  He comes back with: 

God's flying in for your trial.
This whole damn world can fall apart,
You'll be okay, follow your heart.

You're in harm's way.
I'm right behind.

Pretty similar to the reading from Wisdom, right?

Always take advice from dudes in sweet pink hats

I could be the only one, in which case just stop reading, but it seems like all too often the whole damn world does fall apart, or at least it seems like that.  I get flustered and stressed and worried and I hole up and try to protect myself from the terrible things that will happen next.

But they never actually come.

And in these past three days I've been reminded of that once again.  The Earth is not a cold dead place, and in fact, it's quite the opposite.  Whenever something goes wrong, there's always something there that helps me to bounce back.  Sure, there's a hell of a lot of bad stuff going on out there, but that doesn't mean that it's going to ruin things for me.  If I hold on to what I value, if I don't give up, if I'm me, the goodness of the world will take care of me.  Things will shift from bumper to bumper city traffic to a beautiful drive through the countryside at dusk, and even though it doesn't mean that the ETA moves back to where it was and the bad things never happened, it doesn't mean that it's not an incredible experience.

On taking control

In eighth and ninth grades, I wasn't quite sure who I was.  I was kind of rolling with the waves without really knowing how or where or when to take control of the tide, instead allowing myself to kind of drift along to the rhythm of the world.  Whenever I wasn't sure what was going on, it seemed like I would always revert back to one of the most potent lyrics I've ever heard.

"...And life barrels on like a runaway train..."

The world was on track, sure, but I wasn't quite sure where it was going, I wasn't quite sure if I'd make it there without derailing, and I wasn't sure if I even wanted to be on board, but I sure as hell knew that I was on that train.  That's about as far as I was comfortable reaching though.  I assumed that someone else would take the wheel.

Now, I've written about my love of the musical stylings of Ben Folds before, and I maintain that he's the Elton John/Billy Joel of our generation and is without a doubt a musical genius, but in this case he's wrong.

About a week ago my best friend told me that a baseball team, Los Cardenales del Parque San Luis (St. Louis Park, MN Cardinals), full of Mexican guys from his workplace needed a few extra pitchers, and that we were the guys for the job.  I obviously agreed immediately, and was pumped until I realized what it would entail.  I'd have to join a team of 15 guys who I'd never met before, they all spoke Spanish, and I hadn't thrown to a batter in three years.  I was terrified.  I thought about backing out.  I already knew I would hate the entire thing.

Baseball is, without a doubt, my favorite thing in the entire world.  It's beautiful, it's poetic, and for years and years it was mine, from the backyard to the State Championship, I knew the game and it knew me and dammit if we didn't love each other, but I still couldn't pull it together enough to lace up the spikes.  The only reason I went to the field on Sunday was because I couldn't bear bailing on my buddy.  The train was running away and I was hiding in the caboose.

So I got to the field, was told I was the starting pitcher, didn't have any control during warmups, walked the first batter on four pitchers, and drilled a guy with the next pitch after that.  Not exactly the way to impress a new group of teammates.

I managed to get out of the inning, though, and Arturo, the manager, pulled me aside.  I couldn't really understand what he said other than, "settle down," and what must have been Spanish for, "How the hell did I get suckered into signing this kid up."

Something funny happens when everything goes wrong though; you realize that it can't get any worse.  I didn't get pulled, so I went back out for the second inning, fully confident that there was no way that I could pitch any worse than I had in the first, and I put down the other side 1-2-3.  My outing ended after 5 innings, with 8 strikeouts and only 2 walks (plus 2 hit batters, but who's counting?), and I didn't give up a run after the first.  And the only difference was my attitude.

Young William delivers for Los Cardenales del Parque San Luis

The train was still barreling down the same track as it always had been, but instead of hiding in the back and expecting the worst, I picked myself up and took the controls.  Instead of embarrassing myself I pitched my longest, and best statistical, outing since I was 14 years old.  Instead of letting my teammates down, I was getting fist bumps between innings and Modelos after the game.  Instead of seeing the train as a runaway I saw the train as my own, and even though it was flying down a track that I didn't know the destination of, I could see far enough ahead to get it there.

La cerveza oficial de Los Cardenales

There's never a way to stop the train.  It's moving and you're on it and there's nothing you can do about that.  What you can control is whether or not you want to take it in your hands.  After all, life can be a runaway and you can hide and you can wait and watch, but what does that give you?  There's not much to be personally proud of, nothing is your responsibility or your fault, there's nothing that you can look back on and say, "that scared the hell out of me but I did it anyway."

Life is going to take me someplace, but I want to be the one who gets me there.  I want to be in the engine, at the controls, and I want to be looking out the front window to see where I'm going and the sides to see where I am instead of out the back to see where I was.  We can't change what's coming to us, but we can change how we handle it, and it's a lot more fun to stare it down and steer into it than to it is to let it run away with you.

"New is always better"

I just finished through the 2011 season of How I Met Your Mother on Mom's Netflix account (in exchange for the password, I've corrupted her favorites with beauties such as Baseketball and rated everything I watch as 5 stars.  Fair trade).  Anyway, the last episode was the best one yet (and you can trust me on that because I never make blanket statements), mostly because it was centered around Barney's rule of "new is always better."

There are many exceptions to this rule, namely Notre Dame football teams, the Chicago Cubs, and lacrosse being the cool new sport, but in general it's pretty good.  It's easy to get stuck in a rut and think that everything used to be better, but it's only because that part of our lives was figured out.  It was easy.  We know how things would have happened.  We can always be perfect in hindsight.

But we'd also be accepting something that isn't our best.

I get made fun of for my overuse of "It's the best day ever," but I do think that it's something that should be taken seriously.  After all, yesterday is a sunk cost.  It still matters on the balance sheet, it can't be erased, but there's also nothing that you can do to change it, so there's nothing to do but take what you have and create the absolute best possible outcome, the best day that can be made.

Were there days that were absolutely amazing?  Were there periods of our lives that we thought that everything was completely figured out?  Were we kings of our worlds for brief periods of time?  Yes, yes, and yes.  But would we want to relive those days in a loop forever?  I say no.

It's easy to look back and see what didn't work and wish that it did, but the truth is that it didn't, for whatever reason, and even if we revisit it every once in a while, we shouldn't have to re-enact it.  What's through is through and what's done is done.  Today in church our minister used the phrase, "from history to mystery," while describing the Easter story.  I think that applies here too.  History is done and the future is a mystery, but just because it's a mystery doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken on.  There's a reason that things end.  There are new beginnings waiting, and these new beginnings are always better.

Stars

Since I was about 4 or 5, there have been stars on the ceiling of my bedroom.  Little, glow-in-the-dark circles that I looked up into thousands of times.  I've looked up through tears, I've looked up when I was too excited to sleep, I've looked up when I was scared, I've looked up during love, I've looked up during heartbreak.  I've looked up after Cub Scout meetings, after snow ball fights, after bike rides, after days at the lake, after baseball games, after playing in the yard, after fights, after injuries, after surgery, after the greatest days of my life.  I've probably looked at those stars, that "sky," more than just about anything in my life.

I can still remember the day that they went up, or at least the process.  True to form, my mother decided that if we were going to mark up my ceiling, it was going to be a learning experience, so she cut a scale replica of a little section of the solar system (with the big dipper right above my head) out of a huge piece of paper, taped it to my ceiling, and painstakingly filled in the holes with the glowing paint.  When I say scale, I mean everything too.  Star sizes, angles, directions, distances, they were all taken care of.  The only part I played in it was to hand up the sticky tack when she put the initial piece of paper up. 

I only have three more nights of sleeping under the stars.  Three more nights in this wonderful old house before we move.  I told a friend the other night that it feels like I'm being forced to walk away from my childhood, like the little boy that I grew up as will always be in this house, and I'll be forced to watch from the outside and reminisce.

Sure there will be reminiscing.  As the new house is only a few blocks away I'll inevitably drive by the old one.  I'll think of the summer nights and winter days in that yard.  I'll think of the dinners that I ate.  The walks home from the bus stop and piano lessons.  Parking the car in the driveway after a hard practice.  I'll think of carving pumpkins on the driveway.  I'll think of birthday parties and Christmases and coming home from vacations.  I'll think of pets and I'll think of relationships and friends.  I'll think of how my best days and my worst days all ended up under those stars.

The thing is, though, memories don't exist anywhere except for within us.  Will I be reminded of my childhood when I drive by that house?  Of course.  Will I remember what happened as happening inside of that house?  Yes.  Will I always love that house?  Without a doubt.  But can those memories live on without that house?  Yes, that will happen too.

Memories are what we make of them.  Memories are inside of us.  Memories will live on with or without the corresponding information intact.  Places disappear, experiences are once in a lifetime, but memories tell us how we came to be what we now are.  Nobody's seen anything that's looked like that little boy for years, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't exist.  He's still inside.

He's still inside and so is the dad that always managed to blow huge leads in the bottom of the last inning in the back yard.  So is the mom who made sure that I learned everything that I possibly could in every area that I possibly could, and was able to trick me into enjoying every second of it.  So is the older brother who taught me how to hate losing and how to love the feeling of victory, but also ensured that I knew the joy of playing the game.  So is the younger brother who would listen to my stupid ideas and go along with them without caring whether we looked like idiots.  So are the grandmas and grandpas and uncles and aunts and cousins and friends.

Pretty soon I won't be able to sleep under my stars anymore, but that doesn't mean that I never did, and it doesn't mean that they aren't still with me.  Just because I can't see the people that I love all the time doesn't mean they aren't there, and just because I can never re-live a moment that has already passed doesn't mean it never was.  They're all there, and just like stars, they follow me.  They're distant and sometimes the clouds pass over them, but they're always up there.  They never leave, no matter where I go, and no matter where I call home.  My best days and my worst days always end up under those same stars.

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts

This summer, I plowed my way through four seasons of Friday Night Lights on Netflix in about a month.  (I'll give you time to wonder about whether I have any friends whatsoever and how I could sit in front of the tube for that long, and rate my loserhood on a scale from Scotty Smalls in the first part of Sandlot to Steve Urkel.  Good?  Good!)  By doing this, I introduced myself to a group of characters that immediately joined my Court of Fictional Friends alongside Howard Roark, Calvin, Hobbes, Roy Hobbs, Matthias from Redwall, Mufasa, Woody and Andy, and Moonlight Graham.  The most important was Coach Eric Taylor, who led his teams into battle (and an uncanny amount of last-second wins), with his mantra of, "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose."
There's nothing sneaky about this phrase.  It can be interpreted pretty easily.  The coach is just telling the boys that being strong people is more important than being a strong football team.  That they can't lose if they are upstanding individuals.

That's fine and good, but I'd like to break it down a little bit more.

Full hearts.  If you would have told me to have a full heart five years ago, I'm not sure I would have thought that was possible.  How can you have a full heart?  Aren't there always more things to love?  Can you really fill that container up?  I now believe that I was on the right track, but I was picturing the container wrong.  There's no finite amount of space to fill up - no box or bag or bucket that can eventually be 100% full.  Instead, I'd like to reference a lecture that I received in one of my first classes at Notre Dame, a theology seminar.  The professor compared the concept of "knowing God" to that of walking backwards out of a funnel.

You start in the spout, and from that point it looks like there's a pretty clear path out.  There isn't much to the sides and you can more or less narrow everything down into a fairly well-defined, uncomplicated track.  The light at the end of the tunnel is narrow.  God is limited.

However, there's a point in time when everything clicks and you realize that God can't be that limited.  That's the transition from the spout to the bowl of the funnel.  From that point on, every step you take forwards makes the area surrounding you a little wider; the closer you get to understanding God, the more there is to understand.  This paradigm means that the funnel can never end, as every time that you do take that step and you do understand, there's that much more that's uncovered and still has to be learned.

I believe that the same type of analogy is true of the heart.  The more that we love, the more ability we have to love.  The more full the heart gets, the wider the "container" gets.  The more love we give, the more ability to love we have.

The only way to be able to do that, however, is with clear eyes.

I believe that one of the worst feelings in the world is regret.  Pain goes away, sorrow clears up, anger dissipates, but regretting something can never be undone.  What-ifs and I-wishes and could've-beens keep us awake far longer than I-miss-hers and screw-hims.  Wouldn't you rather strike out with the bases loaded than let it be completely out of your control?  If you have an open jumper at the end of the game would you really want to pass it to a teammate just to avoid the pain of missing?

Clear eyes means no regrets.  Clear eyes means looking at someone and being able to tell them that there's nothing more you could do, nothing you would rather have done, and that you're proud of yourself.  Clear eyes means that you don't have to look back at the past, but that you can see the present and the future without obstruction.  And to me, clear eyes means one more thing:

Without clear eyes, it's hard to really see what's going on.  It's easy to make judgments about people, about places, about situations.  It's easy to think that you're always right.  It's easy to overlook things. 

Clear eyes means being able to see the world with an open mind.  Clear eyes means being willing to understand people for who they are without blindly trying to classify them.  Clear eyes means wanting to know and understand the world around you, the people who live in it, and the things that happen in it.

If we can look back without regrets, if we can see the past for what it was and the present for what it is, and if we can allow ourselves to see the unknown as it comes instead of assuming what it will be, if we can fill our hearts, and continue to fill them, if we can approach the world with a loving heart instead of a bitter one, I really don't think that it's possible to lose.

!

Two nights ago, I was told by someone I know that life is a question mark, that you can never be sure what's going to happen next, that it's one big mystery.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh...

I'll give her that you can never be totally sure of anything, but at the same time, she's making it sound like Mario Kart, where you get hit by lightning or tracked down by a turtle shell at least once every 60 seconds.  Now, I don't know all that much about what's going on with her, but I can honestly say that none of those things have ever happened to me.

Milwaukee, apparently

There are unknowns.  There are lots of unknowns.  In fact, there are very few knowns, and that's even if you count high probability assumptions, such as surviving the morning drive to work.  These things are scary, some are terrifying, some make us stay awake at night, some make us doubt ourselves, and some seem insurmountable.  In no way am I saying that there aren't question marks in life, but that doesn't automatically make life a question mark.  We give out question marks when we run out of our own options, either when we don't have any ideas left or when we don't care enough to find out by ourselves.  Is that really what we want to reduce life to?

Let's pretend that

Clay Matthews

is chasing you down.

What do you do?  Well, you, you scared little ball carrier you, have options.
1. Stand still
2. Run at him
3. Try to avoid him
That's pretty much it.  Now, there's a great chance that by doing any of these three things you're going to get clobbered, but at least in the second two you are in control of your own destiny.  If you try to avoid him, you have a chance to get away.  If you run at him and initiate contact, you have some control of where the hit's happening.  If you stand there and leave it up to him, they'll have to peel you out of the Frozen Tundra.

This isn't something that a positive attitude can solve.  This is something that only effort and passion and hope can solve. 

"Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

A positive attitude wasn't going to get Andy DuFresne out of Shawshank.  A positive attitude won't save your teeth if Clay Matthews is running at you.  A positive attitude only works when coupled with hope, which my dictionary defines as "a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen."  Key word there?  Expectation.



If we wait to see what the scary things are going to do to us, even if we have the best of attitudes, they will inevitably do something other than what we want, and while it may never result in us face-down in the Lambeau Field turf, it could cause other things that are just as bad emotionally, if not physically.  On the other hand, if we take that fear and channel it, and decide that we're going to do something about it and keep it in our own hands, we can do absolutely no worse, and a lot of the time we can do a lot better.  If we expect to come out ahead and we act like it, if we expect to break out of that prison and do something about it, if we expect to juke out that linebacker and start making some moves, there's a chance that we will, but if we sit around and wait to get hit by the scary unknown, the best case will never happen.  Clay Matthews doesn't miss tackles.  Shawshank doesn't let guys out because they feel bad for them.

We need to be bold, we need to expect excellence in the hopes that we will only fall as low as success, and we need to live life as an exclamation point, not a question mark.  Exclamation points accomplish their purpose!  Aren't question marks just waiting to get eliminated?

Seeing the game from a new field

Whenever I tell people that I played baseball growing up, the first question most people ask is, "What position?"  Simple question, simple answer, right?  Ehhh...

The problem is that I didn't really have a position.  Since 2002, when I was 11 and when kids really start getting locked into positions, I've been all over the place.  Quick look: 2002 - SS for the Keystone Display Braves, 3B/1B for the Crystal Lake American Little League All-Stars.  2003 - SS for the Keystone Expos, 1B/C for CLALL.  2004 - 3B for the CL Cyclones.  2005 - 2B for the Cyclones.  2006 - RF for Crystal Lake Central, 2B for the Cyclones, 2007 - CF for CLC, 2B for the Cyclones.  2008 - RF for CLC, 2009 - LF for CLC.  For those of you scoring at home, that's 6-5-3-6-3-2-5-4-9-4-8-4-9-7.

Now, every time I moved, the coach would always say, "it's great that you can play so many positions," which I'm pretty sure was only the first half of a sentence that should have ended with, "because you sure as hell don't excel at any of them."

Young William not excelling in right field in 2008

So when I answer the question I always tell people that I moved around a lot, which is true, but also leaves me without a true identity and makes me sound like a tee ball player, ("Mom!  I got to play six positions and we got juice boxes!") but I also take a lot of pride in it.  Why?  Because when circumstances changed, I was able to adjust in order to change with them.

One of the toughest things to do in the real world is to keep an open mind about things.  It's much easier to entrench yourself in an opinion, a mindset, and an identity, and never give in to the concept that maybe, possibly, there are better options out there.  Humans, it seems, are proud beings, stubborn beings, and defensive beings, which combines into the perfect storm of closed-mindedness.  Why think when we can react?  Why even bother listening to other people's opinions when we could ignore them and pound our own even deeper into our brains.

Truth is, nobody is absolutely, 100% correct about everything.  Nobody knows how to solve every problem that's out there, nobody knows who God is, nobody knows how to completely stop Aaron Rodgers, nobody has written the best novel of all time, nobody has painted the best picture of all time, nobody knows why Tiger Woods betrayed Elin Steve Williams, nobody knows the meaning of life, nobody knows who Jack the Ripper was, nobody knows why LeBron James is such a gigantic douche, nobody knows how I Can't Believe It's Not Butter can't be at least a little bit butter, and nobody knows how they get so much cheese into a Cheez-It.  There are millions of theories on every topic, but not one is absolutely accepted by everyone because they're not facts.

So why do people insist that they do?

I know, I know.  Proud, stubborn, defensive.  But what do we gain from that?  It's hard to put aside our personal pride sometimes, but when things change, be it in ourselves, the people we're interacting with, or our surroundings, if we stay stagnant we're going to become irrelevant.  If I'm playing second and a better second baseman comes along, I won't play if I insist on being a second baseman.  I'll get moved to the bench, and eventually get cut.  But I can still play the game if I'm willing to move elsewhere.  A "position change" doesn't have to be a total shift in mindset, it just means that we can be willing to adjust our perspective based on additional information.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't hold onto our opinions about things.  Just because somebody disagrees doesn't mean that we should automatically change to agree with them.  I just think that we should be open-minded enough to know that, chances are, our opinion isn't the strongest or best one out there.  There are probably other things to consider, and it's okay to consider them.  It's okay to believe that there might be better options out there than the one we have.

[Note from Mom]:  "You should tie this into evolution.  The most adaptable, not the strongest, are the ones who survive."

Brilliant woman, brilliant statement.  And she's right.  Dinosaurs, if you take the extreme example, were much more powerful than apes.  A dinosaur could tear an ape to pieces.  But they couldn't adjust to shifts in the climate, so they disappeared.  They stuck to their cold-blooded, flesh-tearing guns and it didn't work, while apes were able to survive and turn into baseball players because they didn't have any one method of survival.  I'm sure that their lifestyle pre-Ice Age was much different than the one they chose during the Ice Age, and they lived to tell the tale.  The dinosaurs didn't adjust, got put on the bench, and then the Great Coach in the Sky decided that they ran out of innings.

"It seems delightful, but so unnecessary"

Three years ago this summer I was in Bloomington, IL for a baseball showcase (They told me I was a DIII level prospect, I didn't believe them, they were right) and my Dad and I stopped for dinner at the original Jimmy John's.  Pretty cool to begin with, but the even cooler part was a sign on the wall.  Anybody who's visited a Jimmy John's knows about all the funny signs (One in Milwaukee said "Hippies Not Welcome," or something to that effect) that riddle the walls, but this one was a little bit different.  It was titled "How Much Is Enough?" and went like this:

The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”
The American then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this take?”
To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then?”
The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”
“Millions?” asked the fisherman, “Then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evening, sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos!”

The moral of the story is no secret; why be stressed and miserable for years and years so that you can do what you love later if you can do what you love now?

I know, I know, it's pretty hard to eat Cheetos, drink Bud Heavy, sit on your couch, and watch the Golf Channel for your entire life without getting evicted, losing all your friends, having your parents think you're a slob, and having girls never talk to you, and that's the one thing that you truly excel at, but let me explain:

No matter what your dream job is, chances are that there are things you'd rather be doing, but those things also don't provide you with funds.  What the Mexican man did was figure out a way to get all three into his day.  He was good at fishing, loved fishing, and could get paid to fish, so he did it, and then used it to live a comfortable life with his wife and family.  Could he have made more money doing something else?  Yes.  Could he have had a nicer boat?  Yes.  A bigger house?  Yes.  But what's the use?  When our family visited friends in Australia, we were telling them about how whipped cream is sweet in the States (it's literally just "whipped cream" down under).  One of the daughters seemed a little bit perplexed when she heard this, then finally said, "It seems delightful, but so unnecessary.."

Sure, the added sweetness seems nice, but if it's whipped cream you're looking for, doesn't unsweetened get the job done?  If we really stretch the analogy, the added sugar will harm your body in the long run blah blah blah etc etc.

Unfortunately, that's a dangerous road to go down.  Settling for less is never a good thing, and even if you like something, you're good at it, and you're getting paid, it doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a better situation out there which you like more, you're better at, and you could get paid more.  It also doesn't mean that we need to pretend that a situation is something that it isn't.  I'm all for positive attitudes, but it's never good to pretend that you love something just because you're currently doing it.  Finding the positives is a good thing, looking on the bright side is a good thing, but feigning passion always seems to lead to disaster.

One of my recent favorite songs is Doc Pomus, by Ben Folds, namely because of two wonderfully written lyrics (written by Nick Hornby).

1. "Out they pour, the hits and the misses."

2. "He could never be one of those happy cripples / The kind that smile and tell you life's okay."

Good things happen and bad things happen.  That's unavoidable, but what is totally in our control is our reaction to them.  If something comes along to cripple us, we don't have to just sit and take it.  If we're stuck doing something we don't love, we don't just have to stay with the job.  If somebody breaks our heart, we don't just have to feel sorry for ourselves.  If things aren't okay, we need to do something to fix it, to try to find that dream combination of love and skill and support.  It's always there.

The key is finding the right balance.  Just because something is delightful doesn't mean it's unnecessary and just because something is unnecessary doesn't mean we have to settle and pretend it's delightful.  Sometimes it's good to step back and say, "Why am I doing this?  What am I looking to gain?"  At age 60, the American executive and the Mexican fisherman would have had the same life, but life isn't always about destinations.  A lot of the time it's about the journey.

Brothers Need Brothers - Teammates in the Game of Life

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how happy I was that the Mavs had won the NBA Finals, and more specifically, about how cool it was to see a bunch of teams full of foxhole guys reigning on the top of the American sporting world, especially when the most recent "defining moment" of that world was The Decision.  That got me to thinking about how much I miss my teammates, and for the past three weeks I've been sitting on my couch watching videos of my Little League years, spraying cheez whiz straight into my mouth, looking at old pictures of my high school teams, and crying profusely.  However, now that it's all out of my system (but not really), I have time to do other things, like thinking constructively on the issue.

With a few exceptions, all of the friends from high school that I have actively stayed in touch with through my first two years of college are former teammates (about .4 seconds after writing that sentence I realized that there is no such thing as a former teammate).  You see, teammates have a special relationship that can't just be created through any friendship.  Teammates are stuck with each other.  They can't jump ship, they can't choose new teammates, and they can't completely ignore each other.  At least while they're on the field they have to interact in a working unit.

Over the course of a season, or, in the long term, a career, almost every team will hit both a hot streak and a slump, and on a smaller scale there will be hissy fits, incredible personal runs, game-losing screw-ups, game-winning plays, "Did you just see that?" greatness, "Did you just see that?" failures, and everything in between.  Through all of the joy, pain, crap, and mediocrity, you learn to deal with these people in about every different setting imaginable, and the most important part is that, unless you perform the ultimate sacrilege and quit, you're stuck with them for months on end.  I've stayed close with my teammates, even the ones that I wasn't super close to in high school, because I can go to them about any number of scenarios and they will know how to handle my emotional states.  After seeing me spike helmets, perform borderline-flagrant fouls, cuss, laugh, cry, jump with joy, fall to my knees in pain, get injured, hit home runs, strike batters out, give up home runs, strike out at the plate, airball shots, hang my head, stick my chest out, draw charges, argue calls, shove teammates, hug teammates, and punch lockers, it's not that tough to read my feelings after a low GPA, a breakup, or a job offer.  Sports, especially baseball, are based off of locker room chemistry more than I think anybody gives enough credit for anymore, and more than that, it's based on keeping each other even-keel.  The highs can't get too high or you'll come crashing down.  The lows can't get too low or you won't be able to rise out of it.  If one person starts riding these, other people start riding these, and sooner or later you always end up on the bottom, so it's the job of teammates to make pull each other through anything; to tell them to flush a strikeout and move on, to give them a butt-pat after a home run and remind them to move on, to keep the player balanced so the team can be balanced.

What do I miss about sports?  I miss the feel of the dirt, I miss the smell of the grass, I miss seeing curveballs snap into the strikezone, I miss stealing bases, and I miss hitting the ball on the sweet spot, I miss getting playing 32 of 32 minutes, I miss the mixture of pride and exhaustion, but most of all, I miss being on a team and I miss having teammates.

Luckily for me, I have two outstanding brothers.

Over the course of a season, or, in the long term, a career a lifetime, almost every team family will hit both a hot streak have high times and a slump tough times, and on a smaller scale there will be hissy fits, incredible personal runs, game-losing seemingly life-altering screw-ups, game-winning plays moments of personal triumph, "Did you just see that?" greatness, "Did you just see that?" failures, and everything in between.  Through all of the joy, pain, crap, and mediocrity, you learn to deal with these people in about every different setting imaginable, and the most important part is that, unless you perform the ultimate sacrilege and quit, you're stuck with them for months on end forever.  I've stayed close with my teammates, even the ones that I wasn't super close to in high school, brothers, because I can go to them about any number of scenarios and they will know how to handle my emotional states.  After seeing me spike helmets, perform borderline-flagrant fouls, cuss, laugh, cry, jump with joy, fall to my knees in pain, get injured, hit home runs, strike batters out, give up home runs, strike out at the plate, airball shots, hang my head, stick my chest out, draw charges, argue calls, shove teammates, hug teammates, punch lockers, punch them, throw temper tantrums, quit on them, bully them, tattle on them, support them, stand up for them, need them to stand up for me, after riding in cars with me, after waiting for me in the car while I puke away my carsickness, after crossing oceans with me, after insisting that I play one more inning, one more quarter, one more set of downs, after boxing with me, after singing with me, after hugging me, after watching me break down, after watching me exude cockiness, and after living with me for twenty years, it's not that tough to read my feelings after a low GPA, a breakup, or a job offer.  Sports, especially baseball, Families are based off of locker room chemistry more than I think anybody gives enough credit for anymore, and more than that, it's based on keeping each other even-keel.  The highs can't get too high or you'll come crashing down.  The lows can't get too low or you won't be able to rise out of it.  If one person starts riding these, other people start riding these, and sooner or later you always end up on the bottom, so it's the job of teammates brothers to make pull each other through anything; to tell them to flush a strikeout failure and move on, to give them a butt-pat after a home run success and remind them to move on, to keep the player brother balanced so the team family can be balanced.

As Dante Shepherd of SurvivingTheWorld.net so wonderfully states, "Life is a lot like a baseball game - You want your team to win, you want it to be a thriller, you don't want it to be called short on account of nature, and you wouldn't mind if it went into extra innings."  In this game of life, it's nice to have some good teammates.

When I was little, I spent just about every second playing with my brothers.  We'd pull out the Indians and the Orioles lineups and play series after series in the backyard; Michael always spotting me just enough runs to keep me interested but just few enough to still be able to come back.  We'd throw elbows on the cement of the basement basketball court.  We'd check each other into the drywall (the same drywall which I once threw a ping-pong paddle through).  We'd never finish a single game of football without a fight breaking out.  And it couldn't have been more perfect.

When I got to high school, it was Michael who took me under his wing.  I was known as his brother and that wasn't a problem for me.  He'd made a name for himself as hard-working, athletic, good-natured, and, as way too many of my female friends told me, a good looking dude.  He was the one who took me out to the batting cages to hit after school with his teammates.  He was the one who brought me to lift weights and play in open gyms.  He was the one that showed me how much diligence had to be put into school work.

When Stuart got to high school, I tried to do the same thing, and I hope I succeeded.  I feel like I did.  Stuart and I got very close during my senior and his freshman years.  We took care of each other.  That's important.  It's the constant that's held us together through all the years.

Michael and Stuart have been there for me through everything, and not just because they have to (at least I don't think that's why).  When I broke up with my girlfriend of two years, it was Michael who gave me a hug and walked with me, even if I had trouble saying anything.  When my baseball career ended, it was Michael and Stuart who were there to comfort me.  When I got into Notre Dame, they were the ones I wanted to talk to.  When I have philosophical issues, I go to Stuart.  When they lost (Michael coaching, Stuart playing) a mere five wins away from the Little League World Series, I felt like I'd gotten kicked in the stomach too.  They've been there for me for every single second, momentous or mundane, of my entire life, and I know that that will never change.

I brag about my brothers, I'm proud of my brothers, and I love my brothers.  They are my heroes, they are my best friends, and they are rocks that I can build off of.  When I graduate college, they'll be cheering.  When I get engaged, they'll be the first to know.  When my first kid is born, they'll be there to see.  When that kid busts into the Majors they'll be wearing his uniform in the stands next to me.  When I need someone to talk to they'll open up, when I don't want to talk they'll sit and wait with me.  When I want to celebrate they'll be the ones popping the cork and dancing with me, when I want to mourn they'll each have an arm around me.

My brothers and I are stuck together for the rest of our lives, but that doesn't really matter.  After being on the same team for so long, I don't think any of us would ever want to take our talents elsewhere.  You see, we don't even really have a choice.  Having been raised together, having learned to rely on each other, having come to trust each other and wanting to fight for each other and being ready to jump in the foxhole together, trying to operate without each other would be like trying to turn a 6-4-3 double play without two of the players.  And that's what separates brothers from any other type of friend, from any other type of teammate, from any other type of relationship.  That's what makes it special.  One of the more regular readers of this blog (of the 6 or 7 that there are) asked me to write about what it means to be a brother, and I guess that I can't really give a prescription or a recipe for what to do, but I can tell you how I feel towards my brothers and about brothers in general.

Brothers don't just love their brothers.  Brothers don't just appreciate having their brothers around.  Brothers Need Brothers, and will continue to need them for the rest of this infinite ballgame.