Another Year Winds Down
It is already upon us: planning for that final period of the year, the end of the holiday season. This weekend we firmed up our plans for New Year's Eve (which have been the exact same plans for a few years now), including trading e-mails with the people with whom we always spend the festive, gala celebration.
We saw houses all decorated for the season, although the menorahs have been taken down.
Baseball will conduct the December General Managers Meeting, starting this Friday. Of all places, it is in that MLB-free state of Tennessee this year. Home to many a minor league team, shoring up the farm system of numerous members of the bigger Show, but how odd to pick Tennessee. Usually the GMs gather in a more posh environment, like Hawaii or Palm Springs. See what the Luxury Tax has done to these spendthrifts?!
It is somehow fitting, following a World Series in which there was no Yankee team, that the GM meetings begin on Friday the 13th.
Gather they will, in Nashville, TN. Perhaps the new crop of Baseball GMs are a Country-Music-loving group. A curious factoid regarding this annual meeting: is is not sanctioned by MLB. Nope! This is a presentation of, and hosted by, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, Inc., which governs minor leagues [1]in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
There are few things quite as enjoyable and as exciting as watching minor league baseball. Most often the players give their all, the fields are funky and have a more homey ambience than the ones in the Major Leagues. The park-like atmosphere is more akin to that of a circus or an outdoor carnival than that of a major league ballgame. This festive atmosphere adds to the sense of growth, a certain sporting adolescence (or the downward spiral of those in the twilight of a career, clinging to the hope of getting called up yet again ...a last hurrah of sorts), a naivete and joy in and of itself.
Yes, you know it is December when the Free-Agent signings, the Winter Meetings, the Arbitration-eligible Free Agent Deadline and other such events fill this writers' mind. What else is there to ponder during these lean off-season months?
PASSIONS
Over the weekend, at brunch with an associate, we discussed what are our passions. Why do we work, what is it we hope to reap with the fruits of our labors?
Fishing!, came the reply from across the table at Olga's Diner [2] at the intersection of Routes 70 and 73 in or somewhere near Cherry Hill, NJ.
He explains that riding his Harley and fishing off the Florida Keys are his passions. There's his wife and family (young 'uns, at that!), sure, and he loves them. But FISHING!, nothing beats it, he says. Why does he work, why is he so steadily in focus, going for the brass ring? So he can manage to find time to just freeely fish. No hassles, no responsibilities, no pressures ... just get in the boat, sail down to the Keys, and go fishing. "I live to go fishing," he says, "That's the pure joy."
And me? I live, I tell him, to follow the Yanks first, and all of Major League Baseball after that. Susan and I want to visit every Major League ballpark. A perfect Summer tour that would be. While on the way we'd stop in at some Minor League parks, too, to see the stars of tomorrow as they learn and grow in the now of Minor League competition.
Our passions compel us. To a certain degree, they also sustain us.
In recent discussions with a colleague we've spoken about our lives, our work (we do a great deal of work together), opportunity, goals, and life in general. He's endured a major recent emotional powderkeg, and now, after the initial explosion, seems to be coming out of it. Not necessarily better, an odd word to use, but just, actually, coming out of it in order to return to the norm, the mold, the routine. The way things were.
After one goes through an emotional whirlwind, a huge upheaval, a melange of conflicting and painful senses and such (loss, grief, anger, guilt, remorse, fear) it takes a long time to readjust, resume the routine, go back to "the way things were."
We shared a macabre joke tonight, this friend and I. He made it, actually, I would not have dared to tread in these areas with even a hint of levity, for fear of being hurtful or insensitive. I responded with some shock, and a more serious comment than I would most usually make. I am usually the one with the quick wit, the humor, the play on words. In this case I was the straight man, the appreciator of the joke, the one a little out-of-kilter at the comic sense of my colleague.
Sure, sure, humor can be a shield. But, in this case, it was an emotional maturity, a peculiar and very dark sense of humor, and using a recent event as an analagous descriptor of some other issues he and I had been bandying about. This gallows humor, or Black Humor, actually stunned me for a moment. And then I commented on the long-term impact the recent events would have.
It is akin to a pebble being dropped in the center of a still body of water. At first there is a splash of some note,and then the ripples come.
After that there is a secondary ripple-effect, following the first, and chasing after it as though to offer a remainder of the initial event. Those first and second wave ripples are the repercussions of the original event. And often they seem to have a longer life span, incalcuble yet constant, though ever-ebbing.
And yet the repercussions, the ripples, remain, persist, carry on. Like the hum of an appliance, just there in the background, almost hidden, unoticed, yet a permanent part of the landscape, the scene, the reality in which we function.
Oddly, in some cases, there also exists a comfort in the aftermath, of that hum, that presence, that memory. Like the sound of a train's horn, remote, off afar in the distance, or applause coming from a distant amphitheatre, somehow there is almost a warming, coddling effect.
This is passion of another sort. This is the quiet passion, a more internal and private sort.