Ya Gotta Believe

   There was one of those great father-son stories on the Moth Radio Hour, a free podcast* that gives people a few minutes to tell their story, no script, and in front of a crowd; the stories are varied and range from tearful tales to tales of childhood that can leave you laughing.  Some of the tellers are rather famous in their respective fields, but the majority of the brave souls standing in front of that microphone are ordinary folk who have pitched their one personal story to tell and have been selected from among many to broadcast it across the waves...think karaoke for life histories.  Anyway, this particular broadcast was about a devoted father who was also a devoted fan of the Boston Red Sox, not season-ticket devoted but devoted enough to yell at the television or pound his feet in triumph when the Red Sox would score a run or heaven forbid, actually win.  And now, in his story, his team had a chance to secure the division pennant and possibly go from there to the World Series, something that the team hadn't done in nearly half a century; and all that he had to do was that he needed to convince his son that all of this, but particularly that baseball itself, was worth the time spent and that --as fans-- it needed them.  Son, he would say, ya gotta believe.

   I must admit that I enjoy baseball, although I am about as removed a fan as one could be.  Actually, I have gone to a professional game only a few times in my life so obviously the idea of buying a season ticket puzzles me, almost as much as those football fans (both the U.S. and the overseas version which we politely separate by calling the round-ball version soccer), who paint themselves in team colors and come close to foaming at the mouth when a player scores or the ref makes what they see as a poor call.  But I remember that when I did attend a game, oh boy, those childhood feelings of whatever you had experienced with your dad or your friends back then, those feelings seemed to all come back...the packet of hot peanuts or a sizzling hot dog (now converted to something healthier like a beer), the sense of being part of the crowd, the sitting up high in this massive and sometimes ancient-feeling stadium, the feel of being allied in this strange yet common cause of gazing at a beautiful field and at athletes who were in their prime (to get a quick idea of how that must feel, watch the rather enjoyable film from years past, Talent for the Game).  But baseball today (sports in general, really) is big bucks, something I discovered when attending a Los Angeles Dodgers game some years ago; the food and drinks alone will rip through your wallet despite the estimated 7 million hotdogs they expect to sell in this 2017 season (although to their credit of trying to keep up with the times, stadiums now offer things such as poke bowls --raw tuna as served in Japanese restaurants-- and elaborate chef-inspired menus, delicious as long as one remembers that you're at a ball park and not at a restaurant).  But the money is there or seemingly must be for take these quick blurbs from Business Week: Tottenham Hotspur, the No. 2 club in England's Premier League, raised $900m for a 61,500-seat stadium.  Tottenham expects matchday revenue to more than double in the new facility...or this: After a clash with partner Derek Jeter over who would control the baseball franchise, Jeb Bush abandoned a bid for the Miami Marlins.  Mitt romney's son Tagg is also bidding for the club (doesn't really matter that those names are associated with earlier bids for the presidency of the U.S.)...or this as taken from The Arm: The $1.5 billion that Major League Baseball spends annually on pitchers' salaries is five times more than the combined cost of every starting quarterback in the NFL.  It exceeds the top 200 NBA (basketball) salaries put together.  When I call the pitching arm the most valuable commodity in sports, it is not an exaggeration.  And yet, the most overanalyzed sport in the world, with an industry of bright minds studying its intricacies, loses half a billion dollars a year to injuries.  More than 50 percent of pitchers end up on the disabled list every season, on average for two-plus months, and one-quarter of major league pitchers today wear a zipper scar from Tommy John** surgery along their elbows.

Size of the hail that arrived May 7, 2017

    Okay, I digress.  Sports is big both for the fans and the owners alike and I take nothing away from that.  We pick our favorites and turn kids in their 20s into larger-than-life figures; and admittedly it's difficult not to fall into that excitement of watching your team reach the finals or rooting for your home country during the Olympics.  But since I'm among the worst of sports' "fans," I have no business attempting to make any sort of  comment or analysis, which I wasn't really trying to do as much as I wanted to capture the "ya gotta believe" part.  So let's jump to the weather, especially to the ending of spring (like baseball, the end of their spring training approaches as the real playing season begins, much as the official beginning of summer beckons in just over a week)...things seem to be different this year, even with something as simple as spring-like weather.  On May 7th, we got a major hail storm here in my state, the hail bouncing and flying and yes, hurting, as my wife and I rushed to get our flower baskets off of their hooks and safely under some protection (the leaves of the trees took a beating); this was followed in the next few days with 90-degree heat (32 C.) and a few weeks later, winds that strained our trees and snapped more than a few branches.  

    But as we hiked, the nearby forested trails seemed to also have been caught off guard with the weather as we came across trees that had snapped, their sinewy insides still as tough as rope and their fibrous wood lacing still as connected as ever as if attempting one last gasp at hanging onto life.  Was it the wind, or snow, or the damaging bark beetle or maybe just a weak spot?  We had had odd weather before, but this year seemed especially so.  And yes, the reports were in on climate change as scientist after scientist reported on the bleaching of corals as the oceans' waters turned warmer and more acidic, even as ice sheets broke away and melted.  And coupled with all of those reports came the myriad twin piles of reports from climate change deniers, their reports saying that these changes were all just a natural cycle in nature and that the earth had gone through all of this before.  But by the end of the day, the numbers had kept climbing on the points that we supposedly couldn't pass, those parts-per-million graphs that mentions carbon emissions and carbon dioxides levels where 350 ppm was considered the safe level.  Says the CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy), our CO2 levels now are just shy of 404 ppm, our worldwide temps have gone up by 1.55 degrees F (.86 C.) and our seas have risen by close to 3 mm per year...and that's so far!   So what to do?  Whatever side you're on, what should you do?  The advice and columns and opinions are out there by the millions...drive less, no keep running those old gas mowers, no switch to LED lighting, no keep those lights on, no line dry your clothes, no that leaky faucet is no big deal.  One almost wants to scream What Difference Does It Make?  For me, I'm a big believer that each of us can decide for ourselves on what is the right or wrong thing to do and that each of our decisions will collectively make a difference.  But even more than that, I'm a believer that nature and our planet will take care of itself in the end, with or without our decisions...it will adjust to survive, even if that might mean wiping out some of the life that is destroying it.  Volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues...whatever it takes.  Whether we stay or go and whether we hurt or help, nature will likely be the decider and winner...it's just as it is in baseball, ya gotta believe.

At the end of our hike, the grand winner...Nature.

*This particular podcast was well worth the time spent listening for as fun as the baseball story was, the Jerusalem story was an equal jolt to the senses.  One has to realize that people are people and that we all have a story to tell, be it to our friends or to strangers; and whether we feel that that story is important enough to get us to stand in front of a sometimes-large crowd is a decision few of us have the courage to make, or the talent to present well...but with that in mind, here''s one more story you might enjoy, a story of an 8-year old girl dealing with the terror felt at being onstage at her first school's talent show, a tale by Jessica Lee Williamson.

**Tommy John was a Dodger pitcher back in the 1970s whose injured ligament in his arm had an experimental surgical procedure that proved successful and later became the de facto surgical procedure of choice for many pitchers to follow; after surgery, John successfully returned to the majors and went on to pitch for more than half of his total career wins.