Ya Gotta Believe

When I woke up this morning, I felt depressed, anxious, and irritable. I felt overwhelmed by work and unsatisfied with my personal life. Worst of all, I realized that I felt totally drained of all passion.

I have spent much of my life dealing with pretty serious depression: I have contemplated suicide many times and even spent five days in the mental health facility attached to Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg. When things were at their worst, I remember saying that my life felt like a light switch - it could be on, it could be off; it didn't much matter one way or the other. Feeling this way doesn't exactly happen all at once, but getting there is not something I am always very aware of either. A bad day here, a bad day there, too many things to do and not enough time to do them. The normal stresses of every day can pile up until I wake up one day and just don't want to get out of bed.

This morning was like that; I just wanted to hide under my covers and not confront any of the myriad things that I had to do today. I thought about the much needed sleep I could get. I thought about the book I was in the middle of but never had time to read anymore. Most importantly, I thought about the baseball game I could watch.

R.A. Dickey, my favorite player, was trying to become the first New York Met pitcher in 22 years to win 20 games. His saga this year has been incredible: He climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to support a charity devoted to helping girls caught in sex-trafficking; he released a beautiful memoir in which he discusses how he overcame a lifetime of neglect, horrific abuse, and unthinkably bad luck; and in his third year with the only team that would take a chance on a mid-thirties knuckleballer whose career had never materialized, he became the most dominant pitcher in the National League. While all of those are good reasons to love R.A., none of them is the reason that I love him. I love him because he straddles a line between Romantic Hero and Hardworking, Humble Competitor, and that was always how I imagined myself. He's a long-haired, bearded professional baseball player who wants to be an English teacher, and I'm a long-haired, bearded English teacher who wants to be a baseball player. He has fought his way through depression, self-doubt, and bad breaks, and reinvented himself as a completely different kind of person. I've been trying to do the same. I desperately wanted to watch him pitch today, and the fact that if I went to work I wouldn't be able to see him go for win number 20 felt like a kick when I was already down.

I did eventually force myself to get up out of a sense of duty to my students, who are in the midst of doing research for their big essays and need all the help they can get, but I was sure that today would be absolutely miserable. For much of the day, I was right. My students were rowdy, it felt like I couldn't get anything accomplished, and I just knew I would end the day feeling even more buried than I already did. As the day progressed, things brightened a bit. My later classes were more cooperative, and I was able to get a few things crossed off my to-do list. Even though I knew I would miss the early innings of the 1:00 game, I figured that I could still catch a lot of it when school ended at 2:25.

The bell rang and I threw on my Dickey Jersey and Mets hat, which I am thankful I had the presence of mind to bring with me this morning. I pulled out my phone and opened up the MLB app, and through the magic of MLB.tv, I was able to watch the rest of the game. The next two hours reminded me why I am a Mets fan, and how good it can feel to really feel passionately about something.

When I turned the game on, The Mets were down 3-2 early. But shortly thereafter, something amazin' began to happen. A couple of men got on base, and a single by Daniel Murphy tied up the game. When David Wright came up to bat with two men on, it just felt like something good was going to happen. If you watch enough baseball, you'll start to notice that something in the atmosphere of the stadium changes when a guy like David Wright steps to the plate in a big situation. The fans expect him to come through with a big hit, his teammates expect him to come through with a big hit, it even seems sometimes like the opposing team expects him to come through with a big hit. The air in the stadium carries the electricity of the shared excitement of everyone there, and if you are a perceptive enough fan, you can feel it at home too.

I normally pride myself on being the kind of baseball fan who is happier with a string of doubles than a home run. It seems like it's always the casual fans who just come out to see some dingers, but the real fans are there to see a hard fought pitchers' duel with a well timed double or two that make the difference. We'd rather see a few good at-bats in a row, because a baseball season is a marathon and not a sprint. We know that power comes and goes, but patience at the plate and good fundamentals are a recipe for long term success.

Maybe it was the fact I was having such a bad day. Or week. Maybe it was the fact that I had once again watched my beloved Mets far surpass any expert's expectation in the first half of the season, only to watch them completely fall apart after the all-star break. Maybe it was the fact that I just wanted for R.A. to get that 20th win so badly, especially in front of a home crowd after the year he had. But when David Wright set his feet in the batter's box, I felt like I was eight years old again, wanting nothing more than to see the home town hero crush one out of the stadium.

When David made good contact and sent out an opposite field shot to put the Mets up 6-3 and give Dickey his first lead of the day, I jumped out of my desk chair and screamed. I danced. I was so happy, I had to choke back tears. When R.A. came back out and continued to sit down Pirate batters one after another, I felt giddy. When he tied his career mark of 13 strikeouts in a game, I cheered. And when he got an infield single in his final at-bat of the season in front of an ecstatic home crowd, I held back the tears again. When he came out of the game in the 8th inning, I gave him a standing ovation from 300 miles away. When Jon Rauch gave up a 2 run homer in relief to cut the lead to 1, I just said to myself "Ya Gotta Believe!"

R.A. Dickey, David Wright, and the rest of the Mets made me believe again, and that's what being a Mets fan is all about. Just like my team in the second half of this season, I've hit a rough spot in my life. I look back at what it was like a few months ago, and it seems like everything has changed. It would be easy to give into despair and pity, to say that I am cursed with bad luck, or that things would be better if it weren't for the people in charge, but that's just not what Mets fans do. We say things are awful and try to act like it doesn't bother us, but deep down we always hold on to the hope that we can turn things around. The Mets have been eliminated from playoff contention this year, but when one of our own needed help, every player, coach, and fan did everything they could to help him.

When Dickey gave his post game interview on the field and thanked the fans for supporting him this year, I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. I cried for the promising start that dissolved with July, I cried for my own lost sense of direction and happiness, and I cried with the feeling of community that comes from thousands of people loving a team so much that they can all join together in finding something to root for in a lost season. I don't know what it's like to be a fan of The Royals of Padres or Twins, but I sincerely hope that those fans can feel as a part of something as I feel with the Mets. Fandom can be a great and terrible thing, but as long as you keep believing, you'll never be on your own.

Dan Cathy Ruffled My Feathers

So I haven't done much writing lately, but it seems like everyone is talking about Chick-Fil-A and its president, Dan Cathy. The following are my thoughts, taken from an email to a friend who prefers (perhaps wisely) not to debate politics via public internet forum.

It's good to hear from you!

Thanks for the email - I am always glad to hear your opinion on things, as I feel I can usually trust it to be well-thought out, respectful, and include a better understanding than my own of any given subject from a different perspective. I understand your reluctance to weigh in on public internet forums, as I often find myself forgetting that one shouldn't argue with a fool because people may not be able to tell the difference, but I kind of wish you would reconsider. I think that the more visible debate is between reasonable and intelligent people, the more everyone can fully see both sides and inform their opinions. Plus, it's good to see mutual respect among people who disagree, which is hard to come by these days.

I've been thinking a lot about that last part for a couple of weeks. I have said for a long time that the cultural divide in this country is the most harmful thing about our society. More than the philosophical differences on either side, it seems more and more that it's the people on either side that don't like each other. On healthcare, abortion, tax law, gun law, etc., I try to see both sides of the issue. I have my own opinions, but that doesn't mean I can't see what the other side is saying. I understand very well when you say that most of the people you interact with have different views on many things, as I fall mostly outside the norm of my peer group on the majority of political issues. This doesn't affect the respect with which I view my friends, family, coworkers, etc.

The trouble, of course, comes when people start talking about homosexuality, specifically in regards to marriage. The trouble with the pluralistic approach when it comes to this issue is that there is no acceptable (in my eyes) middle ground. Person A can own a gun while Person B chooses not to, but Person A can't live in an America where gays are treated equally in the eyes of the law while Person B doesn't. While I do feel very strongly that homosexuality is not for anyone on the outside to judge, what most inflames me is the paternalistic approach that those arguing against gay marriage take for society. The parallels to anti-miscegenation laws from the last century seem undeniable to me. The Supreme Court ruled (correctly, I and most would say) that those laws violated the 14th amendment's guarantee that no state can take away from a specific group the rights that it protects for others, without due process. Constitutionally, it seems such a cut and dried issue that it makes running across those who oppose gay marriage especially frustrating. The only basis for denying same-sex couples the right to marry, then, is a religious one. And while the 1st amendment doesn't expressly guarantee the separation of church and state as many believe, several Supreme Court rulings do. If marriage is a secular arrangement, churches have no right imposing their beliefs on those who are not members. If marriage is a religious sacrament, then the government should get out of the business altogether.

I think that our society is at a very important time when it comes to gay marriage. Here, today is equivalent to Alabama in 1950 during the last big civil rights movement. The next few years are critical in the fight for equality. I fully believe that gay marriage will be protected within the next 30 years, but when that day comes is something we can influence. If those rights were guaranteed tomorrow, rather than 30 years from now, think how many more survivors will receive death benefits, how many partners will be allowed hospital visits, how many couples can have beautiful weddings and pledge to love and honor and hold each other in front of friends and family in a way that we as straight people take for granted. Those are some of the most important events in a person's life, and right now millions of people are denied those moments for no legal reason.

As someone who eats at Chick-Fil-A regularly, but not especially frequently, I am aware that a very small amount of the money I spend there makes its way into the hands of anti-equality groups. For a long time, I ate there knowing full well the politics of the owner. As you pointed out, chicken has little to do with marriage. But with Dan Cathy's recent reaffirmation (and really, doubling down) of his beliefs, and with us being so close to a tipping point, eating there just doesn't seem a viable moral option anymore. If I give 12 cents to a cause that I oppose with every ounce of my body and extend marriage inequality by just a few minutes, I'm making a difference in the wrong direction. It's especially unfortunate that all of the good Chick-Fil-A does, which is substantial, is tied in with this mess. That was my moral justification for going there for a long time: my money did more good than harm. However, I do fully believe what I said yesterday: until you get basic civil rights down, the rest just doesn't matter. People deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and saying that one person's love is not as valuable or as real as another's denies him dignity and respect.

Let's not forget where Dan Cathy made his remarks that reignited this issue in the public eye: he was giving an interview, attempting to establish his company as an example of the Southern Way of Life to attract the segment of the population to which that appeals, in which I generally count myself. This time, I think Mr. Cathy made a quick generalization about the way he and his coworkers feel, thinking that it would make them seem trustworthy and down-home to their fans, without realizing it would alienate many of them. The implicit support of that position by silence and continued patronage is much more harmful to the fight for equality than the few pennies that make their way from my pocket into the pockets of those I disagree with. I know that I don't have enough money to make an appreciable difference in the fight for marriage equality, and Dan Cathy isn't really donating enough to make a very big difference. What this whole thing is really about is that Chick-Fil-A as a company is attempting to cash in on its homophobia, and I find that to be an offensive position. For many, his beliefs make him and his chicken more appealing (look at the support of Mike Huckabee's Chick-Fil-A appreciation campaign); for me, his outspoken approach to the issue has made it hard for me to support him. Rhetoric is powerful, and symbolic gestures are often more so. As long as Chick-Fil-A is making them for the other side, I think they need to be met by those who stand up for equality.