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.