Alexandersmap

    Tag: Boston Red Sox

    • Something More Than Hope

      “You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” — Jim Collins

      At a mass of remembrance recently, a Catholic priest, speaking on faith in the face of loss, said that there are two sides of the coin with regard to hopelessness: despair and practicality. His point was that, not surprisingly, we lose hope when we reside in despair, but we also do when we succumb to logic and believe that there is nothing that can be done about the matter. There’s a place for hope in this world, he suggested, and it requires the antonyms of despair and practicality: faith, confidence and maybe even a small but healthy dose of idealism.

      His words triggered a memory of the “Stockdale Paradox”, which Jim Collins explains quite effectively in the quote above. Faith and hope are great, but we have to be practical too. There are sometimes things out of our control that must be dealt with. When we balance those two sides of the coin, we might realize the optimal outcome given the circumstances. Or we might not, but we gave it a good fight. Life isn’t fair: We must reconcile ourselves to that fact and do with it what we can to stay afloat. The alternative is to sink.

      Surely, there are things we have no business hoping for. Sometimes the brutal facts make hope a frivolous distraction. Then again, sometimes we get so caught up in things like despair and practicality that we give up on hope too soon. The world is full of stories of epic comebacks fueled by faith in the outcome and decisive action despite ridiculously bad odds. Being from New England, I can quickly think of two favorites:

      “Don’t Let Us Win Tonight!” — Kevin Millar, Boston Red Sox, before the game 4 comeback against the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. The Red Sox were down 3 games to none and came back to win the series.

      “Let’s go, baby. It’s going to be one hell of a story.” — Julian Edelman, New England Patriots wide receiver, prior to the Super Bowl comeback from a 28-3 deficit against the Atlanta Falcons to win the Super Bowl.

      In both situations, the logical thing to do would be to sink. But each team flipped the script and did whatever they had to do to win in the end. Granted, sports aren’t life, but they represent the dynamic nature of living in a contentious, competitive world that doesn’t care about our feelings, only the results.

      Brutal facts are indeed often brutal, and mandate clear thinking and deliberate action. There’s no going through the motions in such moments. Unwavering faith may fuel you, but surviving and thriving require heightened awareness and strategic execution. And even then things don’t always go our way. But then again, sometimes—sometimes, they do.

    • From Fenway Park to Barred Owls in the Night

      Yesterday afternoon I changed up the routine and watched the Boston Red Sox play the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park. Day games are a different vibe than night games, and all games are a different vibe during a pandemic. But we’re slowly coming out of it, and going to a baseball game on a beautiful day felt pretty cool.

      It’s been decades since I’d seen that many empty seats at Fenway Park. Social distancing requirements demand low capacity, and we were among the lucky few to get in to see the game. Honestly the game was a mess of bad pitching and horrific defense for both teams, with 21 total runs scored. But being back inside the park after a couple of years, and especially the last year, made it special.

      The entire experience, like everything else nowadays, occurs with appropriate precautions. They zip tie the seats you’re not supposed to sit in, and have some ushers walking around asking you to put your mask on if you aren’t eating or drinking. I saw plenty of people breaking this rule, but people are spaced so far apart that it didn’t matter much. The group I was part of is fully vaccinated and more comfortable than we might have been otherwise. No food vendors walking up and down the stairs pitching hot dogs and popcorn, and there were limited options below. But we were still at Fenway Park and loving the afternoon vibe.

      Back at home in New Hampshire and ready to call it an early night, I heard the calls of Barred Owls in the woods behind the house. Loud. Close. And what sounded like three or four owls. We don’t generally have Barred Owls in the neighborhood, mostly because we have Great Horned Owls and they stay clear of each other. But here they were, and the night was filled with the apocalyptic sounds of Barred Owls in the night.

      You can’t just slip away to dreamland when there’s a cacophony of owl calls outside. So I walked outside on the deck and stood listening to them in the dark. High up in the tree canopy, making baby Barred Owls or at least deep in negotiation. I thought about the contrast between Fenway Park and the woods of New Hampshire on this beautiful day in May. I’m not sure what this “new normal” will be, but if this was it, I felt lucky to have been a part of it.

    • Truck Day

      It hasn’t been a normal winter. Temperatures are milder, early winter snow has largely melted, ponds are at best unsafe to walk on. If Australia is burning, New England is experiencing one of the warmest winters on record. The world is unsettled… but small signs of familiar are out there if you look for them. Even if these too have an odd twist to them.

      Yesterday was Truck Day in Boston. That probably means nothing to most people in the world – and why would it? Truck Day is the first sign of spring on a normally cold and relentless winter, when snow storm after snow storm batters our very souls. And while the winter hasn’t spun into soul-crushing yet (there’s still time), Truck Day still highlights the rite of passage from thinking of winter to Hey! It’s almost Spring!

      Truck Day is when the Boston Red Sox roll their trucks full of baseballs and uniforms and God knows what from Fenway Park to Fort Myers, Florida to be unloaded and ready for Spring Training. It’s a light at the end of the tunnel, hope for better days ahead. Dreams of green in a brown, monochrome world. But even Truck Day feels different this year. The Red Sox fired their Manager in the midst of a cheating scandal, there’s talk of trading star players instead of excitement about the pitching rotation and the outfielders. No, it’s an unsettled winter on Causeway Street, which makes Truck Day just like everything else this winter; a bit off. Like waking up the first day you have symptoms of the flu off. And this winter, of all winters, comparing an event you normally look forward to to the flu isn’t the kind of light at the end of the tunnel that you want to see. It might just be that speeding train barreling towards you.

      But that’s pessimistic talk, and Truck Day, even with the chaos in the world and on the Red Sox, is a good sign. Maybe this will once again be their year. If they can find a Manager anyway. And then it hit me, this is how we used to think before the Red Sox started winning World Series. Jaded optimism disguised as pessimism after getting beaten down year-after-year by the Yankees or (going way back) the Orioles. Yeah, that’s the feeling I was trying to place, the feeling of dread hiding behind hope, as another season begins for The Olde Town Team. Buckle up everyone.