It's started already. Four games in, 1-3, and I'm trying to
figure out what I'm doing so wrong that is screwing my O's. Is it the O's glass
I employ during games? I bought it last
year for the stretch run thinking the mojo would inch us into the playoffs. We faded. Is it my new O's hat, the one with
the low crown and crisp Orioles cartoon smiling amid a black background and
sharp orange brim? Not the right one for this year? It isn’t the 1983 white and black and orange
affair that saw us win our last World Series.
Maybe I should only wear it for home games? I have an older hat I bought
when my father was dying. I got him and
me low crown O’s hats with the scripted O’s on the lid. I bought for his birthday, in 2005, and I
don’t think he ever wore it. Maybe I was
thinking it could bring some magic and help him live longer, maybe even somehow
(in my panic) it could even cure him. It didn’t, I knew it wouldn’t, but I wore
it daily. The O’s were still losing, but
leave it to me to believe that hat had the power to propel us to 93 wins in
2012. The hat was already seven years old and I was fooling myself, just like
with dad.
Maybe since Donna and I are 3-0 at home the past year she
and I should go to every other home game remaining? You think we could go 79-2
at home this year? I know, no. I got it, maybe it's that I have my O's
license plate covers on the wrong ends. I'll change them today. The front is
white with black and orange script and the rear is black with white
script. Maybe I need a cold Natty Boh at
hand during the games, you know, just in case?
Maybe it’s not about maybe and maybe I should stop with all the madness?
Hmm? I have no power, I get it, and I
understand it’s just a game. Four games in and I'm blaming myself. Four games
in and the season is unfun.
I’ve always placed too great a meaning on an O's win and too
great a punishment for a loss. I
remember growing up and rushing to the newsstand to see the box scores and
resting my moods on the O's and the Colts.
The Colts though were long gone by 1972 but that didn’t stop me from
sheading tears March 29, 1983. No mojo
worked then. But the O’s were still Baltimore’s. My dad and I would talk baseball and he would
get so pissed with me because I never got any of the statics correct. I would
make shit up just to talk with him about the O’s and he would yell, “Get your
facts right! Goddamn it!” I’d brush it off because it was the bonding I
yearned for. There was a time in 1985
when I spewed a stat about Don Mattingly and seemingly simultaneously the Chuck
Thompson echoed my words. Dad was floored, looked me in the eye and praised
me. “That’s it! That’s what I want to hear!” If only I were better at it maybe dad and I
could have been closer, who knows? But
my mojo has never worked. No amount of
contrived rituals worked, ever, and you'd think after 40+ years of loving the
O's I would have learned how to temper my angst and adulation. Alas, poor Derrick, he's slow on the uptake.
It's just a game.
As kids we played every chance we found. I wasn't serviceable, was usually picked first
or second for the teams, and occasionally could knock the shit out of the ball;
but only during neighborhood pick up games. For some reason, when I donned an
official uniform for official league play, I stunk up the field. I had no
confidence, none. Couldn’t get out of my own way and looked like a boy with no
arms or legs out in the field. I never got why I could be like Doug DeCinces on
the sandlot but ridiculously inept in a regulation game. Maybe my therapist can help with that. Anyway,
we’d play every day, all day, and I swear we didn’t finish one game. Ever. Usually
there would be someone getting pissed off for whatever reason a teenage boy
does, or the score would be so ridiculously incalculable that it didn't matter
anymore and we’d switch up teams. There
were lots of times when someone's feelings got hurt because of the collective
ribbing we unloaded on them. Ribbing? Too soft a word. We unleashed a blitzkrieg anyone we
subconsciously and collectively agreed upon was to be blasted. We were merciless, mean. We all had our turns
and all was forgotten after the day’s end. But we always came back for more
because baseball galvanized us. It
brought our neighborhood together whenever we played other neighborhoods (always
kicking their asses). Baseball was our
rite of passage, our escape, our raison d'être.
So today I sit with my O’s at 1-3. One and three. The sun came across the east, the skies
obeyed their cosmic lords, and I woke. I
woke.
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