Baseball and Heartbreak
And one very specific story of how George got his Groove Back
There’s only one sport in the world that will introduce you to the feeling of heartbreak at an early age. Baseball is filled with what-ifs, almosts, what-could-have-beens. The same stuff life is. What if Bill Buckner had fielded that ground ball in 1986? What if Bo Jackson only played baseball? WHAT IF JEREMY GIAMBI SLID?!
I have those, too. What if I switched majors from accounting to journalism in college, instead of letting the journalism chair talk me out of it? What if I’d never been given a digital camera on my 18th birthday? What if I married my long-time girlfriend a few years ago? What if I’d adopted an older dog like I planned to that one day, and never picked up a tiny little puppy I named Bauer?
But more than these memorable moments, baseball is still full of heartache, frustration and angst pitch to pitch. It’s a game of failure. Good hitters fail 70% of the time. No team wins every game. It’s a game that requires perseverance and toughness so that when you do succeed, it’s the sweetest victory there is. Like life, the sport rewards those who are the best prepared for anything.
I was watching For Love of the Game over the Christmas break and I started thinking that no sport captures the highs and lows of relationships and dating better than baseball.
Someone too hot for you is “out of your league”. “Yeah sure, go talk to her”, your friend says. “What’s the worst that could happen?” Oh, right, she’s throwing smoke:
Moving through different stages of intimacy is called rounding the bases. I’m sure everyone knows what they are but I was once naive. So I finally asked someone what the bases are, but I was living in Utah at the time so mine not be accurate:
1st Base: Eye Contact
2nd Base: Formal introductions
3rd Base: Discreet handholding
Home run: Marriage
(hold for laughter)
In my personal life, I’ve been given advice that I need to be patient. Let things come to you. In baseball, they call that waiting for your pitch. But if your instincts are trash… well here’s an example of me “waiting for my chance to swing”:
That was probably your cue to swing, man.
I’ve also been given advice to be more assertive. You’ve gotta go out and get what you want. You know, like taking the extra base and scoring a run. But just because you went for it doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it. Oh there’s a clip for that, too. With appropriate commentary:
Just take your best swing. Put on your nicest shirt, grab a breath mint, build up your confidence, ask her out. You’ve got this. And then this happens:
You can’t succeed in baseball without confidence. I’ve been told my confidence is weaker than a dribbled foul tip ground ball. Well, sometimes you get caught in an 0-for-35 slump and the end never looks to be in sight. Here’s George Springer hitting a massive home run in the 2017 World Series, looking like a future legend:
Here’s that same man, a 4-time All-Star, World Series MVP and Blue Jay on a $150 million contract, but amid a brutal 0-for-35 hitless stretch that dropped his season average from .262 to .247:
But George Springer didn’t just forget how to play baseball. I didn’t forget how to talk to women. Ask him off the record, and he’ll say he was losing confidence during the slump. But he kept at it. It didn’t all come back at once. He broke the futility streak with this:
A 68-mph blooper that just happened to land in the perfect spot. The equivalent of getting a ❤️ on an Instagram story. It means so little in the big picture, but after all those rough at-bats, look at his reaction.
The next day, he made more baby steps to rebuilding his confidence. He went 0/3 with a walk, but he didn’t chase, he didn’t take a horrible swing and didn’t set himself back. Not every day is a miraculous leap forward, sometimes you’ve gotta keep steady:
The next day, he mashed an RBI-double over the center fielder. Like having a brief but uplifting text conversation. Something moving things along. Look at his body language now:
He’s 3 days removed from ending that soul-crushing summer slump and starting to feel himself again. I bet he’s thinking he’s actually a pretty decent fella again.
The very next game it all clicked. The perseverance and mental toughness to push through the slump, accepting the small but important advances back to where he wants to be, seeing glimpses of that person. And then, boom:
A four-for-four night with a walk, a stolen base, two big runs and he’s got his mojo back. Two games later he’d go 2/5 with 2 doubles as his confidence increased. Then, on August 9th, he hit this home run:
He had the only RBI in a 1-0 victory for his team. And at the end of the game his batting average had recovered everything he lost during the slump. He was hitting .261. He brought himself up off the mat and won.
I can’t get ahead of myself. I ain’t hitting line drive doubles and game-winning home runs anytime soon. Even that bloop single would be a game changer right now. So where am I on this road back to finding someone?
