Episode Synopsis
“Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, I don’t care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame. For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out at the old ball game.”
When I was [insert some random childhood age here], I played on The Braves with my brother. I pitched and played 1st base. I’m not sure what he did—my only memory is of him in his baseball uniform sitting in the dug out reading. Sports really weren’t my brother’s thing, though I couldn’t blame him. He was practically blind and we didn’t realize he needed glasses until he was 13. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t the greatest baseball player.
It is the bottom of the 9th. We’re down by a run and the pitcher just struck out the second batter (a kid who spent more time digging his nose than anything else). I’m on 3rd base where I’ve been waiting, desperately hoping for a hit to give me my ticket home. To my horror, my brother stands and grabs a bat and a helmet. He’s up. This sounds awful, I know—but even then, I was competitive and losing felt so much like the end of the world. I remember watching him, mouth open, as he approached the plate. He could’ve been taking an afternoon stroll for all the urgency he showed. I yell something encouraging to him to remind him of what’s at stake. He looks at me as if to say: “it’s only a game.” I close my eyes. The pitcher checks his bases, then let’s one fly. Strike one. I’m not sure my brother even saw the ball whiz by. More words of encouragement (or maybe I said: just close your eyes and swing!). The pitcher looks my way as I take my lead. He throws a curve ball low but inside. Strike two. Oh god, I think, we’re going to lose. My brother calmly takes a practice swing as the crowd cheers. This is it. The pitcher smirks, he smells blood in the water. He winds up and let’s one go. A fastball right down the middle. I close my eyes waiting to hear the ump yell “strike three!” Instead, I hear the bat connect and the ball sails over our heads to the outfield. Even my brother looks surprised. I run and slide into home. We win. This is the first time I realize the importance of teamwork. This is when I fell in love with sports.
My whole life, I’ve played sports: soccer mostly, basketball at times, but I’ve tried them all. After playing four years of soccer in college, I found myself at a loss with what to do with my life now that soccer was over. I got used to having a team around me, sharing my wins, my losses, with a bunch of my closest friends. Now, all of a sudden, I was out on the pitch—team-less. I meandered through a Master’s degree and two or three mind-numbing, wouldn’t-wish-it-on-my-worst-enemy jobs. But there was no satisfaction. No duende or sense of flight. Soccer provided stability, purpose. A goal to work toward.
This week’s episode, “Take Me Out to the Holosuite,” features the lighter side of Star Trek and speaks to every weekend warrior, the winners, and the losers. The senior staff must come together and learn how to play baseball in order to beat an old Academy rival, Captain Sovok—a Vulcan with an all-Vulcan team. For two weeks, I thought about baseball, about sports and about life. I watched the World Cup, delved through my best and worst sports memories, searching for a theme for this week’s blog. And I kept coming back to this idea of teamwork.
Life is so much easier with teammates. People who are vested in your successes and failures. People willing to throw down for you. I finally realized what this episode meant to me. As adults, we build our own teams. We pick our friends; we hold on to the good ones and let go of the not-so-good ones. This applies to our families as well. Some of us may go it alone (I think these are the golfers and tennis singles players) and some of us may substitute teammates frequently and fall into one crowd or another searching for just the right fit. But the strongest teams are the ones that stick together regardless of skill level. The teams that endure are those that accept the not-so-great players (like my brother), the players who make mistakes (like Green—England’s goalkeeper who dropped the ball into the goal for the US), and the goal scorers. I realized it’s not so much the score at the end of this game, but the experience of playing and who you choose to play with.
As I continue this blogging project, I keep expecting grandiose realizations about Star Trek and about life. Instead, I am constantly reminded of the simple lessons. You would think at this point in my life I’d have figured out the so-called simple stuff. Turns out a reminder every now and then works wonders.
Episode #4: If Wishes were Horses.
Check out the trailer here. The entire episode is on youtube in five parts as well.
Oh, and all you loyal followers—try not to leave so many comments on my page. It’s crowding my blog posts.
End Transmission.
krib,
ReplyDeletei'm catching up on your posts while i was in europe, and i'm really glad you were suckered into writing one about sports and teamwork. : )
playing in a week-long tournament (in prague, no less!) with my team made me realize what you eloquently shared here - the strongest teams are those that stick together regardless of skill.
my team's philosophy is this: once you make the team, you are on it as long as you want. and, more often than not, each season there are talented players that seek a coveted spot on this team. and some of them are better than some of us currently on the team, but we don't just kick them/me off the team to make room for them - it is what it is.
nearly three weeks after the tournament, and after reading this post, i, too, have a better appreciation of the experience of playing and who we choose to play with. i'll keep this in mind as our "real" season kicks off next weekend.
again, thanks for sharing!
beth : )
ps: re: simple lessons comment - you were the one who gave me the book "all i need to know i learned in kindergarten" - life is all about the simple things. : )