Baseball and Writing and Life

by Patrick J. Walsh

Here's something I'm particularly grateful for today: my video Pitching Diamonds: Cy Young's First No-Hitter (http://youtu.be/QNsFJ7cxVR4) has just passed the 5,000 views milestone.

I am so appreciative for everyone who has checked it out over the course of the past two and a half years, and I am grateful for all the views, comments and feedback I've received on all my video efforts.

I first posted the Cy video in the very early hours of April 6, 2012 -- the overnight following Opening Day of the 2012 season for my New York Mets. That day, Mets ace Johan Santana returned from shoulder surgery to pitch a masterful five innings while helping to secure a 1-0 win over the Braves.

Later that season, Johan would pitch the first no-hitter in Mets history. I watched both of those games on TV, with my Mom.

Looking back on them now, and reflecting on all that has happened since — to my team, and in my life — I cannot help but smile when I think of how lucky I am to have had so many great experiences as a baseball fan, and as a writer.

The Cy video marks my first step beyond the Five Minutes in Space series — the first time I've posted a video intended for a broader audience. I had originally launched my YouTube channel in January, 2011 as a way to communicate with like-minded fans of space exploration — the folks who might know me as the author of Echoes Among the Stars or Spaceflight.

When I started researching my baseball project about a year later, it was awesome to have the ability to transform one small slice of the research into an 'instant' short-form documentary that I could immediately share online. It allowed me to reach out to other baseball fans, and to give everyone who might be interested in my writing a chance to see a little bit of my work in progress.

Given the length of time it often takes to put together a big project, and the fact that I am pretty much always working on a whole raft of different writing projects at the same time (like pretty much every other writer I know), it's an especially good thing to be able to quickly, concisely, and continuously share a sample of my work with anyone who'd like to know, you know, "so what are you working on now?"

There were 10 years between the publication of my first book (Echoes, in 2000) and my second (Spaceflight, 2010), and that's a really long time to have to try to describe your current project, again and again, in a manner that's succinct and vivid enough to capture someone's interest. Especially when the project is constantly evolving, or as you shift your attention from one project to another.

Having a video sample helps me to honor the question, and to provide a meaningful answer for those who are kind enough, or interested enough, to ask about my work. I am always grateful for both the interest and the support, as writing can often be a fairly solitary pursuit, and it's important to stay plugged into those who care the most about your work.

Which brings me, not coincidentally, back to the game of baseball.

In baseball, as in writing, as in life itself, there is so much joy to be found in being part of something larger than yourself: a team, a city, a sport, a life, a history…

I like to think that my own experiences of that feeling of joy, however personal or humble, have given me some small idea of what it's like for those who are at the heart of the greatest moments in the history of the game.

Just as time passes and those moments are transformed into memories, all the little joys we experience first-hand remain as near as our connections to the times we shared, and to the people who shared them with us along the way.

And as we remember and record and pass along the stories of those moments, we also pass along a little bit of each of us. Clapping, cheering, breathing right along with our favorite team or favorite players, we all take our seats in the stands as the game rolls on, helping to shape some small part of a day, or a season, or a lifetime.

That's baseball, and history, and life. And I'm grateful for the chance to share it with all of you.

A Certain Kind of Anger: Reflections on Baseball’s Great Late-Season Pitching Heroics

[This is an excerpt from the introduction to my baseball project, which focuses on late-season pitching heroics from the earliest days of the game right up to the present day. Using the same research, I’ve also created the short documentary, “Pitching Diamonds,” which chronicles Cy Young’s September 18, 1897 no-hitter, and which is now available online at my YouTube channel.]

By Patrick J. Walsh

...And then, on some days, there are those rare games in which the time of year intersects with the particular circumstances of the team or the individual to dictate that a given starter must try to will himself to a level of play that is painful to reach and debilitating to maintain, but necessary for the circumstances of the moment...

Sometimes, a certain kind of anger becomes almost a necessity, as a key to unlocking the inner reserves. But it is a particular kind of anger, a productive exasperation with one’s own limitations. It is not the anger of Proverbs, or the wrath of the Seven Deadly Sins. It is in fact more like its juxtaposed virtue in modern Catholicism, which contrasts the deadly sin of anger with the blessed virtue of patience.

Anger is, after all, ugly in all its forms but one: that in which it is employed in the struggle against indignity. In that one instance, in the extreme titanic struggle as the twilight shadows lengthen and the final innings draw near, in the proper hand guided by the right heart, it can be utilized -- transformed, as a beautiful sort of anger whose features are polished with courage, determination, and self-respect.

Conjured by a skilled athlete in response to the sudden arbitrary meanness of circumstance, it is an emotion that is carefully controlled and precisely applied, only in the measure necessary to achieve the objective of the moment, without malice or rancor.

As the days grow shorter, and some games take on a special urgency, there are sometimes those individuals who by the nature of their unique position get the opportunity to achieve a greater sort of victory than the kind reflected on the scoreboard. They win by simply refusing to be bettered, by giving their all to the effort, and by playing smart and tough and angry.

It is a task like those few that arise in any lifetime that provides an opportunity to concentrate the frustrations that come from constantly bumping up against the limitations of endurance and age and circumstance, and transform them into a weapon against the arbitrary whim of fate.

And it is a special gift of baseball: for a given game, late in the season, one particular player is given a chance to overcome all the lost chances of the whole long year that have finally, suddenly conspired to demand so much and yet promise so little. In victory, he emerges with his dignity intact, and the gratitude of those who depend upon him.

There are a multitude of examples of late-season pitching heroics throughout baseball history... Some are stories of great pitchers who helped their teams avoid defeat and live to play another day -- often famously going on to success in the playoffs and the World Series. In other cases, the triumph is more individual in nature. But in all accounts, it is the furious will to win that distinguishes each individual performance, and provides a remarkable example of courage in the face of adversity.

© Patrick J. Walsh