Non-Linear, Non-Analytical

Every few weeks, I have this idea to write about baseball in a non-linear, non-analytical way, to relate the game to myself as we all do, as far removed as we pretend our emotions to be. I sit down, wait for my computer to decide that Blogger is a thing I'm allowed to open (it's mercurial these days, in the way that five-year-old Macs earn the right to be) and then stare at the blinking cursor on the bane of a writer's existence, the blank page.

I've loved baseball, the sport, since I was a small child. The Ballpark in Arlington (its only proper name, insurance companies be damned) looms large in the fragmented memories of my youth, flashes of Pudge and Rusty and all those names of baseballing yore, glimmers that I built my past upon. Even as a rebellious teenager I'd let myself enjoy baseball, though I'd be loath to admit I was a "sports fan."

This baseball thing has taken many forms. From childhood building block to teenage guilty pleasure to collegiate superstition – I watched maybe four Rangers games in 2011, because I was convinced that I was the reason they lost, which is something which maybe speaks more to my state of mind than to the state of the club at the time– baseball's been a constant, the way that loneliness or worry have been.

Now, baseball's newest form is that of "job," which sounds worse than it is. I love the sense of height that analysis gives me, the excuse to not talk to anyone and only focus on the game. I get a rush (and don't think anyone else doesn't) when watching talent manifest itself on the field of play and having a reason to watch baseball is always more than worth the hassle of getting there.

But this is all talking around the point I originally set out to make. I, like so many others, suffer from varying amounts of depression and/or anxiety. Sometimes, this is easy to forget, when I'm standing under a sunny sky, and sometimes it's so very present that it would be easy – nay, pleasurable – to cease existing, if just to get away from the undefinable weight of being.

Baseball, somehow, helps. (Me, at least.) It's hard to type that, to put that into black and white text, without it looking stupid and childish and, well, aren't you a little old for that, and isn't that a little simplistic, but no. Baseball helps. Maybe it's that I'm willing to throw more of my brain into baseball, giving myself less room to think about how I've never had any friends, I can't find a job, clearly I'm worthless and useless and things would be simpler were I to not which are all very real things that are slightly painful to put into actual words, and by hiding them in an excessively long sentence maybe y'all won't read them.

People ask me "Why baseball? Why throw yourself at something that is more of a fight, more of a struggle for you than for most?" Maybe it's because I like the challenge. Maybe it's because in some sense of deluded self-importance I want to matter, even through something as minor as a byline. Mostly, though, it's because it genuinely helps.

Baseball moves in its rhythms, its patterns, its set ways in which things can surprise you. It's the most unpredictable of the predictable, and if teasing out the sense from all the random noise is what gives life colors (even briefly), then cling to it I will.