Here We Go Again

Today, a new round of documents came out alleging a deeper level of involvement and complicity on the part of Baylor University in the cases of football players assaulting other persons.

I'm angry, you know? I'm so angry that I'm not angry anymore, that I'm just exhausted. Ken Starr and his student-friendly ways, student-friendly until it came time to actually stand up and be a man of honor, which he apparently couldn't do. Art Briles and his country charm, his folksy mannerisms, and his willingness to take on anything. Ian McCaw and his savvy hiring, his quiet maneuvering of a sinking ship on the Brazos to a new safe harbor of entertaining success.

If there's anything these new reports show, it's that the leaders of this university can't hide behind a claim of ignorance anymore. There is no ignorance, and it seems to be growing ever clearer that there never really was.

How did I not see this coming, that this was a group of people so determined to win at any cost, even if that cost was this? They can't say "oh, well, they never played a down of football" anymore. No, these were huge team contributors that would have hurt those chances for titles and money and glitter if the men in charge done the honorable thing.

But no, we've got a stadium to pay off, and so the show must go on.

The thing is, the thing that I want to come back to and also avoid, is that this is everywhere. This is everywhere! Not every university may be failing to this level, but there is this kind of systemic failings of victims at every university. No one is perfect. The greater sin, though, is that for years and years and years, Baylor has pretended it is.

I wrote some on this in my previous pieces on this theme, but here we are again, with another round of damning documents that no longer allow us the innocence of youth. When you step onto Baylor's campus, you're told it's a home, that you're with family, that these people (this president of the university who helps you unload your boxes) would do everything to protect and encourage you - but it turns out there are limits.

There are limits, like when a team chaplain reportedly tells a young woman reporting an assault to him to let it be. There are limits, like when there's not even the most basic of system in place - a Title IX office, the very least possible - to ensure that when this happens, it can be handled well. There are limits, because this is Baylor, right? We can stick our head in the sand like ostriches and pretend that Good Christian Boys have been Taught Better and Would Never and that Good Christian Girls wouldn't Put Themselves In These Positions Anyway, and therefore, it just Can't Happen Here.

Wake up, Mr. President. Wake up, head coach. Wake up, various and sundry honored sirs and madams of the council. You are not exempt. You are not special. This university is just dirt and stone like every other place on earth, and the people in it are a mix of humanity like any other. If you don't take proactive measures - not just those blue-light poles, half of which seem to be broken every semester, not just the asinine "we're here for you" and then cutting off counseling sessions after a semester, not just the barest of minimums - if you aren't here, then you don't only lose your claim to being "better than," you are therefore worse than for even claiming it.

Of course, I've said this all before. I have! I've said it in more flowery language, I've torn apart rhetoric from here to there, I've screamed and cried and cursed and worn myself hoarse trying to make this university worthy of me. Right now? It's not, and I feel like I'm just repeating myself, screaming at an unhearing wall, an uncaring group of people who want to wear a caring mask.


Note: I feel I must lay this out here, simply because it is who I am. I did not experience anything like what has been reported while I was at Baylor. My experience while on campus was, for the most part, a good and growing one. I had incredible professors who did live up to the ideals put forth by the university, I had wonderful mentors who made time for a very confused and frustrating music student who wanted to do anything but, and I had a counselor who flouted those very "only so many sessions" rules to help me make it out of the mire of my mind, even temporarily. This is why I feel so betrayed, I supposed - because I had the model experience, and it seems there are so many who didn't, and were shoved away for not. 

something ranty about things

Right now, at this moment, if I had money and time and life on my side, I would gladly drop everything and give my all to a baseball job.

In the real world, though, if I were to get the highest paid internship I have heard of in baseball, I would be taking an immediate 25% pay cut, and that's low-balling my annual income as of right now (which is already on the low end of the scale for my particular specialty in my particular location). That pay cut doesn't include the question of health insurance, or any increase in rent, or moving expenses, or all the little things that come with dropping everything to do what we're lied to about from middle school on and pursue a dream.

I'm not even in any need. I'm very firmly middle-class, from a middle-class family, in a middle-class job. I live in a not huge but not tiny apartment, by myself, in a fairly low cost-of-living area of the country. My student loan debt is weighty, but not crushing. I don't even have credit card debt! I make some extra money on the side, I try my best to save and spend wisely, and I budget for the occasional extravagance - like playoff hockey tickets or a nice dinner out, but not both at the same time. If I can't make baseball work from a practical standpoint, then who on earth can?

These limitations mean that "the best and the brightest" becomes "the best of the interested richest.” Yeah, there's going to be exceptions. There's going to be those precious few who hit on the right thing at the right time, make insane amounts of sacrifice, and then are rewarded with token status  - "if they did it, then clearly you, you younger generation, are just lazy!" or, the ever-dreadful "but look at this one hire we made!"

It's been shown time and time again in multiple fields of business that diversity - inclusive of race and gender and opinion - makes for better ideas. Why has baseball, a business so intent on chasing any bit of advantage in a largely even field, not paid more attention to this? There are signs of this happening, yes. The Dodgers, for one, the Brewers, for another, the Mariners...but it's still the exception, not the norm.

There are bright minds out there. They may not be making noise, but they're in college, and they're in the workplace, and they're thinking and commenting and coming up with ideas that, for the large part, won't be seen by a major league team due to the barrier for entry. Not only do these "diverse" minds have to first overcome the societal skepticism that comes with whatever tag they're blessed with, but then they have to figure out whether or not they can actually, practically, if they have the good fortune to get noticed, make that next step.

Major League Baseball's diversity problem isn't this easy to fix, I know. The financial barriers aren't the only thing making it difficult for people to decide that something they love is more valuable than something that allows them to live - but they're no small part.

To bring this back to me - however selfish that is, I only really have my example to work from - a lot of things might have been different if I'd known that baseball was something I could do, for real, when I graduated college. It took me two years to find a full-time job in my current field, two years I lived with my parents doing my own succession of low- or no-pay internships, two years that are the reason I can't drop everything and do that now. I drained my savings account paying my student loans so I wouldn't have to pay more later - and how lucky was I to have savings! Now, when I know enough and am encouraged enough and lucky enough to have a chorus of people telling me that I - a woman, a music major, a non-math person - I could (?) be good enough to work in baseball, I just can't make it happen.

If you want to really see change, it has to happen at the beginning. Baseball can't wait for people to come to it. We've got to stop holding it up as a golden god of employment, something worth sacrificing health and wealth and sanity to. We've instead got to hold it accountable, something that's been happening more and more often in these recent years.

It may be too late for me and baseball, but I sure as hell want to make sure it doesn't get to be too late for whoever is next.

I've written this same damn post a thousand times, worked it out in blog and message and text, the same cry from inside my soul that I've got nothing, that I've been sucked dry. It's that time of year, I guess, when I realize that the fountain that used to spit out ideas and thoughts and clever bon mots is nothing more than a fickle spring, dried up at the first touch of drought. I'm not even good at my job right now, which is to this kind of writing what carob is to chocolate - nothing but an artificial and plasticne substitution.

I spend a lot of time talking about what I cannot do. I cannot command a room with my presence, I cannot seem to type quickly without error anymore, I cannot drink milk. I cannot work a full time job and write on the side full time, too. Right now, I cannot do even basic baseball analytics in the same way anyone else can. I can't find it in myself to be completely happy for someone else, even though I hate myself for that seed of jealousy.

Two paragraphs in and I'm staring at the rest of the page now, because sometimes I just can't even make my fingers keep going. I write in such flowery awful language, you guys, that even when I'm writing to write, writing to try to keep myself from completely falling apart, I sit and stare because the words just aren't lining up correctly, the rhythm isn't quite right, and it's not that this isn't a symphony, it's that it's barely a student-level piano duet.

Maybe it would help if I didn't flip to Twitter every time I finish a paragraph, but I can barely stand to be in a room with myself at times, much less on the same page. I still don't know if I'm actually going to hit that bright orange "publish" button yet.

That's a lie. I know I will, because I am, for all my love of espionage and misdirection, fundamentally honest. I will, because maybe my ranting, maybe my venting, maybe my honest exploration of emptiness (not even pain, just the vague black nothingness that is the inside of my head right now, where words used to exist) will help someone else. I doubt it, but maybe, they will, and all this won't have been for absolutely naught.

I'd like to write that great piece, still. The big something, my chance at glory. I thought I had it, a few months ago, but it slid through my fingers like sand, a reminder that I really shouldn't get my hopes up. So it's still out there, that chance for me to prove myself once and for all, or maybe it's not. Maybe this is it - I'm simply what I am today, nothing more or less.

I don't know what I am today, and every time I ask someone to tell me I cannot tell if they are lying.

I've been posting a lot of things untitled, recently, because I cannot come up with something that doesn't either feel misleading or overly pretentiously shallow. This will be another one.

honesty or foolishness or both

Two years ago, I was living with my parents. My car had no air-conditioning, I was draining my savings account to pay back my loans, and I was improbably mostly happy. I had a database of minor league information like you wouldn't believe, sources to call on to find out anything I couldn't see, and I didn't know what I didn't know - I was formless, but boundless, full of energy and vitality and I could write.

I'm now in my own place, with a car whose air conditioning works but suspension keeps creaking, working five days a week and making enough money to buy things from Sephora when I'm sad. I also can't remember half of what I knew about the Rangers' farm system, feel like a failure and a loser, and am constantly on the edge of tears. I'm exhausted and yet can't sleep, spend hours watching television and yet can't write.

So as I delete yet another pitiful plea for someone to pay attention to me when I've done nothing worth attention in a year, I try to say I don't want your pity but I do.

When I wasn't making money, I wanted to. Now that I am, I wish I could go back to that, that there was some way that I could pay rent and write, pay rent and be happy, pay rent and cover baseball the way I want to cover it.

It used to be a day's work (sometimes, a moment's) to churn out a piece on three prospects, and they'd be three guys I knew. Now, I have no idea what Adam Parks throws, why Josh Morgan isn't catching, or whether Jairo Beras has a chance. I might not have had an idea two years ago, but I didn't know that. I was writing by the skin of my teeth, soaking up knowledge like a sponge, so full of promise, and now, two years later, I feel spent.

I want to be your expert, I feel this never ending drive to be the best, to be the only, to be the one you think of when you think of I'm not even sure what, but that's passed me by and that's both good and bad. Good, because there are others and bad because I

I'm not a good person. I've gone on about this here, before, about how I'm all about feminism and equality and more space for women in this fucked up world of sports until it threatens me and then I clam up, because being the only meant it was easy for me to stand out. How awful is that? How absolutely selfish am I?

All this to say that I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Part of this is that I've hit that plateau, that there's only so much you can learn quickly and easily, even if you're me, and that nothing is easy, nothing come free. Part of it is that I only have so much RAM to give, and that right now too much of it is written with stress and the inconsequential nothings from a job that pays my rent but not my soul. Part of it? I'm just not good enough to find a way to write around that gap, to bridge what I can and can't do.

Maybe I'll find it again. Maybe admitting my every weakness is not honesty but foolishness, or both.

I have a stubborn streak a mile wide, inherited from a mother whose never much liked people telling her what to do, either. I'm obstinate and headstrong, both traits that can be valuable but usually just get me labeled a bitch. I'm paralyzingly terrified of failure.

These traits make it difficult to get things done, sometimes.

I'd be lying if I said I was happy with myself recently. I'd be lying if I said I said I was generally happy, recently. So I'm sitting here wondering if I can do what it takes to be not not happy, and whether the sacrifice is worth it.

Funny thing, sacrifice. It can mean so many things to so many different people. For some, it's passing up the easy opportunity for something more difficult and less rewarding. For others, it's passing up the rewarding thing in order to make sure they can make rent. For me, right now, it's giving up, failing, dropping away from something I really enjoy doing, even as it kills me.

It's easy to be objective about a baseball team, it's hard to be objective about yourself. Even as I sit, paralyzed by fear and emotion, accomplishing nothing and being incredibly noisy while doing so, I can't admit to myself that maybe it's the way it should be, because this would be me, giving up.

I've fought so much, taught myself so much, looked for answers and driven miles and gotten migraines. What does it mean if I step back from this, if I step back from doing what I really can't imagine myself without, now, in order to try to grasp at a future?

It wouldn't be a complete letting go, but even opening my hand that little bit and feeling the sand I've fought so hard to hold spill out makes me want to break apart. I have to make a choice, and it feels impossible.

I've stubbornly clung to this for two years, two years longer than anyone thought I would, and I can't let go, even as the tide pulls me away and my fingers bleed from clinging to the sharp iron bars that I thought I could handle. Why give up? Why give in? Isn't this surrender? Isn't this failure?

Isn't this what I was afraid of?

babbling

It's self-indulgent, really, isn't it?

Sure, I can sit here and put all sorts of names to this invisible malaise that steals my joy and makes my brain run slow, but it's self-indulgent, really. To think that I could be good, to think that I could be well-known, to think that I could chase and catch that fickle fucker fame.

I vacillate between some form of utter self-delusion and self-loathing. If I'm as good as I think I am, where are my awards? Where are my haters? Where is this proof of my existence other than my meaningless words on a page?

I am full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I am angry about all sorts of things, white-hot in my righteous rage, and yet I fall prey to the same words that wound me, that feeling - insistence - that to be the only is to be the best, to be the best is to be the only, and that if I'm not the only then I'm overshadowed.

I write these self-flagellating raw posts out of my head and at the same time I loathe myself for them - what am I doing but indulging in some bit of amusing self-promotion? I write in the interests of honesty, but who am I fooling? It's all just this exercise in pretentious word-smithery, pretending that I'm better than you because I'm more honest, or some nonsense like that.

I wouldn't be writing these self-searching pieces of bullshit if I were writing real honest genuine work, of course. This is easy and requires no research, no work, no anything except the moving of my fingers and giving written voice to the constant voice inside my head.

What do I strive for? I don't even know, except for this yawning hunger in my chest for more - for better, for faster, for higher, for more and more and more.

Maybe I could have been a genius if I'd had an axe to grind, but I've had axes to grind and I've ground them and I've come out on the other side with nothing - maybe I didn't grind hard enough! At the end of the day, the three other fingers still point the blame back at me and self-indulgently I welcome it, roll in the mire of anger and frustration because it's easier than moving on.

Easy is a funny word. Is something worth less because it's easy? Probably, which is why these bitter ramblings I post out of a desperate sense of something unnameable detract from my value, but I've never known when to shut up.

It's self-indulgence, really.

relationship status: hockey?

There’s no insanely sappy, sentimental story tying me to hockey, honestly. There’s no childhood memories, no inherited passion, no tradition of fandom passed down from on high. There’s just me, a friend, and a promise that “come on, you have to watch one game. One game! One game when they come back from the lockout.”

The Dallas Stars either have a very simple or a very complicated history, depending on who you ask. They’re a team that moved, or was stolen, or was stolen and moved, and their fans are either a small but intense group, a bunch of immoral bandwagoners for rooting for a stolen team, or nonexistent. I knew that Mike Modano existed, somewhere in the back of my mind, as I was growing up, flipping past Stars news in the paper on my way to the baseball. Hockey was kind of there, but so was basketball and football.

Hockey lockouts are the worst, but I probably wouldn’t be a fan without the last one.

I wasn’t hooked the first game I watched, but I was intrigued. I don’t remember many of the specifics, really, other than the fact that the Stars won - one of the seemingly few times they’d do so that season. I was drawn in by the rush of it, though, despite the fact that I understood basically nothing about the game. It was fast and frenetic and I was watching it on a 13-inch screen across a living room in a desolate apartment in Waco, TX and while I didn’t fall completely in love at that moment, I at least felt some kind of stirring, something that kept me tuning in the occasional times I found them on whatever channel they’d gotten shuffled to.

I fell in love, though, in October 2013, when my good friend Graham Jenkins, himself a dedicated and long-time Stars fan, the one to whom I’d made the promise to start watching, and I went to the Halloween game, and I got to experience the adrenaline rush that is live hockey, even near too many Jets fans. I was in. Hockey, and specifically the Stars, had me - even though they lost that game 2-1 in a shootout.

Of course, it’s not been without growing pains. Hockey has its share of issues, things I can’t wallpaper over with my love of the game. There’s the sexual assault and rape allegations, the standard issue problematic teams and fans, the whole fighting and concussions and players encouraged to be too tough for their own good thing, everything you have to make your deal with the devil’s sport-related minion in order to remain a fan of any sport. It’s a part of being a fan - and so far, the positives have outweighed the negatives.

I got lucky, you know. The Stars have turned from laughingstock to powerhouse in the few seasons I’ve been a fan, making the playoffs, gathering young talent, having their captain turn into one of the best players in the entire league, getting new uniforms, the whole kit and caboodle. I don’t know if I’d be planning to buy half-season tickets if they were still at the bottom of their division, but now I can’t imagine my life without losing my voice in Victory Green.

Hockey’s seen me through depression, through frustration, through friendships and the dissolution thereof, through baseball, through writer’s block. It’s good, as a writer, to have a sport you can unashamedly love, a sport that you don’t have to hide or get rid of affiliation, a sport you can watch through green-colored glasses.

It’s bad, but all sports are bad. It’s good, in that all sports are good. It’s communal, it’s crazy, it’s impossible, and I’m in love with it.