Instant-ity

Our lives are made up of instants/ One instant after another piled on top each other until you end up with full picture, a full game, or a full life.  Baseball, however, is a bit different than most of the other major sports in that there is ample time to reflect on each of these moments while the game is still being played.  In hockey, the action is so fast paced that the players change while the game is ongoing, occasionally leading fans who are casually watching to question who is even on the ice at a given point in time.  Basketball is a little more controlled in that players cant just walk off the court during action, but the end to end pace doesnt leave a whole lot of time reflect on what has just happened.  Even football, with all of its down time between plays players huddling before the start of nearly any action, is always forward looking with what will be done on the next attempt.  Each of those sports has built in breaks (periods/quarters) that allow for some time to look back at what has happened and use it to inform future decisions, but baseball allows this sort of introspection after each and every pitch.
I have long held that baseball is a metaphor for life in its construction and implimentation.  The pitcher-batter interface features two individuals using their brains and their bodies to battle one another with the outcome of their interaction helping to determine the outcome of their respective teams.  No one can win or lose the game all by themselves (except Billy Chappel or Steve Nebraska), but their personal victories can provide boosts towards the collective effort.  In any society, no one person holds the key to the rise or fall of that society (despite what we see in movies or read in books or epic poems...I'm looking at you Achilles), but the sum of all the pieces add up to make the whole.  Baseball is a relentless chess match where each piece of the board knows their jobs, their strengths and their limitations, and must work within those (and overcome them) with their group of teammate in order to come out on the winning side.  Within the game, just like within life, it is possible to achieve great personal success, yet never realize group success (Tony Gwynn...any Cubs player since the last one from the 1908 team retired); it is just as possible (if not infinitely moreso) to fail spectacularly, yet have the team achieve its goal.  The instances to act and to reflect (and then act again) play a key role in this success or failure.  As someone who got a degree in analyzing things and then coming up with criticism (or reasoning) why things are that way, I greatly appreciate the metaphysical nature of the down time.  In baseball, its not just that Paul Goldschmidt gets hit in the hand while pinch hitting in the bottom of the 9th in a game his team is losing 9-4 and is lost for, what is likely, the year and takes one of the best all around 1b in the game and shelves him for the last 2 months (and murders my fantasy baseball championship hopes).  That is just the first instant.
The reflection in the next instant allows manager Kirk Gibson to form a plan to hit the best player on the Pirates (Andrew McCutchen) as some sort of retalitory gesture, even though there is no way that Ernesto Dumpster Fireri hit Goldy Locks on purpose.  I mean...does anyone here think that Dumpster Fireri can hit something that he is trying to hit?  Wouldnt that mean that he would do things like try to hit the corner of the strike zone and get people out instead of hitting a player in the hand in a game that isnt in jeopardy against a hitter that, by all accounts, is a pretty decent guy?  Dumpster Fireri ended his season and Goldy's response was basically, "Well that sucked...but whatever, it happens sometimes."  The next instant, the drilling of Cutch in the small of the back, should result in Gibson getting fired, plain an simple.  It is a unnecessary risk to one of the game's most exciting players just because Gibby's player happened to get hurt in an accident.  Moreover, Gibby should never have had his franchise player in that situation to begin with.  #FireGibsonAndHisT-RexArms would be my new twitter hastag, if I had a twatter.  As a fantasy owner, my next instant will be deciding how to replace the Grand Canyon sized hole in my lineup (Hey John, we play this week...early congrats on the victory).
In the larger scheme, one of the things baseball has always done for me is to give me a better perspective on life in general.
I talk about baseball a lot, and everyone here knows that I played through college, but I dont think that everyone knows that I was actually really, really good at it. Like...had I not blown up my ankle in my senior year, could have had a chance to continue on kinda good.  I dont like to talk about that part much (I will however, share all kinds of stories about things that happened during games or from not during games - the latter are the better ones) because I dont like it to come across as sour grapes or shameless self promoting (like it probably is anyways).  Even being really good, I still failed to get on base nearly 60% of the time.  Coming to terms with not achieving my goal made me more prepared when it happened outside of baseball, but also made me appreciate more the times when I was successful, and taught me how to appreciate things that are special in the game and in life.
On Friday, one of those special instants happened that all of us should appreciate.  At 4:48 PM, a new member of the Tater Tot family graced the world with his presence.  Warren Giancarlo, Uncle Jimmy's SON, entered the world at a solid 7 pounds 13 oz and 21.5 inches long, though I am not sure if that included the Blackhawks sweater he was wearing or the white Iowa hat he surely was born with (his dad was not seen without the hat from roughly 2000 through 2009, so I assume that, all Darwin-like, Uncle Jimmy's DNA adapted and was passed on).  The entire fam is doing well and is now back home in the greater Chicago burbs.  I know that I have said this already numerous times in the past few days, but congratulations buddy and I cannot wait to meet the little guy.  How old do you think he needs to be before we get him is own Tater Tot team?  Keep in mind that my daughter won our extended family fantasy football league at 2 years old.