Yesterday Has Turned Into Today

My life has become Groundhog Day.

After a restless night’s sleep, I’ve awakened to a day that I know is going to be filled with excitement and anxiety. I know it’s going to be filled with excitement and anxiety because I lived today yesterday. And now, because of rain in St. Louis, I relive yesterday today.

I’ve barely slept. I can’t focus at work. Or at school. My mind can’t make sense of anything that’s not related to baseball. And yet my only real job as it pertains to the game is to sit on the couch and watch it play out before me, and if I’m lucky, hear the iconic radio voice of Eric Nadel tell me that the Texas Rangers are World Series champions.

Every baseball fan dreams of their favorite team winning the World Series. Some fans have been more fortunate than others. Much, much more fortunate. But finally, after thirty-five years of loving the game, I’m waking up to a second consecutive morning in which a possible series deciding Game 6 is scheduled to be played, wishing the day would just hurry up and fast forward to game time. Sadly, I know the minutes are going to pass by at an excruciatingly slow pace, taking their time, refusing to turn into hours. I’m starting to understand the gravity of a word like infinite.

There have been times when being a Texas Rangers fan has been brutal. Each spring would always bring with it a new start. The summers would always bring what seemed like an overkill of heat in an effort to thoroughly melt the hopes of post season play. Doubters called the Rangers the Strangers. To truly love the Rangers you had to truly love the game.

Yet here the Strangers are, thirty-nine years after migrating from Washington, DC, after a miserable showing in last year’s World Series, after losing out in the off season on signing one of the best pitchers in the game, after surviving record breaking heat over the summer, staring down the improbable - two chances to get one more win. One more win to make history. One more win to show the world that one bad decision or error in judgment doesn’t have to define who you are as a leader. One more win to prove that all you’ve ever really wanted to do is play the game and play it right, and if you’re lucky enough, be called World Series champion. One win to prove to everyone who’s given up on you, and more importantly to yourself, that despite having fallen so far down you can actually get back up…and be forgiven.

Before the World Series began I predicted the Texas Rangers to win in seven games (2, 4, 5 & 7). I’m 5-0, yet somehow struggling mightily in my statistics class. If only my professor incorporated WHIP, ERA, and batting average with RISP into her lesson plan. But she doesn’t, so I’m forced to adjust.

I’m not the only one in our family with Red Fever.

Brady keeps asking why the Rangers aren’t playing the Dodgers. I tell him it’s because Daddy isn’t rich enough to buy the Dodgers and turn them into a good team. He says I should work harder to make more money so we can buy them. I tell him that if I work more then I’ll be home even less than I already am now, which means I won’t be able to practice t-ball with him to prepare for the spring season. He says we can practice on the PlayStation. A month shy of turning five and he’s already got all the answers. But as interested as he is in the Los Angeles Dodgers, it’s the Texas Rangers he stays up late rooting for, as if he fully understands the magnitude of what’s happening.

Kacie has a Rangers pillow that she hugs while watching the games, smothering it between her chest and knees on plays that just might go against our boys. She’s not as vocal as Brady and I are, but all you have to do is look at Kacie and watch as her eyes tell the story of what she’s feeling inside. She wants this as badly as we do.

Traci makes me go to the other room to listen to the game on the radio, because the delay between radio and television is significant enough that she doesn’t want me spoiling the play for her by cheering or moaning. Maybe if she looked at the radio like a mini time machine that gives us quick glances into the future we could be in the same room.

And now, because of the rainout, yesterday has turned into today and I face a dilemma: go to my Chicano Literature class tonight or go home and watch the game. By skipping class I’m sure to lose points on my final grade. I suppose the choice will be fitting since this semester we’ve read about the importance of family, the expectations put on you by both family and society, and the choices we make with regards to living up to the hopes and dreams that others have for us or deciding to make a mark on the world by doing something different, something that matters to us.

But there's no deciding in this decision. My choice was made with CJ Wilson's first pitch of the season. If the Texas Rangers are fortunate enough to win the World Series this year, I want to know that I was watching at home with my family when it happened. I want my children to look back twenty years from now and share with their own children their memories of the night in our cramped apartment when dreams finally came true, because maybe this could be their moment to say “I too want to conquer the improbable and achieve the impossible.”

But for now, I wait. Restlessly.

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