Winds of Change:
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opinion
A Reflection for May
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max cunningham, dsj co-editor in chief
As this magazine went to print, the Washington Nationals were 12-4, good enough for first place in baseball’s National League Eastern Division. Their superstar pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, was 2-0 with 1.08 earned run average (ERA), among the best in the game. Elsewhere in the league, pundits on ESPN speculated that Matt Kemp of the Los Angeles Dodgers could win the coveted Most Valuable Player award at the end of the season. Here in April, a casual observer might think that baseball’s playoff picture, a short five months away, is shaping up. Americans love the fast start. Just about every year since I began following baseball at age eight I’ve been excited to see the Baltimore Orioles climb to the top of the American League Eastern Division, and convinced myself that they were bound to something great. In more recent years, I’ve thought that the latent talent within the Washington Nationals will finally pay off. Every year I’m wrong. I can almost guarantee that two weeks out, when this magazine begins to be distributed to the hands of William and Mary students in the first few days of May, that the Washington Nationals will have begun the first of many downward slides yet to be experienced during the season. Stephen Strasburg’s unworldly fastball will slow down to human levels, and his terrifyingly low ERA will be on the rise. Matt Kemp will sink into the ranks of dozens of other potential MVP candidates, and the playoff picture will fog into muddled ambiguity. It amazes me how consistently America’s vast throngs of avid baseball fans fall into the trap of generalizing too small a sample size. To some degree, I think the modern media is to blame: any self-respecting sports journalist should have the wisdom to limit predictions of a league MVP until at least 10 percent of the season’s 162 games have been played. Or maybe as whole, baseball fans still have trouble appreciating the relatively vast time scale on which our beloved sport functions. I think more of it has to do with our own
nature, that of wanting to see life continue exactly as it seems to be. At no point in my life have I considered my situation anything other than permanent. By now I’m 21, and the fact that I do this kind of thing so innately is telling. Take, for instance, my undergraduate career. In the moment, I can’t help but think that my sleeping in a dorm, writing for the DSJ, and wasting cool spring nights on the dew of the Sunken Gardens will extend infinitely into the space-time continuum. I’ve been asked by a number of people this year what I’ll be doing when I graduate in the spring. As it is, I’m only a junior that looks like a senior, so the question is less than pressing. Yet, this year is the first time that I’ve had to come to terms with the mortality of college life. Of course there have been instances in the last several years when Williamsburg, VA has been close to the last place on Earth I’d like to be. Those feelings usually subside relatively quickly into the warm comfort that surrounds this this beautiful institution. Comfort. William and Mary is more than that, but I’ve grown comfortable with where I stand and the expectations that await me here. What lies beyond is strange and uncomfortable; how does it even work? We have to deal with exactly this kind of issue more than we’d like to all the time: change is most certainly a constant in this life. When the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles slide down the standings this year, it will be painful to watch, as it will be when Stephen Strasburg’s ERA steps over the 2.00 mark, and Matt Kemp’s batting average moves closer and closer to that of everyone else in the leauge. Still, we turn to baseball year after year, each time choosing what’s comfortable to believe, knowing deep down that, really, who knows how the season will end? What makes baseball, and anything else, so great is the subconscious realization that in the end, we really don’t know how things are going to work. I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as a thrill, although it may seem that way sometimes. Rather, I think that as people we also have a great comfort in change. We
feel comfortable with things that we know will evolve in some way, morph beyond our expectations. Yes, things can always change in a bad way, but if change is always there, so are more positive possibilities. My personal favorite example of change, as far as the baseball world is concerned, involves a pitcher, Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants. Tim is fittingly off to a bad start this year (his ERA is eight times that of Stephen Strasburg’s), but a similar thing happened in 2010. In August of that year, the Giants were out of the playoff picture; Tim lost five out of the five games he pitched that month. Then, magically, the baseball winds began to change. Tim suddenly won five games in September, and pushed his team on a remarkable playoff chase that landed them in the World Series. I remember watching the Giants record the final outs of the championship game, Tim on the mound. I logged onto Facebook and, in a rare status update, posted one word: “happiness.” Whether we like it or not, we are a people of change. And although we try to ignore it, it is sometimes the changes in our lives that move us most deeply. This May, the class of 2012 will graduate. It will undoubtedly be intimidating, exciting, terrifying, and exhilarating all at the same time. But among all these things, it is also a change, and it is change that make us. Max Cunningham is the DSJ Co-Editor in Chief. His views do not necessarily represent those of the entire staff. THE DSJ -
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