Love and Baseball
The New York Times
February 25, 2010
By Doug Glanville
It’s here again. Position players report to spring training this week (pitchers and catchers ...
But the players are also leaving something behind. Many have families who will have to hold down the fort back home. Their kids might be in school, their wives or girlfriends might have inflexible jobs. As players sprint toward that passion for all things baseball, intimate, person-to-person love becomes uncertain. Which is it going to be, “absence makes the heart grow fonder” or “out of sight, out of mind”?
Either way, there are always doubts about taking this annual relationship test, this pre-meditated breakup that parts couples year in and year out. No matter how well-oiled your relationship engine is, sooner or later there will be frustrations and you will feel, for a moment, that love officially stinks. How do you hold on?
I was Mr. Bachelor for pretty much my entire professional baseball career. There were seasons when I was one of only a couple of single players on the team (the 1997 Chicago Cubs, for instance), and others when I was one of many (the Phillies of the early 2000s). After seeing the full spectrum of what a serious relationship looked like in pro baseball, I was exhausted. Dating people I knew “before I was famous” did not work. Dating only during the off-season, when I was completely available, did not work. Dating someone similarly situated and equally “famous” did not work. Dating someone who had an inordinate amount of time to spend with me did not work. I learned a lot, and it helped me understand commitment and who I was, but I was always empty-armed when all was said and done.
Just before one Thanksgiving, my first valentine, my mom, stormed into the bachelor house in Pennsylvania that I’d been living in for years and said, “I am tired of seeing all these white walls and empty rooms. You are hosting Thanksgiving, so you need to find a way to furnish this place for a huge gathering . . . this year!”
Of course, most single players try not to commit to a space, knowing that their address can change on a G.M.’s whim. One way to accomplish this goal is by not decorating. Even if you actually purchase a house, as I did in 1999, you know in your heart that the new home could be demoted to a glorified storage facility as you hit the road for months at a time (when I played for Texas, I didn’t set foot in my house from January to October).
Nothing brought this more into focus than spring training. You could be having the time of your life, and spending a tremendous amount of time with someone during the off-season, but when spring training begins the relationship as you knew it ends. The idea of compromise disappears; you have to leave, and she has to get on your program if you hope to see each other any time other than during home stands — and even that assumes she lives where you’re playing.
So I fought what seemed to be the inevitable demise of something good, just as I fought through relationships, trying to support the belief that a serious commitment can work in a world of nomads and playboys even as I racked up excuses for not being able to close the deal.
So how did my mom’s Thanksgiving “request” go? Fortunately, the woman who had sold me my house four years earlier had introduced me to an interior decorator, who had become a friend and had helped me touch up a room or two that would have otherwise remained full of computer gear and boxes. So I called on her to help me meet Mom’s “full house” demands. And, over time, we talked about more than decorating. Tapping her elder wisdom, she decided to keep an eye out for me, a kind of surrogate mother.
After another valiant relationship effort of mine ended up on the side of the road, she reminded me to check in with her if I were ever “on the market” again. I let some time go by and then took her up on her offer. She asked how I could be contacted, and I told her to pass on my e-mail. It turned out she had someone in mind: the co-worker of the daughter of her friend.
A woman she did not know.
Apparently, the woman also thought this was questionable, so when she received word to “e-mail him,” she didn’t lift a finger for about a month. This roused the peanut gallery, who pressed her to drop me a note. She finally did. It turned out she was extremely busy preparing for the bar exam.
We wrote back and forth for a while, I finally asked for her phone number and, after a few weeks of this madness, we met just before I was about to head out on a two-week road trip. Our first date was over breakfast at a spot in Philadelphia called Morning Glory. (After she said we should wait to meet until after the exam, I told her, “Hey, you gotta eat!” — and she agreed).
It turned out they had the best French toast (next to mine, of course) I had ever tasted. I sensed destiny was calling since she had no way of knowing that I lived for breakfast. If I hadn’t fallen in love with my wife that day, I would have fallen in love with the syrup.
We were inseparable from that day on.
This was 2004. Although it ended up being the final full season of my professional career, I did still have some more baseball in me. And a relationship that had been smooth sailing was about to hit the storm of spring training.
At the end of a long off-season rummaging in the scrap heap of the free agent class, the Yankees finally sweetened an earlier offer they’d made me. I said to myself, “It’s the Yankees, I gotta answer this call.” So I had to abruptly tell my girlfriend that I was moving to Tampa, Fla., and that I hoped she could visit me. She was blindsided. She knew I was looking for an opportunity, but now it had become real, inflexible — and one-sided.
After a tough spring training, the Yanks let me go, leaving me to ponder my future in my apartment in Tampa. A week went by and the offers coming in were more about being in the front office than on the field. Finally, the San Diego Padres offered me a Triple-A contract.
Did I need this closure, to prove something to myself by going to Triple-A and then getting back to the big leagues? I thought about it and realized that I had what I needed. My love for baseball had changed. This was not the puppy love of a Wiffle-ball-loving 8-year-old; I was a 34-year-old man who’d seen a lot of ups and downs, yet I was still playing, and remained true to my commitment. It was a mature love I had now for baseball. And realizing this helped me understand that it wasn’t a love I could grow old with while competing on the field. It had to evolve before time kicked me out the door and into the street. I had to have a new relationship with baseball — one that made room for something else, for someone else.
Like the character played by Matt Damon in “Good Will Hunting,” it would appear that I had to “see about a girl,” but it was more about seeing in her the desire to take a leap of faith so that we could be together. And so I saw my options as something beyond just playing or not playing.
I proposed to my wife on April 7th that off-season, shortly after Opening Day of the 2005 season. Not in New York City — my plan for when I made the team with the Yankees — but in my baseball hometown of Conshohocken, Pa., far from a city that never sleeps. The game that had stolen my heart for decades had helped me develop my capacity to love, and to expect so much from love.
Baseball might not allow you to love it by playing it for all your time on Earth, but it can guide you to a love that can last that long.
And it smells sweet as a rose.
New York Times 02/25/2010
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/g/doug_gla...
