ASTRO-NOTS!
A Fall Classic worthy of the name
First, let me thank David Roberts’ wife for the headline. It was too good to pass up.
With that done:
Say what you will about The West Wing, the Nationals social media team know their audience cold. Also:
After 34,719 days, version 3.0 of the Washington Nationals (the first having moved to Minneapolis/St. Paul in 1961, the second having decamped to Arlington, TX a decade later) won the World Series.
It’s Friday morning, Washington, DC has another victory parade set for this weekend, and this is The Miscellanies. And just so you know, Montréal (where the Nats got their start 50 years ago, as les Expos) has some damn good bagels.
This was one hell of a World Series, and it made history in more ways than just Washington winning a title for the first time in 95 years. For the first time in major American sports history, the road team won every game in a seven-game series. That’s right: in the history of the NBA, the NHL, and MLB, this had never happened. I can’t speak for minor leagues, or for leagues like the World Hockey Association (the 1970s competitor to the NHL) or the American Basketball Association (the ‘60s & ‘70s upstart rebel to the NBA), but in the majors? Nah.
The Houston Astros, for that matter, weren’t just an overwhelming favorite. They were an absurdly, historically great team. How great, you ask?
Since Opening Day 2017, when they won their first World Series, the Astros have been an astonishing 136 games over .500. Read that again: in the last three years, their record was 311 wins, 175 losses. No one else in baseball history has won that many games over three straight years. But wait, you say, didn’t the Yankees do this just last decade? Sure, but here’s the difference: the Houston Astros are the only team ever to not just win over 100 games each season, but improve on their record each season.
In 2017, they went 101-61, winning the World Series. In 2018, their record was 103-59, and they lost the ALCS 4-1 to only the winningest Boston Red Sox team of all time (108-54); and this season, they had a ridiculous 107-55 record, en route to losing the World Series in seven games. That simply doesn’t happen.
I think it’s easy to forget just how grueling baseball is. Baseball teams play twice as many games - 162 - over the course of nine months as basketball teams (82) and hockey teams (82). That’s a lot of wear and tear on the body, even if baseball isn’t as physically extortionate as hockey or basketball in terms of its demands. And what’s lacking on the physical side is more than made up on the mental side. I can’t think of another American sport in which a key player - the closing pitcher, known as “the closer” - has to take the field on essentially a moment’s notice during a high-stakes situation, and deliver a successful performance over and over again — especially if they’ve failed previously!
The Houston Astros didn’t just maintain their performance, they improved on it over the course of a thousand days! THAT SIMPLY DOES NOT HAPPEN. IT DOESN’T HAPPEN.
And yet: last week, I was basically writing their eulogy. That’s right, I was tap-dancing, pirouetting, clicking my heels over their baseball grave. With good reason, mind: as I detailed, the history of teams coming back from an 0-2 deficit in the World Series, let alone blowing the first two home games of the Series, wasn’t…great. Nats fans were all set to have themselves a fine ol’ party, about to bust out the go-go. Forget bagels and muffins, Donna, they were gonna have themselves a whole lot of half-smokes and chili, OK? This confidence was entirely justified, considering not just the history above but also the fact that the Washington Nationals had lost a total of two — that’s right, two — games over the last month.
Which was right about the time that Houston decided to make things real. They didn’t just blow into town like a Texas derecho, they straight-up obliterated the Nats. They won the three games in DC by a combined score of 19-3 (nineteen! NINETEEN! TO THREE!), and never trailed once at any point in those three games. Something, and this is now approaching the parodic point, that. had. never. happened. before.
You dig?
Do you?
Which brings us to Games Six and Seven of this World Series. At which point the Washington Nationals flipped the script neatly on this Astros team. For the fourth time this postseason — and then, a fifth — they faced elimination. This was the Nats response:
Which led to this happening on Wednesday night, roughly around ten till eleven:
Imagine — just imagine — that kind of untrammeled joy for a second. Just take it in.
I don’t know about you, but this is why I love sports. This is why I love writing about sports.
I’m not a Nationals fan. The first team I fell in love with were the ‘80s New York Mets, which makes for a hilarious story (ask me about it, sometime). Then, briefly, since I grew up in Ohio, the Cincinnati Reds, before settling into a lifetime of split loyalty between the Cleveland Indians and the Mets, with a dash of the Dodgers, thanks to my mom growing up in 1950s Brooklyn (she grew up in Ditmas Park and Flatbush).
The last four years, I’ve seen my teams make the World Series. I don’t think I’ll actually get to see them win (Mariners fans, don’t worry, I see you and I honor your pain as well), which makes seeing teams like the White Sox (!) and Astros (!!) and yes, even the Nationals (!!!) hoist the Commissioner’s Trophy particularly bittersweet, but how could anyone dislike a team like this?
[SIDEBAR: The Chicago Cubs get a pass here. Yes, it was absolutely gutting that the Indians frittered away not just a 3 games to 1 lead in the 2016 World Series, but a ninth-inning lead in Game Seven to give the Cubs their first championship since before cars were even a thing, but then again: it’s the Cubs! The last time they won, they’d only played two of the damn things! The American League was five years old.]
The truth is, though, I’ve been in too many locker rooms, and talked to too many athletes, to have the kind of uncomplicated relationship with a team that a fan has. That’s the trade-off you make when you write about and work around sports. It’s easy to caricature the women and men who play at an unearthly level the games we played as kids. It’s impossible to hold on to those cartoonish ideas when you walk into a locker room after a game, and actually spend time talking with players, asking them to share a part of themselves we can’t possibly begin to understand.
Anyway, what a fun ride.
One last thing: my respect for the Houston Astros’ remarkable on-field accomplishments aside — which I wanted to catalogue for the record — it’s extremely cool that the team that gleefully signed a domestic abuser, gloated about it, lied about gloating about it, & then smeared reporters that wrote about that gloating lost. If the Houston Astros are smart enough to win 311 games over three seasons, they’re smart enough to pick up a closer who doesn’t beat women.
I hear a certain World Series-winning closer might be available. That would be a good start. A better one would be deservedly firing Jeff Luhnow and Anita Sehgal (the Astros PR chief, responsible for all their dealings with the press), along with signing a replacement for disgraced closer Roberto Osuna.
For what it’s worth, the Yankees could make it markedly more difficult to dislike them (I don’t, but to each their own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) by letting disgraced closer Aroldis Chapman walk. There’s a few Yankees fans I know who’d be quite okay with that.
night falls fast
“Why men great 'til they gotta be great?” — Lizzo, “Truth Hurts”
I cried last night.
I was spending time with my cats, Hector and Hobbes, at my former partner’s place. I do that often; we share custody of the cats, so to speak. I can’t have them at my place, because one housemate is allergic to cats. I was snuggling Hobbes, walking around with him in my arms. I let him go when he tired of it. And at that point, as is sometimes the case, I was seized by grief.
Grief, at seeing the past, and knowing what could’ve been, if not for me. My former partner is an amazing person; patient, loving, willing to love me for who I was and who I am and whom I’ll be. We were fundamentally unsuited for each other, which is why we’re no longer together, but real talk: I was great, till I had to be great, and then I fucked up in all the stupid little and big ways that guys like me fuck up.
I was great, ‘til I had to be great, and then I was decidedly the opposite of great.
“The only journey that matters is the journey within” — Rainer Maria Rilke
So here’s the thing: I suffer from dysthymia (what you’d also call persistent depressive disorder). Also: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and social anxiety disorder. I’ve also been in recovery from alcoholism for over five years now. I mention it now, and I’ll mention it again, because we need to get to a point where we treat things like depression, and anxiety, and all the rest, the same way we treat broken bones and bronchitis and tendinitis.
Which is what they are: medical illnesses. Not proof of your lack of worth as a person, or moral failings, or things we can treat with physical exercise or the kind of affirmations you’d get from Stuart Smalley.
Yes, engaging in a rigorous, regular practice of meditative exercise like, for instance, yoga or t’ai chi or aikido can help. It’s not going to cure something like dysthymia, which I don’t think can be cured, but it can help. Doing the kinds of exercises you learn in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) might seem like doing positive affirmations, but they’re not at all the same, and we shouldn’t confuse them.
Anyway: my dysthymia and anxiety and PTSD combine to amplify the emotions I feel, and distort them, too, like some hellish funhouse mirror. They’re not why I failed to be great when I had to be: discredit for that goes to the things I did and words I said when I did them and said them. But it made it harder to be great, which is why I’ve worked hard on myself since, why I’m sharing this with you, and why I’m sharing some of what I do now.
In my last email, I said I wasn’t currently in therapy. That’s largely correct. That said: I currently use two services as a stop-gap while I’m searching for a long-term solution. They are BetterHelp and Talkspace (N.B.: Talkspace is offering $100 off your first month using the code 1004U). I wouldn’t recommend them as a replacement for a personal, dedicated therapist, but in a pinch, if you need counseling right now, they’re a good option.
The reason I wouldn’t use them as a replacement for a dedicated therapist is that, in my experience and that of many, many, many other people, mental health therapy works best when you can establish a deep, consistent relationship with a provider. That relationship is what makes the hard, painstaking, painful work of therapy effective, roughly the same way that working with a personal trainer offers more effective exercise results over a long period of time.
But it goes beyond that. The reason having a dedicated psychotherapist is more effective is because the relationship you build with that person allows them to see through your bullshit. Yeah, I said it. Damn near everyone who engages in therapy bullshits about it, especially at the beginning. And it’s so obvious that there’s even a West Wing scene about it. Specifically, Season 3, episode 14, “Night Five”. I’d give you a link to the scene, but it isn’t up on YouTube, so the script will have to do.
Basically, President Bartlet suffers from insomnia. Dude hasn’t slept for four nights, going on five, hence the title. Can’t have that when you’re The Leader of The Free World™, so in comes the show’s go-to therapist, Stanley Keyworth. They have a session or two, and then comes the part when — and I swear every therapist will nod vigorously here — Keyworth calls out the President on his bullshit.
STANLEY
Mr. President... If you were any other patient-
BARTLET
Say what you'd say to any other patient.
STANLEY
I'd say, screw around if you want, but it's your money, it's about to be my money, and I sleep fine.
This is why, if you’re gonna do therapy, it’s best if you do it with a dedicated therapist. Because this moment will happen, and it’s only then — when you get past it — that the real work begins.
tapestry
I’m gonna talk about this in my next email, but dammit, Jim, this is why no one sees their friends anymore.
I recently re-read Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind and I can’t possibly recommend it more, though it’s not the easiest read. Also, Liz Phair’s memoir - Horror Stories — is fucking transcendent; easily one of the rawest, most honest memoirs I’ve ever read. Finally, since it’s Presidential Election Season™, and this is shaping to be a brutal one, here’s Jules Witcover & Jack Germond recapping the 1984 election in Wake Us When It’s Over.
(links to Powell’s in Portland and ThriftBooks, ‘cause I sure ain’t giving Amazon my business unless I have to.)
This is ferociously searing from Dahlia Lithwick. Some things aren’t worth getting over, and we shouldn’t be expected to.
My friend Stephen Bush has five thoughts on the UK’s December election - the first held on that month in 97 years.
trust me, you HAVE GOT to read this, especially if you’re into traveling and not into hotels or motels or Holiday Inn?
fuck, I miss being in love, and I miss being loved. and I’m both wildly happy for those of you who are in love (don’t fuck it up, my men, be great when you gotta be great) and just a little bit jealous, too. but happy. if for no other reason that ain’t no one in the market for a broke-down slag-heap like me*. anyway, like so many of Nicole’s threads, this one is amazing and the replies made me laugh and cry and laugh some more. so if you’re in love and are loved, here’s to you. to paraphrase a toast I’ve used before:
The person you really love will never grow old to you.
Through the wrinkles of time, through the bowed frame of years,
you will always see the dear face and feel
the warm heart union of your eternal love.
May it ever be so.
Take care of yourselves. I like you just the way you are; I’m trying hard to like me just the way I am, and so are you. I hope you have an excellent weekend, and I’ll see you on the other side. If you like what you’ve read, and you want to see more of it (thank you!), sign up and share this using the buttons below: