Baseball and perseverance
This is not a tech-related post. This is a post about baseball. It’s currently the Dodgers vs Yankees world series (2024), and last night was one of the greatest games in sports history.
For those that know me personally, I played baseball growing up in the Bay Area, but I found the game too stressful to really enjoy it. So I never really fully appreciated it. When I met my wife, she got me really into loving the Los Angeles Dodgers. And for the last seven to eight years, they have been my team. And I do my best to follow them every season, including this one.
(And yes, most folks tell me it’s heinous to like the Dodgers, being from the Bay Area. But the great thing about being yourself is that you are allowed to love whatever you want. And for me, that’s being a Dodgers fan!)
Freddie Freeman, who has been really struggling this season with family matters and ankle woes, hit the first walk-off Grand Slam in WS history. And it was quite a thing to watch live – my jaw was on the floor. Here’s a clip:
There’s still a lot of baseball left (up to 6 more games since the series just started), but I was screaming at the TV. The game was close and dramatic, and the Dodgers were down. But this single hit changed everything.
The amazing thing about this event is that it is literal deja vu from the last full season the Dodgers were in the World Series (not counting 2020 since it was a short, pandemic season). In 1988, Freddy Gibson, also with an ankle injury, hit a walk-off home run to beat the A’s in WS Game 1. It’s considered one of the greatest moments in baseball history.
I love baseball as a metaphor for life. There is so much randomness and things that are out of your control as a player and a manager. But you do the best you can to keep yourself healthy and plan ahead (Freeman, according to the broadcasters, will come 4 hours before a game to mend and do PT on his ankle).
And every now and then, a combination of perfect situations, emotions, planning, and bloody perseverance can lead to an unbelievable, outstanding win. And the fact that it can happen again with different people, throughout history, means that anyone has the possibility to manifest miracles like this.
Freddie really deserved this. And this moment is a special reminder of how even if the gossip us about is not favorable and we’re at low points in life, all it takes is sheer will and a little bit of luck to turn it all around. Go Dodgers. ⚾