Sadness versus Tragedy

(Thanks to TGP Sports Editor Goo Duggly for this post.)

Sadness Versus Tragedy

 It has to be stated at the outset that I know the difference.

Tragedy is a splinter you can’t ever remove. Tragedy hurts every day, sometimes less, sometimes more. It won’t let you sleep. It chews on your heart. You can’t turn to God because you know either he’s doing this to you on purpose or he couldn’t care less.

Tragedy is a child with leukemia. Tragedy is a mass on your lung. Tragedy is watching your best friend gasping for breath.  Above all, tragedy is a death out of order, before its time.

Sometimes tragedy turns around.. My mother lost her husband very young, but she found another man to love. And when he died, she found a third. She made lemonade out of lemons, and even so, she had old friends, friends who should have known better, who resented her happiness, which she had carved herself out of the tragic wreckage in which she could have chosen to wallow.

So maybe I ought to ask Mom how to stop getting morose when my Dodgers lose so convincingly to the Giants. I know what she’d say – “honey, don’t worry.  They’ll probably win tomorrow.”

She doesn’t know anything about baseball but she knows you can be sad one moment and happier the next. She knows sadness gets to live in the upper deck but tragedy has a box seat, From the boxes you get life. Everything is clear, sharp and pointed. You can’t avoid the obvious. But from up high, in the simply sad seats, you don’t hear the crack of the bat, you don’t see the players’ grimacing, you can’t smell the dirt and the chalk. The feeling comes, and then it’s gone. You’ve got a sense of something important being wrong, but you can get up any time and walk away.

I don’t want to imply that my sadness today at the ballpark carries any weight at all in a world of so much hurt, but by the fifth inning I was gone. I left my seat in the upper deck, where the little cable cars climb halfway to the stars, and started searching for the stairway. I couldn’t take it any more. My heart was heavy.

I paid $57 for that seat, and $10 for a Cha Cha Bowl and $9.75 for a small beer.  But I was ready to leave after the top of the first when Double Play Rivera hit into yet another critical rally killer. By the third inning, when the Giants pitcher threw two wild pitches in a row and on the second one they threw out my base runner out at home, I felt like it was me who had gotten tagged in the head. And when the Giants scored two runs in the bottom of the third I knew we were done for the day. When the only decent player on my team who hadn’t gotten hurt yet this season pulled up lame after a walk, I knew we were done for the year.

I spent ALL THAT MONEY and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. I AM NOTORIOUSLY CHEAP. THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

I love being at the ballpark. But the sadness of losing three in a row to the Giants is just too much for me. I have no proportion. If we win, I feel happy, but just moderately so, in proper measure. But if we lose, THREE in a row, and are SHUT OUT all three – it’s just too much for this little motorboat. I take on water. I could drown in a damp rag.

As I was hurrying down the stairs, one little blueberry bouncing past happy oranges, I heard a roar from back on the field – you can tell what has happened by the timbre of the crowd’s cheers as a runner flies around each base. One sharp, excited cheer, then two, louder than the first, then three, loudest…that was it. Sounded like a triple. I ran down the stairs and out the gate before God could balk in another Giant run.

I didn’t bother to get my hand stamped. I wasn’t coming back.

I ran to the bike park under the stands, tipped the kid a buck and got out of there as fast as my legs would pedal me.

But, c’mon, Dude. What about that beautiful, funky old black iron drawbridge? The Lefty O’Doul Bridge? I love the Lefty O’Doul Bridge. I really do. Why? Because it’s ugly, probably.

So I lazed there with Lefty, leaned against the railing and looked back. A Dodger fan is raised to think the Giants invented cancer and hemorrhoids. Their stadium will be plastic and their hot dogs boiled.

It’s all crap. The flags, the crowd in orange and black, the boats in McCovey Cove, the skyline and the bridge, the puffy white clouds full of runs for the home team and hailstones for the visitors – is there a more beautiful place in the world to watch a baseball game? I don’t think so.

OK, I’m sad but I’ll get over it. It’s pretty slick to live in a city that knows how to build bike lanes.

There's a homeless camp under the 280 and it’s between me and home. I have to ride through it to avoid the huge mess on Cesar Chavez. Jesus God, it smells worse than any garbage dump I have ever imagined. These poor bastards are living lives worse than rats. I've never seen anything like it, or smelled anything like it, not in this country anyway, and this boy has been around the block a few times.

Now, that’s tragic.

And all those yachts in the cove. And Larry Ellison buys Lanai. And the blimp.

I’m already feeling better.

So the first thing I do, riding home on my bicycle, with that blimp overhead, is raise my fist and shout "Kiss my ass, blimp!”