The 6:25 AM News
It shouldn't be difficult for a man in his eighth decade to fall asleep after HIS baseball team loses another game and makes even mediocrity appear an impossible goal.
This planet has suffered more than its share of fire and rain since I landed in its midst. As I arise today there are issues of such gravity that they threaten to pull us all into the abyss. So why do I still insist on reacting to defeat by others playing a game with nearly the same intensity as I did when I was trying to learn to sound out words and figure out the correct response to two plus two?
The Yankee lineup is now replete with empty uniforms, people pretending to wear pinstripes but who are either once was-ers or never will-bes. What self respecting person would not feel a sharp discomfort in the soul after a two run last inning lead evaporates faster than a drop of rain on the floor of Death Valley?
When I was five or so, I would fall asleep listening to the Yankee radio broadcast. Waking up in the morning, the TV news would report the sports results at 6:25 AM. If the Bombers won, I would continue to turn the news back on until I went to school, just to hear the score on endless loop. If they lost, one and done.
Now, my eyes close before most games have ended. When I wake in the middle of the night for my first trip to the bathroom, my immediate move is to check my phone for the final score. With victory, I devour every detail. And I will repeat the process before each of the subsequent journeys which remind me that my prostate and I are barely on speaking terms these days. But should I learn of bad news, then, as if six plus decades had been condensed into six seconds, it is still but one painful rip of the band-aid .
Each year brings new hope, not merely for the team, but that I will have grown to the point where I have gained reasonable perspective on the relative importance of a sporting event, calculated on a scale of one to lying in the fetal position, disconsolate.
But I am forever doomed by the limits of my brain to my childlike version of Groundhog Day.
Still with my ear plastered to the radio as I head to sleep. Forever awaking to the 6:25 AM news.