Corona Chronicles (Vol1. Issue 13)

I typically write one post on a weekend day.  I don't really care for which day it is, Saturday or Sunday, it usually sums up how I've felt the whole weekend or what my plans were. 

Today's entry was inspired by my dry erase calendar and the 1995 ALDS Game 1: Indians vs. Red Sox. It's an entry that I had been thinking about writing for a few days because I really freaking miss my dry erase markers.  I think about them every day and it is starting to feel very unhealthy the amount of time I think about wanting them from school. I might miss them more than I miss my students (in the entry I put for the kids, I told them I missed them more).  I had just bought them and they wrote so nice.  All the ones I have at my house are cheap and old and I hate them.  But I didn't feel comfortable just writing about the dry erase markers so I felt it was time to express my feelings on how much I miss baseball.  Because a week after what would have been opening day, I am still feeling as if I live in a different world or that it's not really April.

I've also added more about my "anger" in the post I'm leaving on here because I am trying not to let my ill-feelings infiltrate the positivity I'm trying to inspire in the students.  

So read on.  This one I definitely edited for adult reading. 

Saturday, April 4, 2020:

    I miss a lot of things.  

   Things I miss from our classroom include you all, my desk, my candy (yes, I had candy in my room when we left), and my expo markers.  Mostly I miss you and my dry erase markers. Of course I miss seeing all of you and hearing your voices and how you all make my days bright.  But I really miss my dry erase markers (don’t get me wrong, I miss you guys more… especially since markers are replaceable). I had just bought them so they were new and perfect and they wrote so nice on the board. I’ve considered buying a new pack for my house so I can use good dry erase markers on my dry erase calendar.  The ones I have at my house are awful. Writing on my calendar right now is just not as satisfying because I am not finding joy in the markers.  It might sound weird, but the markers really make the calendar.  The way a marker writes is important and the ones I have are really just crap.  I even left my thin tipped expo markers at school and I would just settle for those to be honest at this point. 

   But the thing I miss the most right now: Baseball.  The fact that I love the Indians is usually my fun fact when I meet someone new.  When I started graduate school in 2018, I told all the other people in my program: “Last season (2017), I probably only missed about 25 - 30 games the whole season.  And that was only because I was camping.” There’s 162 baseball games in the regular season. And then if a team is lucky enough, you can add up to 26 additional games in the postseason.  March 26 should have been the home opener in Cleveland. It was the first day of the baseball season. Half the teams would play Thursday, the other half would play on Friday. I miss baseball.  While I like football and I enjoy watching Golf more than most people, baseball is what I live for. I have a fantasy team. I pay attention to the stats of most teams to track the likelihood of someone making or not making the playoffs.  My calendar is linked to the Cleveland Indian’s calendar - a calendar that tells me we should be playing a game every day. It is very strange for me to turn on the TV at 7 pm and not have a game on right now. It feels like a different life. 

   The 1995 ALDS Game 1 was playing on STO tonight and as much as I loved watching a game from Indians' past, it still hurt my heart.  In the bottom of the sixth, the Indians scored three runs.  This is due to the gaps in the field from poor Red Sox judgement. But Jacob's Field roared with excitement and all I could think about was Game 4 of the 2016 World Series.  I will never forget this moment because it fills my body with joy and just magic.  Jason Kipnis was at bat at Wrigley.  I was sitting on the ground at Progressive Field. The Indians were losing (I should know the score but honestly the score didn't matter to my memory, the feeling did).  Jason Kipnis hit a beautiful home run which would lead to the Indians winning.  The second his bat cracked the baseball the entirety of Progressive Field was on its' feet and the energy was nothing I have ever felt before.  All of Cleveland was excited.  It felt like we were all just one giant person in that stadium because the air was vibrating.  When I got in the Lyft after the game to go home, I remember texting my dad "we could win it all tomorrow.  one more game and we could win the world series."  This is the feeling in baseball I live for.  Any time there's a home run hit and I'm standing in The District, the energy of the stadium just fills me with a feeling that is indescribable in a good way. 

   We didn't win the World Series. I watched three more games and after the rain delay of Game 7, the tie was broken and the Chicago Cubs became the 2016 World Champions.  I was standing in my living when I watched the last out happen of that game. I felt my heart drop.  My body went numb and I had to try my hardest not to cry, but I still cried.  My dad looked at me and said "I'm sorry" the same way you look at someone when you're about to tell them someone died. Then he hugged me and I went to my room and fielded a bunch of texts from friends who knew I would not be okay. I never wrote about this moment on JDKC after it happened because it felt too raw for so long.  It hurt for so long.  Hell, it still hurts to think about.  That was one of the hardest things for me to experience.  I put my heart and soul into baseball every year wishing we would make it to the World Series and we had done with against so many odds.  We should have won.  Mistakes were made.  I can go back and say "this decision should have been made" and "this pitcher should have been in the game instead of this one" knowing that we would have won. It's a feeling of emptiness.

    Today, ESPN posted President Trump talked to 12 sports commissioners and hopes to have fans back in stadiums by August and September. Part of me hopes that’s a lie because right now I feel that if I can’t have a baseball season and I can’t watch Golf on Sundays while I cross-stitch, the rest of the sports world should have to miss out on football.  I know that’s not a fair thought, and I absolutely hope that this somehow is over sooner rather than later, but I think I get to feel a little angry sometimes. I don't want this to go into the next school year.  I don't want this to go into the summer.  But I want other sports fans to feel the way that I feel if this continues.  Because the reality that baseball might not be happening this year is setting in and the feeling is comparable to that World Series loss.  But this is going to last a lot longer.  There won't be an All-Star game or any Wild Card games.  There won't be a World Series. And I will have to wait until next March for another Opening Day.  Life might be good and I know I have a lot of things right now, but I feel empty without baseball.  I am angry that this is happening and that all the good things in my life were taken away (see previous posts because there have been a lot). I did all my waiting int he off season.  I miss baseball in a way that I didn't think I could miss baseball.  Watching old games is great, but it just makes the feeling of sadness grow. 

    So today I thought about the things I miss a lot.  And I miss you. I miss my dry erase markers. And I miss baseball.

​Originally I didn't have anything about the 1995 ALDS game in the entry I wrote for my kids, but I went back and added that because it felt important.  And very light and cheerful.  I did not write about the World Series for them or most of the second half of the last paragraph.  But for me, it's important to be honest on my own website.

I said in the post that I have never written about the World Series on here.  And that's true.  I was never able to find the words to coherently express my feelings.  But it felt like a good metaphor for my feelings today. It's probably not even a metaphor... Is it a juxtaposition?  Honestly I have no idea. But it fit here. The tenth inning of Game 7 is still so burned into my memory that if I sit on my couch and think about it long enough I can feel that moment.  I can remember clearly in the sixth (or seventh?) inning when Rajai Davis hit his home run and I had already given up on the game a little bit.  I jumped off the couch.  I knelt in front of the TV.  I was in complete awe.  But the end of the game broke me.  I paced the living room waiting for the rain delay to end and continued checking the radar and looking out the front door.  It was an unusually warm November night. But we lost. The Cubs recovered and scored a run and we couldn't make a comeback.  So yes, right now that's what my life feels like without baseball.  

​So for something that was meant to only be about dry-erase markers, I really felt the need to add in all my feelings about my favorite being delayed. 

I would say "Until the next baseball game" to sign off, but we all know I'm continuing this series until I have to go back to school. So until Monday, 

xo, jax