The Game
My love of baseball came to me completely unexpectedly and lives at the beautiful intersection of prediction and possibility.
ADVENTURE ART CLUB | DAY 3 | 9.3
PADDLEHEADS HOME GAME
OGREN PARK AT ALLEGIANCE FIELD
MISSOULA, MT
Once before, I loathed the sport, finding it too boring to be watchable. Then, one day, I looked up and barely recognized myself! There I am…. quoting stats, watching replays, talking at length about how my favorite team’s “season is going”, and debating whether or not we “have a chance at the playoffs”. Who have I become?!? I think. …I love her.
I love that I can still surprise myself throughout the years, even when I think I know myself completely. Loving baseball has taught me never to say never and to remain open to redefining who I think I am at any given moment.
This evening, I find myself at a local “Paddleheads” baseball game, the last home game of this Missoula team’s minor league season. My confession: I’ve missed every game prior. I have not tracked, in any way, how the team is doing. But, there is something about a ballpark on a Summer evening that is completely unmatched. Joy is worn openly on all the visitors' faces as they cheer, relax, or devour some park food. Kids can run and yell here. Dogs are often welcome. There’s an eagerness to everyone, and a persistent sense of….”anything could happen”....and it could! In the face of all hard work and preparation, perfect planning and strategy, strange and wondrous occurrences happen in baseball every day. Miracle plays and odd events that defy all statistics. Often, here, “never before seen” flaunts its confidence in the face of long stretches of perfectly predictable game play. Don’t you just want to be there to see it?
This particular ballpark is set on the banks of the Clark Fork River, gloriously glowing at the base of the golden mountains above us. An osprey nest stands at one corner, and, if you’re lucky, an osprey will glide gracefully over the field as the sun begins to set. In fact, this team of Paddleheads (a slang term for a moose, apparently, though, I’ve never heard anyone say that word in all my years…) used to be called the Ospreys, after these piercingly graceful birds.
We have several ospreys who nest in Missoula, and you can often find them gliding over the waterways, hunting slowly. I have yet to see one catch a fish, but it’s a lifelong dream of mine to witness this. When they make their move, they tuck their wings and dive at full speed headfirst into the water, talons piercing, before rising back up to the skies with their prey often still fighting for escape. I’ve seen them fly and dive but never this moment of drama. I think the team should still carry the name of these powerful raptors, but I guess that’s neither here nor there.
Despite this naming disagreement, I support our team, made up (like most teams) of players from far-flung places around the world. As the sun sets on this day, I’m standing at a fence railing overlooking the grassy field and red clay dust, sipping a citrusy IPA I’ve never tried, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with my husband in the cool evening air. He introduced me to baseball, having played before, but it’s safe to say, at this point, my obsession has overtaken his.
This season, I’ve watched both our favorite team, the SF Giants, serve me utter heartbreak and the SF Firebells make history, leading the league in the inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL). 70 years in the making, and a long time coming, watching women play this sport I love at the highest level like this has filled a hole in my heart I didn’t even know was there. That’s what representation can do for people.
Tonight, we watch the Paddleheads win the game and clinch their spot in the playoffs. Hurray!
At this point…and probably well prior, you may be wondering….what does this outing to the ballpark have to do with “Adventure Art Club”?? More than you think.
We often think of “adventure” as something inaccessible in daily life. We say it is something to be found in the wild unexplored places of the world. There’s a myth around this word - adventure - that makes it into something grand and mythic. We think we have to find it at the top of a mountain after a torturous climb, in whitewater rapids that scare us, or in the process of overcoming some feeling of fear. To me, adventure is a feeling. It’s a sense of openness to the “new” around us. It’s an embrace of the wild beauty of varied experience.
I feel adventure when I try something new. I feel it when I go somewhere I’ve never been. I feel it with companions when a thought crosses my mind - we’re doing this! I find adventure in the delicious feeling of savoring the first lick of a favorite ice cream flavor. I feel it when someone reaches out a hand and says “let’s dance!” I feel it when my heart beats faster. I feel it when I come across a musician playing well some beautiful song I’ve never heard before.
Adventure finds me when exploring. It takes my hand when I step off the trail and take off running. It finds me when I’m scrambling over trees that have fallen. It finds me when I ask “what’s around that corner?” It finds me when I stop to say “this has been here all along?!” It finds me when I fling myself into cold clear water in the mountains.
Adventure softens by a campfire, in the flames that set our timber hearts aglow. It’s in the spark of flame that drifts up on a breeze and towards the stars - here for a moment, then extinguished.
Adventure is surprise, delight, discovery, and wonder.
Adventure…
Is everywhere.
Maybe adventure is perspective.
On this night, adventure finds me watching baseballs fly at 90 miles an hour into a net that stretches mere feet before me. It finds me in the first sweet taste of something I have never tried before. Adventure is the question of “I wonder who will win?” and in the observation of all these varied people joined together in a moment of enjoyment. Adventure doesn’t cost us anything but a willingness to let it in.
As I sketch a little scene here, a fellow spectator in a goofy, moose hat cheering on her team’s batter on a 3-2 count in the eighth inning, I laugh a little to myself. Adventure Art Club brought me to a black bear, a heron on the water, and now, a moose in the ballpark.
Onward to the next discovery!
Love & Gratitude,
- Christina
