#i cried too hard and i think i broke my cursor while writing this

[2oolander]

mini-essay because i just watched moneyball and the mighty rio grande is like blasting in my headphones rn. please keep in mind i am sobbing my fucking eyes out and this gonna be extremely incoherent and disconnected when i reread it in the morning.

it's hard not to be romantic about baseball. it's a metaphor, of , but it's one that makes sense. baseball is a labor of love. your pour your heart into this group of people you don't know, and you ride the ups and downs together. this is true of any sport, of course, but i think the reason that you see so much love and passion go into baseball is because it's really something special.

in the context of moneyball (a movie that i wasn't expecting would rip my heart out and tear it into a million tiny pieces), every little thing is important. all of these guys, none of whom were loved by major league baseball, hung onto it for dear life because that;s what it meant to them. billy would've left the mlb altogether if he didn't love it as much as he did. all of the players on the 2002 oakland a's loved the game of baseball so much that they had something keeping them in it. they're not getting anything out of it except the validation that they are worth it. peter mentions this towards the end of the movie when talking about the potential contract billy has with the red sox. he says that the money means what it means to any big league player- that they're worth it. at the end of the day, all of these people just want their love to be worth something. don't we all.

there's another thing that i think ties into this, and it's the song that billy's daughter records for him. like, specifically the version that's at the end of the movie. she's telling him, just enjoy the show. enjoy what is happening in front of you right now, without worrying about what it's going to mean for you later. love the game. live in the moment.

and of course, that's true for a lot of things, but in the realm of baseball, just love it now. don't think of what could happen while you don't have to. the chicago white sox are perhaps the shittiest team in baseball right now, but if there are fireworks at comiskey the fans are happy. the colorado rockies suck, but if kris bryant ever makes it off the injured list the fans will have a fucking field day. the cubs might not see another world series for another 108 years, but what matters is that they're pretty damn good right now. and i think that's pretty beautiful.