The Thread

More than a month ago, a friend of mine posted a question on Facebook about the NCAA. It caught my attention for a couple of reasons. First, I've come see how much of the NCAA is built on the myth of the "Student Athlete" and how much we (myself included) take what the organization says as the truth when in reality they are perpetuating their own myths to sustain their current model. Secondly, the person who posted this isn't what you'd call a huge sports fan, at least when it comes to his social media presence so I was surprised to see such a question from him.

Now normally, I'm not one to engage in debates on Facebook. It's not that I don't have opinions (sometimes even strong ones) on things. It's that I don't know how much, if any, the debates will have on changing anyone's mind. I also worry that I don't know enough about a certain topic to be able to say definitively things are one way or another and by the time I'm able to research a given topic to get a better understanding of it the topic has disappeared from my Facebook feed.

But for whatever reason, I figured I had a pretty good handle on the NCAA's myths and had the time to discuss the topic, so I jumped it. It was a fun discussion and I was able to pull from several things I'd read on the subject to counter a lot of the misinformation being presented. I didn't really think any more of it after a few hours, but as the day went on, the thread kept going. Unlike a lot of internet discussions, this one never descended into being mean spirited despite the disagreements that developed over the topic.

One tangent led to another, and another, and after a few days, the original topic was all but forgotten. It meandered from one thing to another, seeming to eventually settle into a comic book/Sci-Fi/Pop Culture discussion as many of the participants would likely self-identify as "geeks." But the cool part about it is the thread just kept going. Hour after hour, day after day, the same people kept coming back. It was, in a sense, like the TV show Cheers where it just became the place to gather and talk about whatever was going on. New friendships were formed. I learned new things about old friends.

A few days ago, it hit 10,000 comments. A PDF of the thread would be more than 500 pages. I have no idea how long the thread will keep going, but it's been a fun month getting to meet new people and discuss anything and everything, even if a lot of it things I don't understand. (I may be the only participant who not only hasn't seen the new Avengers movie, but the only one who wasn't super excited about it coming out. For some reason, they still let me hang out there.)

Numbness finally wearing off

If it was one season it would have been frustrating.

If it was two seasons it would have been discouraging.

Three seasons just became depressing.

After that, I'd kind of grown numb to it.

It, in this case, was losing. For the past five years, the Cubs have done a lot of it. Like a lot lot. You know how when you're in those early teen years and you tell your friends you like a girl and they ask if you just like her, or if you "like her" like her. Losing was like that for the Cubs. They didn't just lose a lot, they lost a lot lot.

From 2010 to 2014, they lost a minimum of 87 games and never won more than 75. And yet I watched. Year after year. I'd subscribe to the Major League Baseball package online and despite the fact I could watch pretty much any game being played, I'd watch the Cubs. Granted, by mid-August I'd turn my attention to the playoff races and starting watching fewer and fewer Cubs games, but I watched a lot of losing baseball.

By 2013, I'd grown numb to the losing. I still enjoyed watching baseball, but I can't say there was a lot of joy in watching the Cubs. Fortunately, their broadcasts are among the smartest in baseball, so even though the team was losing, they were having discussions about the game to make me a smarter fan. There were times I'd turn on the game almost out of obligation of being a fan, like it was something I was supposed to do rather than what I wanted to do.
 
To be fair,  I had low expectations. I knew the teams weren't going to contend. In the early stretch of losing, the team was getting old and had overpriced veterans that were tough to trade for prospects. A new regime was hired in 2012 after the team lost 101 games, but they preached patience as they sought to overhaul the team. And overhaul they did. Pretty much anyone who had any value who could be traded was. The team did get better in 2013, "only" losing 96 games.

My wife all but gave up on the Cubs. She'd ask every now and again how the game went, but the losing really zapped her interest. We got married in 2003, which you may remember as the year the Cubs came within five outs of reaching their first World Series since 1945. You may not remember that, but if you're even a moderate sports fan, you know that as the Steve Bartman year. (No, it wasn't his fault.) My enthusiasm for the team got her excited. The next year the Cubs went back to the playoffs and she became a fan. But by the time the losing started, we'd had a kid and she'd moved up the ladder at her job and had more responsibilities. Watching a losing team wasn't really a priority for her and as you noticed above, it'd almost become a chore for me. Life's short and there's only so much time you can spend watching a losing team before you just start tuning it in as background noise for your summer.

But here's the thing about all that losing. There was a method to it. Instead of losing with higher priced veterans, the Cubs were busy signing players to short-term contracts and then trading them to teams contending. The losing also meant higher draft picks. Coming in to the season, the Cubs had the top collection of prospects in all of baseball. They will likely all not reach their potential, but what they represented was something Cubs fans haven't had in a while - hope.

You could dream on the prospects. They are young, talented, and all coming up to the team around the same time. Not only was there hope for the future, there was excitement. The first couple of them came up to the team during the second half of the 2014 season. Now, instead of watching winning teams battling for the playoffs, I was watching the Cubs on their way to an 89 loss season.

Hopes were high for the Cubs going in to this year, and so far they haven't disappointed. They had their first winning April since my son was born (he's six now). But for me, the excitement is back. I look forward to watching the games. It's obvious to say winning is fun, but it's even better to have any kind of feelings again watching my team.

More than anything, it's fun to get frustrated again when a guy grounds in to a double play or doesn't field a grounder cleanly. It's fun because there's an emotion attached to the game that I haven't felt in a long time. I'd honestly forgotten how much fun baseball can be when you're team's winning. Instead of tuning in to a game expecting to lose, I watch now with an expectation of winning. The team has an offense that is fun to watch. They hit well, get on base and play aggressively. Up and down the lineup the Cubs have hitters, not just guys filling out a roster. It's exciting.

As I was writing this, I was watching the Royals and Tigers play (the Cubs already played today, yes, I watched at work) and was exchanging tweets with a Royals fan I'd met on the site. They Royals had a more tortured recent history than the Cubs, but had an improbable run to the World Series last year that has rejuvenated the fan base. During the game, the Royals were up 4-1 but the Tigers had the bases loaded and Miguel Cabrerra, one of the game's best hitters, at the plate in the late innigs. This friend tweeted "A plate appearance on May 1st is taking months off my life." I replied "Nice feeling, isn't it."

His response, "This is awesome."

It is awesome to feel something again. It's even better to wake up looking forward to baseball.

On Death and Community

 

Today was not a good day. Five nursing students from Georgia Southern University (my alma mater) were killed this morning in a traffic crash early this morning commuting approximately an hour away to Savannah, Ga. I didn't know any of them and I'm not sure I know anyone who knew any of them. Yet I'm saddened for the loss of the lives of five students who were studying so they could have a career helping the sick.

So I'm saddened by the loss of life from these students who woke up this morning thinking they had many years ahead of them. I'm more saddened than I would have otherwise been had they been four students from another university or if they were four young people who weren't attending college but instead going to work.

 As best as I can figure, the only reason this crash and these students have me feeling more grief than I otherwise might is the tenuous connection we shared. I was never in school at the same time these students were. At best, we may have been in the same football stadium a time or two watching the Eagles play, but I wouldn't have known them and they wouldn't have know me.

What doe that say about me? Am I so jaded that I only care about a tragedy when it tangentially affects me? Why don't I care as much for the others who tragically lost their life today?

My best guess is that we're wired to feel connection. Take 10 people and split them into a green team and a yellow team and people on the same team will feel a connection to each other even if they didn't know each other beforehand and the teams were chosen at random. This connection to a team probably helped our ancestors as they worked together to try to form societies that worked for the protection and health of the group. Outsiders represented a threat to their survival as they competed for scarce resources, so a sense of connection and belonging ultimately worked to ensure their tribe continued.

But I don't live in a time where outsiders need to be viewed as a threat. As a middle-class American in the 21st century, I have an abundance of resources (more than my fair share). Yet the centuries and centuries of feeling a connection to my group still exists as an innate part of the human experience.

I'm certainly not trying to diminish this feeling and say, either implicitly or explicitly, that the grief so many of my friends feel from this tragedy is unwarranted. That's not the case at all. It's reasonable and natural to feel grief over the loss of people from your group. And clearly losing a close friend or family member is different some losing someone who went to the same school you did more than a decade after I graduated. Instead, I'm hoping I can start feeling more empathy for people who didn't also attend the same college or cheer for the same team or even just share my name. Just because they were not a part of any group I identified with doesn't make their life any less important and their trials and tragedies any less meaningful.
 
*I've seen some unconfirmed reports that a sixth student died, but haven't seen anything official to that effect. My apologies if got the number incorrect.

An open letter to Braves fans

Dear Braves fans,

First off, let's get this out of the way. I fully recognize the absurdity of a Cubs fan offering advice to you, a fan of one of the most consistently excellent teams of the past 20+ years. From 1991 to 2014, the Braves had three losing records, won a World Series and won, by my unofficial count, 48 division titles in a row over that time. The Cubs, meanwhile, have had only eight winning seasons over that time, winning one playoff series and finishing an average of eight games under .500 over that time. The Braves won more than 100 games six times during that span while the Cubs best year was a 97 win team that was swept in the first round of the playoffs.

So you know all about winning and have been a model franchise. I know all about below average teams and hope. And that's where my experience following and loving a losing team comes in. You see, when the Braves traded Justin Upton, Evan Gattis, Jason Hayward and Craig Kimbrell before the season, they pretty much were telling everyone they were in a rebuilding mode.

Rebuilding, for you Braves fans who are unfamiliar with the concept, is when teams trade away players on their current team for younger, cheaper players who they hope will develop into the stars of the future. Allow me to provide an example from my team. Last year in July, the Cubs traded All-Star pitcher Jeff Samardzija to the Oakland Athletics for a minor league shortstop named Addison Russell. This made the Cubs worse in the short term. However, the front office of the Cubs already knew the 2014 team wasn't going to contend for a title and keeping a star pitcher who could be a free agent soon wouldn't help the Cubs in the long run, so they were able to acquire Russell who is, according to most experts, one of the top five prospects in all of minor league baseball. When the Cubs are ready to contend (hopefully next year), the Cubs are hoping Russell can be a part of that team.

What this means, and as you've seen, is that players you like are likely to be traded away for some player who will hopefully help in the future. The Cubs made a habit of signing guys in the offseason, getting a good first half out of them, and then trading them for prospects. I was a fan of Ryan Dempster. He got traded. I was a fan of Matt Garza. He got traded. I liked watching Samardzija pitch. He got traded. My son was a fan of Alfonso Soriano. He got traded. It happened often.

But I didn't get upset. Even as the losses mounted (and they did, losing 89 or more games each of the last four years), I didn't mind. Because I knew there was a plan. Not only was there a plan, I could see the plan coming together. While the major league team was losing, there were players in the minor leagues who were catching the eyes of talent evaluators. Coming in to this offseason, the Cubs had the top ranked minor league system in baseball. Some projections had them with four of the top 21 prospects.

You see, one of the benefits of losing is you get a higher draft pick. And higher draft picks mean a greater likelihood of being able to draft the next star player. And while every prospect isn't going to pan out, I'll take my chances betting on superior young talent than older players who comprise a team that won't contend. (Braves fans may remember Andy Marte who was in the Braves system before being traded away. He was a can't miss prospect who missed.)

While we can't predict the future, baseball has come a long way with their projection methods and usually have a pretty good idea where teams will finish. There's a lot of math that, frankly, I just don't understand, that goes in to these projections, but essentially they look at how many runs a team will score, how many their pitchers are projected to give up, run a quick calculation and come up with a projected record. While it's not exact and anything can happen, based on their talent level, the Braves are projected to finish 75-87 this year, ahead of only the Diamondbacks and Phillies in the National League.

On the bright side, you have at least recognized the need to rebuild. Philadelphia is still clinging to some misguided hope of returning to what they had when they won five straight division titles.

So here's my advice. Watch the team, but don't get too upset when they lose. They're going to lose more than they win. And come July, if there's an older player or two that doesn't fit in the teams plans for two or three years from now, don't be surprised when they get traded. In fact, you should hope for this. Again, it won't help your team this year, but teams aren't always about this year. Hope for trades, and then find out about the prospects you get back in return. Get excited about them.

Also, find a player on this current team likely not to get traded and enjoy watching him play. I might suggest Andrelton Simmons. He may be the best defensive shortstop ever to play in the major leagues. Don't take for granted the beauty and grace with which he plays the position. Marvel at his brilliance, even if it doesn't always translate in to wins. I wasn't lucky enough to have someone like Simmons to watch. I found myself enjoying players like Luis Valbuena (since traded, of course) or getting excited about Chris Coghlan having a breakout year four years after winning Rookie of the Year. Neither of them are as exciting to watch as Simmons.

Finally, know it's going to be a long year. But baseball is like pizza. Even bad baseball is still baseball, just like even bad pizza is still pretty good. You get to watch your team play for 153 more times this year. Enjoy watching and find the little things to enjoy as you grow numb to the losing.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to learn the phrase "wait 'til next year."

Sincerely,

Your friendly Cubs fan

Facebook Drama

It apparently started with a Facebook comment.

Well, that's not entirely true. It started when Mark Zuckerburg began Facebook, but we're going to skip ahead to this morning when the actual important part of our story takes place.

One of my high school friends posted something on Facebook. Another friend posted a comment that disagreed with the sentiment of the original poster. One thing led to another and Friend A blocked and unfriended Friend B.

Both of them then proceed to post their interpretations of what happened and explained their point of view on the matter. I, meanwhile I, being the person I am, did my best not to make snarky comments to both of them because as fun as it would have been, it probably wouldn't have been appreciated at the time the way you and I would have taken it.

But here are the larger points.

1. I'm not a very good writer because if I was, I wouldn't have to explicitly say what the larger points are.

2. The idea of closing off your worldview to people you disagree with, even strongly disagree with, seems to lead to a less fulfilling life. I'm not suggesting you have to surround yourself with racists (unless you're wanting to join an Oklahoma University frat - ok, that was a cheap shot, but I had to be snarky somewhere, right?). In fact, you're probably better off not associating with racists on a regular basis. But refusing to even listen to someone else's point of view makes it highly unlikely they would then be receptive to hearing your point of view. If you want a racist to stop being racist, cutting them off so they only interact with other racist people seems like a bad long term plan. If you only surround yourself with like-minded people, don't be shocked when someone outside your circle thinks differently than you.

If you want someone to listen to and consider your perspective on things, be it advanced stats in baseball or the role of the federal government to the best ice cream toppings, you have to be willing to have your mind changed as well. It's a risk. It means your world view that you've spent years with and developing could be wrong. It takes a lot of psychological energy and effort to change how you see the world. But if you refuse to be open to that, don't be shocked to find out other people don't want to listen to you.

3. If you're not willing to have a discussion about a topic, probably don't post it on social media. As its name implies, social media has a social aspect to it. When this post gets posted on social media and someone disagrees with me, I'll be happy to talk about it (and equally happy someone actually read it.) In fact, it's possible we could not come to an agreement about things. But so long as you're respectful, I'm ok agreeing to disagree. It won't be the first time and it hopefully won't be the last. But posting something and then refusing to engage with people who have differing viewpoints means you're looking for an echo chamber more than you are looking for social media.

4. This is more a personal opinion after reading the comments under both posts - NEVER READ THE COMMENTS - but joking about driving over state lines to commit violent acts against someone you disagree with seems in poor taste.