The Falls That Lift (One Sixty-Two: Day 145)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Forty-Five: Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati Reds

There are days when the stress feels like it will swallow me whole. I go for a run, or duck out to the gym, and try to breathe deep and let it all subside. But September 2010 is not an easy time for us in some ways. Like so many American families right now, we have seen better days in the way of finances. And it’s hard sometimes to know just when it will get better.

You feel a bit like one of those white-knuckle closers, who are forever filling the bases with runners before somehow wiggling out of it. Francisco Cordero of the Cincinnati Reds has 35 saves in 43 chances, but he also walks nearly as many batters as he strikes out, and he puts an average of 1½ men on base per inning. Rarely does a Cordero outing run smoothly. Reds fans can feel the stress almost as soon as the big right-hander begins pitching.

So in these Cordero-like days at Hynes Central, I’ve got to figure out just how much anxiety I want myself to feel on a day-to-day basis. I can worry all day long if I want – there is no law against that. But it doesn’t seem like a smart idea. And I can’t imagine how it would help me, my wife, or my girls.

So, as always, I search for perspective. This weekend, I found it in a place I never knew I’d be. It took a winding highway, a dirt road, a trail and dozens of steep steps to find it. But my, was it worth the trip.

Tannery Falls is located in a part of the Berkshires called Savoy Mountain State Forest. It’s not a place that you’ll find in most New England guidebooks. But my wife found it nonetheless. In an overnight trip that we took to this area over the weekend, we decided to check it out.

After winding our way along the Mohawk Trail that also goes by the name of Route 2, we turned onto an unmarked road outside Florida, Mass. From there, we drove up into the mountains for several miles before turning onto a dirt road. After nearly a mile of gentle driving over the many rocks on this road, we found a parking lot. The trail started from the lot, and as we followed the blue arrows we found ourselves walking alongside a brook. Soon enough, though, the trail took us down many steps. When we reached the bottom, we looked up and saw before us a pristine waterfall in the midst of the Massachusetts woods.

From 80 feet above us, the water of Tannery Falls cascaded down some 35 feet into a tiny pool, then rolled down the rest of the way via a rocky chute. The white water bobbed and weaved all the way into the shallow pool that lay before us. While only one other family was at the falls when we arrived, numerous others had been there before, and they’d left their mark by taking flat stones off the ground and making small sculptures around the edge of the pool with these rocks. Amy added one as well, and we stood together and watched the water drop down to our feet. The tiny pieces of rock art served as a human thank-you gift of sorts to the falls themselves.

This wasn’t the largest waterfall in the world, nor was it the largest one I’d ever seen. But as Amy and I looked at it, took pictures of it, and listened to it, we weren’t feeling any emotion that you could confuse with stress. This was about as beautiful as life gets – a husband and wife, walking hand in hand through the woods far away from the challenges and triumphs of life, taking some time to enjoy nature at its best.

Tannery Falls. That’s my new catch-phrase. Whenever the stress seems like it’s cascading down on me with the force of a Francisco Cordero wild pitch, I will say those words and think of that glorious display of falling water. Because if this world can contain something that beautiful, and if I can savor its majesty in the same spot where Native Americans watched it 300 years ago, then I think I also can endure a few bumps in the road of life. There is no stress worth worrying about when I can choose instead to breathe deep and visualize the white water and the gifts of stone, all while feeling the warm pulse of my wife’s hand in mine.

Friends and Enemies

When I lived in Massachusetts, I used to go out for jogs wearing my Yankees cap backwards. That way, by the time the Red Sox fans noticed what I was wearing, I’d have passed them by already. We lived on the North Shore of Boston from 1999-2004, during the heart of the modern-day Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. My jogs through Salem and Marblehead may have shielded me from the Boston baseball fans, but other social interactions brought me face to face with the Fenway faithful.

Red Sox fans are not the type to hide their passions. By the turn of the century, Red Sox fans my age had spent their lives rooting desperately for men like Carl Yastrzemski, Dwight Evans, Mike Greenwell, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Mo Vaughn and Nomar Garciaparra. They had watched these men perform majestically, only to fall just short at the finish line or in the playoffs. And when a flamethrower named Pedro Martinez arrived in Boston with a glimmer in his eye and a championship in his sights, these fans began filling Fenway Park every day and night, no matter the month or the weather. They began, in some small way, to believe.

They were rooting for and believing in my least favorite team in baseball, and I watched their passion with no small measure of dread. I, like so many Yankees fans, had reveled in the fact that New York had won 26 titles since acquiring Babe Ruth from the Red Sox in 1920. I had come to see Boston’s annual autumn fade as a seasonal rite of passage, and as validation that I was on the right side of the greatest rivalry in sports.

But then I got to know large numbers of Red Sox fans. I worked alongside them in public schools, I worshiped beside them in the pews of my church, and I shopped alongside them in supermarkets and shopping malls. And as I met these people and talked with them, I found myself making genuine friendships with people who wore that Old English “B” on their heads. I found myself going out to eat with them, inviting them over my house, and even going on weekend vacations with them. And while we engaged in some trash-talking when it came to baseball, the rest of our time together was spent talking about other things – the kids we taught in school, or the kids we raised at home, or the world events around us.

It is late September in 2008, and the landscape of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry has changed dramatically since I moved back to the New York area in July of ’04. Three months after we moved, the Red Sox pulled off the greatest comeback in baseball history to defeat the Yankees for the league pennant, then went on to win their first title in 86 years. Three years later, Boston won the World Series again. This year, they’re on their way to yet another postseason. The Yankees and their vast history of success are taking a year off from postseason play in ’08, and they haven’t claimed a title in eight years.

I still keep in touch with several of my Red Sox-rooting friends. When we talk, I wish them the best and tell them their team is great. At 37, I have come to a place in life where my emotions are not guided by the successes and failures of baseball teams. I have reached a point where I can watch the Red Sox win a championship, and instead of feeling bitterness I can think with affection of the friends I know who are filled with joy at that moment.

I would still prefer that the Yankees be the ones winning, and I’ll still root for the other 28 teams over Boston any day. I still like to pick certain Red Sox players and envision them as evil incarnate (my current choice: Kevin Youkilis). But that’s just for fun. The Sox are a baseball team, and I don’t even know the players personally. The friends I have, however, are true and genuine. I know that. And I think there’s something pretty cool about them feeling some thrills when their favorite team wins.

So on we go, into another October. I’ll read about the Yankees’ plans for off-season moves. And, if the cheers from New England reach my ears, I’ll fire off another congratulatory e-mail to some delirious friends in red and blue.