Perspective is an important thing, which can be difficult to remember when dealing with sports. Especially in these days of endless news cycles, instant gratification, and hot takes delivered in 240 characters or less, perspective is easily forgotten. At best, it’s easily forgotten; at worst, you will be openly mocked for having it. Baseball, of all sports, should have some built-in immunity, with it’s long seasons and unavoidable ebbs and flows, but even this most pastoral of games is infected with the need to assign grand meaning to each and every game. It shouldn’t be that way. Great teams lose three or four times in every ten game stretch. Great hitters make outs 65-70% of the time. Failure is built into the fabric of the game.
I’m writing this partially because I’m a Cubs fan and, even after going 5-2 on their last home stand, everything I read this week is doom and gloom, all because those two loses happened to be the last two games. The five wins preceding that have been completely disregarded. Even the best writers, the ones I leaned on during the truly “dark” seasons of recent past, are timidly asking permission to share some home run videos. This is a team that has gone to three straight league championship series, won the World Series the year before last, and, even though it’s played about as poorly as you could imagine this team playing, is three games above .500 and just won five out of seven games. And people are freaking angry about that. It’s insidious and I can’t stand it.
But the other reason I’m writing this is because I was given a huge dose of perspective this week. I won’t go into many details, and I will let you know up-front that everything is okay now, but I spent all day Wednesday at the hospital with my wife, who is twenty-seven weeks pregnant. There can’t be many things as jarring as the text I got that morning telling me she had to go to labor and delivery. I could think of a few, but I’d prefer to not.
All of the tests came back normal. The crisis was averted. Mother and baby are fine, and it will still be another six or seven weeks before I meet my son.
If you think losing a baseball game is a bad thing, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. Baseball is a wonderful distraction. It’s one for which I’m thankful. But, in the big scheme of things, it’s really not important. Remember that the next time your favorite team loses a game, or a series, or is having a crappy season. Remember that the next time you feel the urge say someone sucks, because they struck out, or walked a guy, or dropped a throw. If your team loses, take a minute to think of the good things you have going on in your life. If you don’t feel there is anything good going on in your life, try appreciating the game for the wonderful distraction that it is. Be thankful that it’s there to draw our mind away from the real burdens and injustices of this world. It can do that for you, no matter what the scoreboard says.
Let’s talk about some baseball.
The Tigers dropped both of their games this week, 9-3 to George Washington University and 16-9 to George Mason University. This has become one of those season when nothing seems to align – when guys who’ve struggled have good games, the guys who have been good struggle. When the pitching is good enough to win, the bats go quiet. When the bats wake up, the pitching goes away. For every line drive that leaves a Towson bat and rockets into a left-fielders glove, the opponent slips two soft grounders between shortstop and third. Towson has earned many of their losses this season, but, if you believe in this sort of thing, they must have some good baseball karma coming their way. “Baseball’s gonna baseball” usually evens out. Right?
Positive Pixels
- Kody Reeser continues to impress in his comeback from Tommy John surgery. Making his third start (and appearance) of the season against GWU on Wednesday, the (redshirt) freshman right-hander had his best outing yet. He pitched two perfect innings, striking out three, and has yet to allow a hit. Aside from the results, the little bit I’ve seen on streaming video shows a nice, easy delivery and a few breaking pitches that had some fairly wicked movement. Another thing to like about Reeser is that he chose Towson partially because of the troubles the program had in the recent past. That kind of character is a good sign and bodes well for his work ethic and commitment (as though recovering from Tommy John surgery didn’t show that enough).
- Freshman Josh Seils started Thursday’s game, and though the line score is ugly (12 runs, 6 earned, in 4.1 innings), there was some good to take out of it. After an ugly first inning that got out of hand after an error, and another error in the second that let an additional run score on a home run, he was able to work two scoreless innings before leaving with one out in the fifth. Seils also set a career high with three strikeouts.; he hasn’t missed enough bats this year, but he has a great pitchers frame that you could project to improve, and like Reeser he has an easy, repeatable delivery.
- Gavin Weyman and Dean Stramara continued to be excellent out of the bullpen, combining to close Thursday’s game with a scoreless inning apiece. As poor as the results have been this year, it’s scary to think where this team would be without these two juniors.
- Billy Lennox walked twice in each game this week and has now reached base in 20 consecutive games.
- Sophomore Noah Cabrera had a huge game on Thursday, going 3-4 with a walk and driving in four runs with a grand slam. It was Cabrera’s second homer of the season and the third grand slam for Towson this year.
- Towson hitters walked nine times in the two games and have shown good patience at the plate for most of the season. The issue has been stringing together walks and good contact to effectively score runs.
The Watch List
Stats for both games combined.
Richie Palacios, SS – 0-9, 1 R. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, failure is part of baseball, and Palacios is experiencing this right now. How a batter adjusts and responds to adversity is a skill as much hand-eye coordination and pitch recognition, and a lot of people will be watching to see how the shortstop works out of the slump he is in currently.
Dirk Masters, 2B – 2-9, 1 R. Masters had a couple of hits on Thursday, following consecutive 0-4 performances. The redshirt freshman has been steady this season, but hasn’t had long stretches of excellent results (his longest hitting streak of the season is five games). Hopefully he can string together some hits to close the season strong.
David Marriggi, P – DNP
Michael Adams, P – DNP
Up Next
The Tigers welcome College of Charleston, another excellent conference foe, to Schuerholz Park for a weekend series. The first game starts today at 3 p.m.
Musical Finale
It might seem crazy, what I’m ’bout to say…
