I have lived to see 23 different years, so my life is like 28% complete. The whole school thing has stopped me from doing too much with my life, but I'm hoping that changes in a hurry now that graduation is just weeks away. Anyways, the first 28% of my life has been filled with a lot of sports stuff and a lot of attempts to be funny. It has also involved me trying to establish myself as an individual, someone who doesn't think like, act like, or talk like most of the people around me. You guys can be the judge on how I've done at that.
I dedicated a huge part of my college life to writing and talking about the Pittsburgh Pirates, which I can't say was a bad idea, although it didn't turn out the way I had originally hoped it would, but I'm okay with that. For right now, I'm done with that being a main focus in my life and I'm moving on to try and make a name for myself in another field. Despite that, the Pirates will always be a big part of my youth, and I can say that I've learned a lot from being a fan of the team. I want to share some of that with everyone who is wiling to read in a two to thirty-seven post series called "Pirates Life Lessons".
There's no doubt that this is a good idea. However, what I should probably do is stop right here and plan things out so it has some kind of flow and progression to it, but that's not really how I like to do my writing, especially in this non-formal blog. I'm just going to let the unorganized ideas in my mind spill out and see what we end up with. So here goes PART 1.
While there are a ton of small lessons I can say I've learned (or at least those ideas have been reenforced) from baseball, I think there are one or two that really come through stronger than the rest. The one I'm thinking about right now is the simple fact that life isn't all about being better than the people around you. Over the last 20 years, the Pirates haven't been better than anybody, I mean they have been brutal. But guess what? The Pirates still have fans. They are still in business. I understand that the reason that are still in business is because they are making money and because you don't have to put a winning team on the field to make money in sports, but that's beside the point.
I am probably the least competitive guy I know. Growing up, all my friends and fellow classmates have been so serious about winning every little thing they get into, regardless of its meaningfulness. There really hasn't been a game or competition that I can name in my life that I've been so serious about that I let it get to the point where it changed my mood for more than a matter of minutes. I get over things quickly, and it's easy to get over things that you don't really care about in the first place. Priorities are a big part of life, and a lot of people get held up because their priorities are out of wack.
Being a Pirate fan isn't easy. While I've always wanted to see the team win, I've never gotten to the point where I needed to see the team win to make the experience worthwhile. It's not that I've ever had some special hope that the team will turn it around, it's just that I've never really cared how they ended up doing, I just liked the team because it was a different thing to like, and the game itself interested me. I could be an "expert" about a professional sports team, because nobody else my age really gave them too much of a second thought. Life's easier without expectation or hope for something big. That's an awful way to live in certain facets of life, but it works out quite well in sports. The word "apathy" usually has a negative connotation, but if you apply it to the right parts of life, it can be a beautiful thing.
For example, I play tennis at Waynesburg University. I do it because there's literally nothing else to do in the town of Waynesburg and I get all kinds of free stuff for playing. My lack of a competitive drive probably would have hurt me in a lot of sports, but it really helped me in tennis. I came in not caring if I won or lost any match I played, which helped me to stay relaxed and not think too much, which has led to me having a crisp 28-10 record heading into my senior season, which is actually the highest winning percentage for any Waynesburg tennis player since at least 1980 (apparently Waynesburg didn't record much of anything before 1980).
Being a legitimate fan of a team that hasn't won since 1992 is an incredibly telling thing. In my eyes that means you're personality is deep, you care about the finer things in life, and you have one crazy sense of patience. Caring about the Pirates because you have hope that they'll someday win is a noble trait, and sometimes I envy it. But that leads to disappointment. Not really caring about the Pirates results and just following the team for the non-conditional fun and personal gain out of it is the way to go.
I'm gonna stop here for now.
Pirates Life Lesson Number 1: If implemented correctly, apathy can be a beautiful thing.
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