I went to Spring Training!!

Never Done: I went to Spring training!!! (it's a baseball thing)

I have wanted to go to Spring Training for years. Everybody else went. My uncle, aunt, and cousin. My therapist. My nerdy baseball friends. But somehow it fell into a category of things that were out of my realm - something (and there are many such things) that felt like the domain of other people, but would be too impenetrable for me to sort out. I can't explain this rationally, but I can tell you that there are many such things, and they are random and unpredictable. It's more that I don't know how things work than I can't do them. When I was young, why didn't I know there was a party? Or that everyone was wearing red that day? More significantly, when it came time to choose colleges, I had next to know guidance counseling and surprisingly little guidance from my parents. I chose a school an hour from the school my sister chose. And when I got there, was confused about advanced placement credits - how did everyone have them when I literally had never even heard of them?

So it's less about limited opportunity and more about limited access to information that then translates into limited vision. When I first made my Never Done list, I filled it with things that felt reachable, if difficult. Then slowly I started to add the things that felt felt unreachable. I waver most on these. I wanted to go to Sundance. January went by and I did not go. I want to write, produce, and direct a short film - but I haven't gone past the writing. I wanted to go to Spring Training but the only person I could think of who I would like to go with, and who would like to go with me was not available. So I started to waver. I called my cousins. They urged me to go. I considered going alone, but wavered more. I made lists of games I would Ike to see and checked if I could clear my schedule for three days. I was on the verge of letting it pass by, when I ran into Mickey at Zach's thesis performance, and blurted out something like, "You! You! Would you like to go to Spring Training with me?"

Mickey looked me in the eyes and said yes.

At that point we had had maybe three conversations together, total. We had never intentionally done anything together. And I knew we were going to Florida together.

That night I sent him all my research. He looked it over and chose his best dates. (Mickey is a Mets fan, and for those of you who do not know, I am a Red Sox fan, so we were looking for a lineup of games that would allow us to see both teams, and both teams' training facilities.) We settled on a Mets-Red Sox game, and then a four hour drive across Florida for a Red Sox-Orioles game.

I started reading websites about places to stay, but ultimately it was Mickey who did the bulk of that research. And before I knew it, we were booking flights and hotels, and the buddy trip was in motion.

It occurs to me now that maybe the trick with things that feel impenetrable is to get help, do them with other people, and break down the isolation that says we are supposed to figure these things out on our own. You still need to know who and what to ask, and that still trips me up sometimes, but even just thinking in that direction helps bust out of the isolation.

Suffice it to say we made it to Florida, and we made it to Digital Domain park where the Mets play, and we asked for direction from a series of sweet, retired white guys in orange Mets shirts until we found the entrance to the practice fields. And then there we were - on the fields while strapping men took batting practice. Mickey knew who most of them were, and I only recognized a couple, but what I did recognize was the connection between Little League and high school and college ball and the major leagues. It's the same guys, the same skills, the same exercises, the same everything. Only the money's different, and not even for most of the guys we saw. (These are guys who got invited to Spring Training but are most likely slated for the minors.) It's hard to describe, but it felt comfortable. A field like so many fields I have played on. A bunch of athletes like so many I have known. Men pursuing their American dream.

By the time the actual game started, Spring Training had been so thoroughly domesticated for me that I felt like I'd been 100 times. As it turned out, the game itself - while super fun - was a anticlimactic for me; the Red Sox left most of their star players near Fort Myers, and played a bunch of guys I'd never heard of. It was a close game, and the Mets won 6-5. But most of all, I was sitting with a friend in a ballpark, wearing shorts and counting strikes, joking with the guys in front of us and laughing at the guy on the cellphone behind us, and feeling very much at home.