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Home , 2010 World Series, 2012 World Series, Brian Wilson (baseball), Christy Mathewson, Cody Ransom, Texas Rangers (baseball)

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Winner of the Crazyhorse Nonfiction Prize

JESSE DONALDSON

Notes from a Congregant

On September 21, 2012, executed once-renowned wild west lawmen). ’s Rodney Wayne Harris, a car wash employee postseason was on the horizon, and perhaps in who killed six co-workers after being fired for his last moments, Mr. Harris realized he wouldn’t exposing himself to female customers. If we can be around to see his Rangers play another game. put aside whatever debate might ensue about Perhaps he meant to say the more direct, “God capitol punishment, the violent nature of Mr. Bless the ” but this isn’t what he Harris’ crimes, the fact that prosecutors were said. He addressed his “God Bless” to the family, able to remove all potential black jurors from friends, Texas Corrections employees, and the trial, and the fact that Mr. Harris had an families of his victims who’d gathered to watch IQ of 68; if we can allow ourselves simply to him die. Then, all of a sudden, the thought came say the issue of taking another person’s life is an to him—a moment that isn’t rehearsed and incredibly complicated moral issue, then we can therefore gives a direct window into the mind— focus on Mr. Harris’s strange final words: “I’m “and the Texas Rangers.” What interests me about going home, I’m going home. I’ll be all right. this shift in his final words—beyond the initial, Don’t worry, I love ya’ll. God Bless and the Texas cynical recognition that we live in a world where Rangers, Texas Rangers.” men bless baseball teams the moment before they The beginning of Mr. Harris’s statement die—is that Harris repeats “Texas Rangers” to suggests his belief in an afterlife—a home. He give it added weight. I imagine that first “Texas instructs those gathered not to worry, as if he Rangers” came as a surprise, even to Harris is the person least affected by what is about to himself, but the second “Texas Rangers”—the occur. This rather open-handed sentiment is not repetition—this represents a moment of peace. dissimilar from those expressed by numerous You can almost hear it if you say it. “God bless death row prisoners before their execution; the and the Texas Rangers.” And then softer, like the most common phrase spoken by such men and amen at the end of a prayer, “Texas Rangers.” women is “I love you” or Mr. Harris’s “I love ya’ll.” The obvious is this matter of Sociologist William Spinrad, in his 1981 essay the Texas Rangers (the baseball team, not the “The Function of Spectator Sports,” writes:

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. . . the trivial but engaging experiences 2010 when the Giants won their first of fandom are, in the truest sense, an during my lifetime. My wife, Becca, thinks this escape from profound personal and a strange phenomenon. My normally dormant social problems. Unlike most popular phone suddenly comes to life—not because of culture involvements it is a viable escape, anything I have accomplished, but because I am partly because the experiences suggest a a fan. Without the Giants, I wouldn’t be back in caricature of so many unstated features touch with Serge or any of people from of regular societal processes. The result is my past. I don’t have Facebook, I don’t Tweet, a respite, a small-scale catharsis. Since it and I am (admittedly) not the best at returning is not a genuine replica of the real world, calls. the direct impact on one’s serious behavior And so while I basked in the glory of the Giants is generally minimal. In this respect it 2012 comebacks and eventual World Series win, also differs from other involvements in I also tried to figure out when the Giants became popular cultures, for sports fandom does synonymous with me. The Giants. Jesse. Jesse. not produce any distortion of personal and The Giants. These are pretty direct cognitive social perspectives. leaps for anyone who knows me, and yet, outside of that circle of friends, those two things mean Before Game 7 of baseball’s 2012 National nothing put together. League Championship Series, my friend Serge, whom I hadn’t talked to since 2007, sent me the Surely my fandom has something to do with following e-mail: the years between 1987 and 1991. I was in Little League then and baseball obsessed. I spent my I’m excited for tonight’s game. I’ve been days hitting whiffle balls and pretending I was thinking of you through this series. I didn’t Will . Will “The Thrill”—Giants’ first think they’d pull it off against the Reds, and baseman and owner of the prettiest left-handed I thought Game 5 was going to be their last swing in baseball. Whenever high point of the season. Good luck. . . . traveled to Cincinnati, an hour and a half from where I grew up, my father would drive us to “They” is the . During Riverfront Stadium to see a game. the Giants’ postseason , I received countless In the blistering heat rising from Cincinnati’s “thinking of you” messages from friends and artificial turf field my fandom cemented because family. People I had fallen out of touch with we were outsiders. I had a Giants T-shirt and my texted, e-mailed, and called after months and dad an “SF” hat. In a sea of red, we wore orange years of silence. The same thing happened in and black. People booed and taunted us, which

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only strengthened my resolve. These were our This same sensation, this brief but fading Giants. satisfaction, occurred when the Giants won the My dad likes to tell one story in particular . As the players celebrated and from that time. At a game the Giants were losing, sprayed one another in champagne and hugged Cincinnati’s star , , started and cried tears of joy, I sat at a bar in Texas and walking toward first base after a borderline 3-2 watched. Surely I smiled widely after the final pitch. He made it a couple steps before the out and was more pleasant than usual in the dramatically called strike three, and when Larkin hours that followed. I suspect I was more likely to turned to protest, I, a normally shy kid, stood up offer strangers compliments or buy them drinks and yelled, “You’re going the wrong way, Larkin!” or profess my love, but this was only a temporary All the Reds fans in our section turned and then grace. The next day, after I’d exhausted the started to laugh. Crazy fucking kid. internet discovering the tiniest details about the team’s first championship since they left New The word fan derives from fanatic. In its York, after I’d talked to my dad about the series, noun form the OED defines “Fanatic” as: A my life returned to normal. I had classes to teach mad person. In later use: A religious maniac. And and papers to grade. There were weeds in the what is sports’ fandom if not a replacement for garden that needed pulling. A few days later, as religion? My admittedly naïve understanding of the Giants paraded down the confetti-strewn faith is that it brings the believer some form of streets of San Francisco, I sat in Houston traffic solace, and following Giants baseball brings me on my way home from work. great comfort. I can recite lineups and pitching rotations like litanies. I analyze the team’s There are drawbacks to fandom that often statistics with the fervor of a theologian studying involve the people closest to you. First off, we the Bible. should understand that fandom, as William There have been times in my life when I Spinrad points out, is a form of escape. And sought comfort in a more traditional higher what one is escaping matters. In my twenties power. I prefer compline services where a choir I was escaping a stuttering relationship and a performs chants from the High Middle Ages and burgeoning problem with alcohol. These two there is no sermon. I leave these services carrying sides of the coin were, of course, related. My a measure of peace I didn’t before entering the drinking wasn’t the fall down stumble and slur church, but when I return home a desk littered variety, which made it all the worse when my with unpaid bills or a message from some person then-girlfriend noticed that I would reach for an I’ve disappointed or some other failure, that object—say a beer bottle—and miss it once before peace often wilts. getting my bearings, and taking another drink.

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She started counting bottles. I started hiding the ninth inning of Game 7, with two out and them. On the night she discovered this, there was runners on second and third, Willie McCovey a fight. Not a screaming and punching fight but drove a line-drive bullet into the glove of Yankees the sort of sad fight where you realize you are second baseman . “Nobody both hurting one another for no reason and that could a ball as hard as McCovey,” my dad even though it doesn’t have to be this way, it will says when I ask him about the game. His voice continue until it ends. And so she explained to me starts to crack as he becomes excited and shouts the ways in which I was hurting her and hurting into the phone, “McCovey hit the ball so hard it myself and I listened and didn’t apologize or say knocked Richardson down!” much of anything before she left the apartment The McCovey line drive haunted the Giants crying. By the time she came home, I’d finished a fans of my dad’s generation. On December six-pack and fallen asleep on the couch. The next 21, 1962, months after the end of the World day I was watching the Giants play the Dodgers Series, Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, a life- when , a career minor leaguer who long Giants fan, drew three straight frames of never seemed to live up to expectations, lined a Charlie Brown and Linus sitting despondent on pinch-hit up the middle to win the game. a rock before Charlie Brown wails, with tears It was a moment of unadulterated perfection, of streaming from his eyes, “WHY COULDN’T beauty, and I found myself cheering to an empty MCCOVEY HAVE HIT THE BALL JUST room. I was happy. And then I started crying. I THREE FEET HIGHER?” Over a month knew this was wrong—that I was betraying the later, on January 28, 1963, the same exact comic woman I lived with by giving more of myself to appeared again, only this time Charlie Brown the Giants than to her. All she wanted was for me wailed, “OR WHY COULDN”T MCCOVEY to express some emotion over the ways in which HAVE HIT THE BALL EVEN TWO FEET we were failing one another, to show her that I HIGHER?” Schulz rarely made such direct cared, but I’d been unable. I gave my emotions references to contemporary events in his comic to the Giants instead. And this, I believe, is strip. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which began the where Spinrad gets fandom wrong. He claims it same day McCovey lined out to end the World “does not produce any distortion of personal and Series, couldn’t move Schulz to tear down the veil societal perspectives” but at that moment I was between Charlie Brown and the real world, but house-of-mirrors distorted, a shell of the person I the Giants could. believe myself capable of being. In 2008, two years before the Giants won In 1962 the Giants came within a couple the World Series, my father was diagnosed feet of winning the World Series. Down 1-0 in with cancer of the vocal cord. His oncologist

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surgically removed the tumor and ever since his knows the players’ nicknames; she even found voice has possessed a rasp it didn’t before. That a thrift-shop Giants’ jersey that she wears for a 2010 World Series somehow seemed like a gift laugh. But all this goodwill on Becca’s part has to my father and me, some sort of compensation a breaking point, and the long slough through for our years of loyalty. We met in Atlanta to the postseason takes its toll. For that month my attend a pair of post-season games; we wore our life revolves around baseball, the quirk turns black and orange in a sea of blue and red clad into an unhealthy fixation. I schedule meetings southerners brandishing Tomahawks—outsiders for work accordingly. I spend ridiculously long united again. hours reading and rereading baseball blogs. Our I can’t separate the Giants from my father, dates are always burgers and beers at a bar with can’t separate my own childhood infatuation the game on. I recognize that it all becomes too with the Giants from his. He listened to every much, that this devotion leaves little time in my game on the radio, cut out box scores and pasted life for the things that really matter—family, them into a book I now own. I suppose he can’t work, general mental health. I am, in many ways, separate the Giants from his own father either. an addict. I cannot help but watch the games if And so on and so forth. We begat begat begat. they are out there, and so part of me (a small And when the time comes, I will explain to my part but part nonetheless) actually roots against own children why we Donaldsons root for the the Giants getting to the World Series because it Giants. I will explain that once they were the would give me back my regular life. Those three- New York Giants, that their great-grandfather hour time slots might be used for something watched pitch at the Polo more practical, at the very least something more Grounds, that their grandfather watched Willie personal. I sometimes rationalize my obsession— Mays patrol centerfield. I will tell them that it’s just sports after all—but I also feel on the edge when the Donaldsons moved west, the Giants of a greater darkness. I guess I feel out of control. followed. I will explain that even though I grew up in Kentucky, far away from San Francisco, I Just before the 2012 post-season, I moved to too am a life-long Giants fan and so will they be. the West Coast for the first time. Aside from getting used to the fact that everyone I normally Becca calls the peace after the Giant’s win call is in bed before I eat dinner, the biggest “Jesse’s Zen.” Despite caring little about sports, change I noticed is the number of Giants fans Becca has embraced my fandom as a sort of around me. One would think this is a good thing. personality quirk. She’s even tried to turn The building of community is another way in herself into a fan so we can bond through the which sports fandom is not unlike religion—it Giants. She’s learned the basics of baseball, connects the individual fan to other “believers.”

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It forms a congregation of sorts. It is this aspect with song lyrics because there won’t be room for of fandom that sociologists are most interested in anything else, which is of course bullshit, but studying. In “fandom” the prefix “fan” still comes seems plausible enough that I worry that when from fanatic, but the suffix –dom comes from someone asks me a question like “Do you think domain, meaning “the domain of the fanatics.” there’s an afterlife?” I’ll say, “’s middle For context you might think of a Kingdom (the name is Nuschler.” domain of the King) or Freedom (domain of the This is the danger of becoming associated free). with a sports team. To root for a team is to adopt The problem is I don’t enjoy being immersed that team’s personality, at least in public. If my in this more populous Giants community. My friends think of me whenever they think of the aversion is two-fold. First: I am forced to look Giants, then I am representative of the team’s at other Giants fans and pretend as though we values. Sometimes this isn’t so bad. The Giants have something vital in common. This is hardest of the past few years have earned a reputation when the person on the other end of a “Go for being slightly off-kilter. , their Giants” is the sort of guy who might otherwise former , speaks like he’s in a comic book call me “bro” or, even worse, “buddy.” Second: and hasn’t shaved in years. Their overweight it is proof that the Giants are not mine alone, or third-baseman goes by the nickname “Kung-Fu not mine and my father’s. Those trips to see the Panda.” Their star looks Giants play in Cincinnati made our particular more like a skater than a ballplayer. These are fandom seem special, but now that I live among qualities that I can root for because they make so many other like-minded souls—fans who the sterile world of sports a bit more human. But boldly promote their allegiance with jackets, there are other associations linked to the Giants hoodies, ball caps—I witness each day just how I’m less enamored with. Their fans are known for commonplace our devotion is. And when I try being a largely white, largely affluent bunch more to find commonality with these other fans, I likely to grab a Roll and an Anchor am often disappointed. They talk to me about Steam at the ballpark than a hot dog and a Bud. San Francisco. I visited their city once (and not And they will forever be linked to during baseball season). Or they ask me to tell and baseball’s steroids era. I lived in Brooklyn them the name of that pitcher again. Even when for a few years and was heckled by passers-by I find a true fan, one who can recite the lineups on the street whenever I wore my Giants’ hat. through the years, I only recognize in them my “Steroids!” they’d yell. Or, “The Giants suck!” own ridiculous obsession, which seems sillier Or they’d ask, “How’s it feel rooting for a bunch and sillier as the years pass by. I think of those of cheaters?” I still don’t know how to answer parents who tell their kids not to fill their heads this question. I am ashamed of Bonds and his

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drug use but that doesn’t have any bearing on talked about players we admired, the best plays my fandom. I have no control over the team or of the Giants’ unexpected championship run. its players. My devotion is not contingent upon We generally offered our praise to the team, their likability, nor how good they are in any and then Dad asked me, “How are things going given season. I listened to almost every Giants otherwise?” game in 2007 when they lost 91 games. This was Each time the season ends, I learn again that the end of the Bonds era—when I was heckled I care more for the build-up, for the process of most. The Giants were terrible. I guess what being a fan from until the last I am getting at here is that my fandom is not pitch of the season, than the end result. Maybe about wanting to be associated with the Giants, this is what true fandom is—a love of the ritual, about wanting to adopt whatever qualities define of holding onto the belief that somehow my one as a fan of this particular team, it just is, for devotion has meaning—but if that’s the case, better or worse. Sometimes I think of it as a virus it can’t help but leave the fan feeling empty. I contracted from my father—a pathogen that Winning and losing don’t matter. At the end of found a particularly suitable environment and the season it’s the mere existence of the Giants became so strong that I no longer possess the that I both miss and try to embrace. strength to ward it off. Not long after the , an old friend from Kentucky called and we talked about On the day after the Giants won the 2012 his kids and then the Giants and he said, of his World Series Championship, their second one-time fandom for another sports team, “You championship in three years, various friends know, I grew up.” I’d like to say I am doing the e-mailed their congratulations. I read through same. At least until and report. sports blogs and websites, watched the highlight And then. The San Francisco Giants. The videos. It was 2010 all over again. Later my father Giants. and I had our final of the season. We

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