It's happening again

"I can't do this again. I just can't."

That was the first and only thought going through my head when I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to surgically remove another tumor from another artery. That was stupid, though, because I knew that bell would eventually toll. I just hoped I could plug my ears and never hear it.

Astute readers may remember my tortured journey with the American medical system six years ago. It's why there's been a hyperlink at the top of this site, so it could be there in perpetuity, a chronicle of a time in my life I wish I could forget. Even then, I knew that removing one of two tumors back then meant that, at some point, I'd have to finish the job. That time is now.

When I first learned this back in February, my initial reaction was what you just read: that I could not do this again. That first time was all-consuming. It upended my life in a way that the mere thought of having to repeat the process filled me with intense dread, to the point that I started to bargain with myself. "What if you… Didn't do this again? How bad could it be?" The reality is, while my previous journey was brought on by measurable bodily impacts, in the intervening six years, I've felt, more or less, fine. There's been no noticeable side effects, and I've been able to retain a normal level of activity without anything feeling amiss. It was heartbreaking to hear that, despite all those positive signs, I would need to throw myself into the world of appointments, referrals, scans, more appointments, and, finally, surgery. Seems lame; I'll take a pass, thank you very much.

Beyond that, I've regarded my writing about that entire ordeal to be so painfully self-indulgent and embarrassing; an utterly undignified pursuit. Who the fuck am I? Who cares? Why so self-important? Logically, I know that was just my way of processing it, though I wonder if it was something better done in private.

Digging into why I look back at my previous writings with such disdain, it's because it feels like I was sympathy farming. Though it wasn't my intention, it invited so many people to offer something, from kind words to material help, and while I am deeply appreciative of those things, I feel completely undeserving of them. I've never liked asking favors of people, and I've never enjoyed being on the receiving end of someone's generosity (a therapist could have a field day with this, I know), so I elected to treat the bulk of this ordeal privately. If it felt bad doing it that way, perhaps shifting up the mode would make things different this time.

Thankfully, it did. At least a little bit. By pressing on with my life and not letting too many people know what was eventually coming, I spent the better part of this year continuing my life as normal. Yes, I did have to drive out to the Cleveland Clinic again, to meet with the same lead surgeon, and jump through all the tiny hoops that come with going out-of-state for medical care, but I kept it to myself. I did what I had to do, processed what I felt in the moment, and then got back to living my life.

But here I am, offering you (hopefully) my lone update on the matter. On Tuesday, October 21, I'll be going in for surgery. The team of surgeons has instilled me with a great deal of confidence, replacing the fear and anxiety that I carried in my body throughout 2019. Perhaps what I really meant when I said "I can't do this again" was "I can't do it like that again." To retain the same coping strategies and write the same thoughts would have shown that I had learned nothing in the intervening six years. And I had. I learned to appreciate every day, even the bad ones, in a way I never did before.

Which leads me to what I actually want to talk to you all about: The Seattle Mariners.

Whenever you get a group of music fans together, the conversation has a way of turning to firsts: the first record you bought with your own money; the first show you attended unsupervised; your first favorite band. It's an instructive line of discourse, as it really makes you understand what spoke to someone and how it does, or doesn't, still take root in their personality. For me, though, the first thing that ever felt truly mine was the Seattle Mariners.

I grew up in a home where music was often playing, and few genres were off limits. The same was true of sports. I knew, ambiently, that my family like the Green Bay Packers because of their Wisconsin roots, Chicago Blackhawks appointment viewing, and the historically great 1990s Chicago Bulls were omnipresent, but there was never a clear picture of what baseball team we rooted for. This was spurred, seemingly, by a few peculiarities.

My grandfather claimed the St. Louis Cardinals as his team, due to his love of Stan Musial and, though I've never been able to nail down the details of this, seeing a local Cardinals affiliate play regularly while stationed in the Navy. He was also an avid sports card collector, having a stockpile of cards from all the major leagues, so I saw a more holistic approach to sports fandom than one normally gets at a young age. When he'd come back from the card shop with a couple of new boxes, he'd call me over to sit at the kitchen table and carefully open packs with him.

I can only imagine the anxiety this brought him. Asking a child, with dubious motor skills, to carefully open packs of cards and not ding any corners or coat the cards in grime is something that was incredibly trusting, if entirely ill-founded. I can still remember the noise he'd make when he'd pull out something notably rare: something autographed; one with a game-used jersey placed into it; a rookie card of some import. He'd let out a high-pitched, joyous, "Uh-oh!" and then quickly put it into a protective casing. It was a ritual I came to love and, if I had to guess, it's part of how I came to idolize Ken Griffey Jr.

Ask any '90s kid who their favorite baseball player was, and you'll probably hear Ken Griffey Jr. as the default answer. For that reason alone, I don't need to explain the cultural importance of "The Kid," but I certainly followed the pack here. I had the "Riptide" poster on my wall, a Seattle Mariners hat, and the kid-sized jersey that was made out of the same material as a cheap tarp from a hardware store. Ken Griffey Jr. was my favorite player and, by proxy, the Seattle Mariners became my favorite team.

This was a good time to be a Mariners fan. The 1990s Mariners brought the languishing franchise to the national spotlight and, as has been so beautifully documented in Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein's The History of the Seattle Mariners, kept baseball in Seattle with that iconic 1995 season. Living in Northwest Indiana, my chances to actually watch the team were fairly scant. There was the occasional national broadcast, and a few chances to see them play the Chicago White Sox, but that was kind of it. Yet, I always appreciated them from a distance, as my team.

In 2001, my mom took me to Seattle for the first time, and I got to see the Mariners play in their home stadium for the very first time. It was Ichiro Suzuki's rookie season, and I can still picture it all in my head. Our seats were along the third-base line, and I distinctly remember the shadows of the midday sun cutting across the infield as I watched Ichiro warm up in the outfield. My mom bought me an Ichiro jersey and, to this day, it remains the only jersey I own. I've worn it sparingly over the years, keeping it in near-pristine condition, in a way my grandfather would surely appreciate.

I would fall out of baseball in the late 2000s for a variety of reasons, but the pull of the Mariners was always there. I'd check in on box scores, watch highlights here and there, and just keep a pulse on a team that always had some strange hold on me. When I got back into baseball in earnest in the 2010s, they became my rooting interest, alongside my long-time second team, the Chicago White Sox. If you've not picked up on it by now, I love to suffer.

As the Mariners have had fortune shine upon them in recent years, it's made me think about why I chose them way back when. Yes, there's the obvious Griffey and Ichiro of it all, but I was watching them in the lean years, too. I still would tune in to see Felix Hernandez pitch masterfully and lose because this team couldn't score any runs. I remember watching Raul Ibanez do whatever the fuck this was. I watched them stink and, frankly, it didn't matter. I was a Mariners fan, and this was the Mariners experience.

There's a line from an Operation Ivy song that my friend Dan Ozzi likes to quote: "To resist despair in this world is what it is to be free." That's paraphrased, but the spirit of it, I think, explains exactly why I feel this pull toward the Mariners. As a franchise, they have a losing record; they are perpetually underwater, despite their seafaring namesake. They have made the playoffs only six times—all in my lifetime, no less—and have never made it to the World Series. In that documentary I linked above, Jon Bois refers to them not as winners or losers, but protagonists. That feels accurate to me.

This year, I've watched so much Mariners baseball it's become a borderline obsession. Streaming games that go well past midnight to watch them eke out a one-run win, or lose a game that they went down fighting in, it's all been a joy to me. They were my companions through my good days, my bad days, and the ones that just blinked past me. This year, they exemplified a spirit that I've needed, which is to feel that you're never actually out of it. That no matter how down you are, no matter how long you've been up against the wall, there's still a chance. And if not, there's always a game tomorrow. At worst, there's always another April. I can live with that.