When To Let Go

The baseball season is over.

Well, at least for me and the other die-hard Giants' fans.

The bandwagon fans will be completely gone again in a few more weeks.  For those of us who will always wear the orange and black, this is a relief--with any luck, ticket prices next year will be reasonable.  We have our reasons for heroes.  The only thing left to endure is "Not so hot now, are you?"

Beating my head against a wall, I keep the common sense to myself, only to write it here...

People.  The Giants were never hot.  They were scrappy.  And they weren't scrappy enough this year.

I'm good with that.  But I'm also content that at this point, Bochy is pulling a Ohio State University coaching trick, only in reverse.  Ohio State University coaches, two of them now, tend to put in their greener, second string if they are light years ahead of the opposition in the second half.  It makes them look like good sports, their second string becomes deep, and they have a better team.

Bochy is operating on the same principle, in the reverse.  He's losing, and losing so badly that he is using this time for "development."  I won't see a lot of the same faces next year because Bochy needs a new hitting team.  (He needs a new hitting coach, too--but I digress.)  He's so far behind he can put in his second string and give them time to learn to be his hitting heroes.  He's creating a deeper team than he has right now.

Which isn't hard, since these guys have nowhere to go but up.

*****

About a month ago I was in the shower, and I was happy when a story idea bloomed in my brain.  What I wasn't happy about was that it was a story for a novel.

I guess it's a good development that I recognized it as a novel instead of trying to write it first.  But I ground my teeth anyway...I'm just now getting the hang of writing short stories.

And a damn novel shows up.  I haven't even published a short story, or even submitted one.

So I wrote around the novel for a few weeks, daydreamed it, free-writing.  Tried to talk myself out of it by writing around it.  What actually dampened it was reading the book "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis.

You guessed it.  The novel was about baseball.  And reading "Moneyball" made the novel unbelievable.  That, and the Giants had a homeless fan who has been missing since July, which was a part of my novel before I knew they had a homeless fan that they were looking for.

Let me reiterate--the novel has dampened.  But it hasn't gone away.  It just makes me think of how to write it better, or how to re-shape the idea.

I can't help it...I so love baseball.  It seems stupid not to write about it.  It seems stupid not to do it, better.

And, since I'm not such a hot writer, but scrappy instead, I have nothing to lose.

Thanks, Jim Tressel.  Thanks, Bruce Bochy.

Write on.