Fowles - Baseball Life Advice

Ill forever remember growing up an Atlanta Braves fan in Nashville, Tennessee, listening to the broadcasts with my dad in the front bench seat of his old blue Chevy Nova. The A/C didnt work and the sweltering summer heat would make even the steering wheel sweat, but I didnt care. The only thing I cared about was getting to listen to the games with my dads arm around me, dreaming of being the next Dale Murphy or Steve Bedrosian. It was a safe place to dream and talk and hope. As time passed and my relationship with my dad became strained, I would often return to that place, where time seemed to stop except for the sweet noise of the crackling radio, my favourite Brave circling the bases after a home run, and the feel of my dads strong arm holding me close. It brought me such peace.

I am forty-two years old now, in the twilight of my career, and frequently find myself reflecting on why baseball has meant so much to me. It is not the competition that holds the weight for me. It is not the game itself. It is not a strikeout, a win, or any statistical accomplishment, although I do find joy in those. It is the template of baseball that I am in love with. It is the pace of the game that allows for a deep relationship between people in the stands. It is the length of the season that demands a real investment in getting to know the players who play it. It is the opportunity it offers for redemption and hope, as the guy who struck out in the first inning gets the game-winning hit in the ninth, or the team that finished last the year before can win their division the next. It is the game of perpetual second chances as spring training rolls around every February. Baseball is a game that forces you to find your way through adversity at every turn. In what other profession can you fail seven out of ten times and be a Hall of Famer! You have to learn to deal with small failures in order to realize your full potential.

I believe that baseball is the most intimate of all sports. As a player, I spend 220 days a year with twenty-four other men. My teammates become my family. When my dad passed away during the season in 2015, my teammates huddled around me at my locker, toasted my dad, and I hugged every one of them to a man, with tears pouring down my face; no shame, no judgment. They were simply my twenty-four brothers who cared about the one that was hurting. And there are countless stories that mirror that one throughout baseball. Thats not to say that these types of stories dont occur in other sports. It is simply that baseball offers a consistent opportunity to enter into a relationship with others, and that has been one of the great gifts the game has given me.

I first talked to Stacey May Fowles in March of 2013. She was interviewing me for a publication she was working for, about a childrens book I had written. Ive given literally thousands of interviews, but I could sense that this one was very different. What started out as a simple interview turned quickly into an intimate conversation about the parallels in our lives and the similar traumas we had endured. We must have talked for over an hour about what was both hard about our stories and wonderful about them as well. I was captivated by her humanity and sincerity. She talked about what the game of baseball and being a Blue Jays fan have meant to her, but she did it in a way that left me spellbound.

These essays take the reader on a rich journey. Stacey May Fowles writes with such passion, and challenges us to look beyond the stat sheet in order to drink deeply from a game that is so much more than the players who play it. She writes that baseball is the one place I had always gone to for solace in the face of painful circumstances. It is this exact sentiment that I can connect with the mostthat baseball is a sanctuary where one can find a temporary peace. Fowless personal anecdotes about her relationship with the game make me thankful that in some small way I have been a part of the landscape of her life.

R.A. Dickey