Joe DiMaggio's Done it Again, Billy Bragg and Wilco

I walked back to my host family’s house in a mood.  The owner of the mini-super market in my community, and one of the richest by default, told me he poaches and sells turtle eggs because he needs the money to survive.  I called him a liar and lazy and he laughed an agreed.  “I may not have to, but others do.”  And with that, he supported his own decision to continue.  Questions of what will happen when there are no more turtles fell on deaf ears.  There will never be no turtles, he said.  Extinction is a lie, much like global warming.  Extinction will never happen on the island, because they care for the turtles.  Yes, well if turtles go extinct in one place, they go extinct everywhere, forever.  He laughed and called me a liar.  I instructed him to start calling me Licenciada.

I kicked rotting mangos and slid on one, hurting my knee.  I threw a rock at the tree the mango must have come from, then ones at the other two mango trees for good measure.  I was upset, visibly so.  My two years here seemed to get longer, and not in a good way.  Would anything I wanted to accomplish actually happen?  If it did happen, would it hold after I left?  I went to bed frustrated and angry.

I called my Dad the next morning, ready to complain.  My dad has always been the one I go to when bad things happen.  He listens, he acknowledges and then helps me come up with a solution.  He answered the phone, “Did you hear?  Matt Cain pitched a perfect game!”  I fell to my knees and nearly started crying.  The only words I could get out were, “Oh my God,” and I sounded like a perfect Panamanian.  Of all the Giants pitchers, Cain earned it the most.  He had been there the longest, worked the hardest and was probably the best underrated pitcher in the majors.  And finally, people would realize it.  The whole day, I smiled.  My Giants were back in the game after a tough season last year.

I even took the time to explain the significance of the event to a friend who knows nothing of sports, who did the math and informed me that it should have happened a few years ago, thinking that perfect games could have more than one pitcher.  Taking that into account, the Giants still had a few years to go before achieving that feat.

One of the first letters I received here from my Dad included a Sports Illustrated article by Hart Seely about how the fans, sportscasters and everyone involved in the game, especially the spectators, feel as though they effect the outcome.  We all have our rituals, even if we don’t call them such.  Phil Rizzuto, the former announcer of the Yankees, used to hold subjects – even unrelated to baseball – through rallies, and revive them when times were desperate.  Who doesn’t know about the Rally Monkey, the bane of the Giants’ 2002 world series run.  In 2010, I watched every game of the series, absolutely enraptured.  The one game I couldn’t watch, because I had a class, I followed the game the entire time on my computer, wearing the cap and nearly tumbling the desk when the Giants won the game.  I have rules when watching games – I don’t touch my phone, no matter how badly I want to text someone.  When something amazing is about to happen, I freeze in place.  My brother, telling me the story of Matt Cain’s perfect game, revealed the same thing.  He refused to let his girlfriend up to get snacks when watching in the 8^th inning.  You freeze in place; any move can ruin it for you.  If you move, and they lose, or someone gets a hit, it’s your fault – has nothing to do with luck, happenstance or skill.  It’s pure juju.  In my family, watching a baseball game is a ritual more than a form of entertainment.  When the team loses, it hurts.  When they win, it makes the day better.  When they perform something incredible, whether winning a world series or pitching a perfect game, you ride that high for as long as it holds.

Phone calls with my family, especially my dad and my brother – we don’t hold my mom’s reformed Dodger nature against her, but there are some things she just doesn’t get – we talk about the team.  Twenty seven innings, the Giants held the Dodgers run-less.  Something as simple as that, and we can talk for a time.  It makes us happy, don’t hold it against us.

The best part of being in Panama is when a friend asks me why I’m so happy today is I can reply, the Giants won yesterday, and they get it.  They may root for the Yankees, but at least they get it.