Control

I’m a control freak. All my life I have been. I long for control of every situation. I want to know who, what, where, when, why, and how. The funny thing is; I never know these things: I never seem to have control. When I reach out and grab for it, it slips through my fingers and I fall. There are few things we can control in this world.

Growing up life was chaotic. Nothing went the way it was supposed to. I lost close friends and family members. I got sick when I couldn’t afford it. I got hurt when it hurt me the most. I could never understand why it would happen that way. So I began to want to control the situations that I could not. I suffered from minor O.C.D., which combined with my “creative, yet insane tendencies,” was a dangerous thing. I had no control over my health or my relationships. I had no control of who came and who went, where I came and where I went. I obsessed, and still do obsess, about the little things. I obsessed over everything that I felt I could control: from taking a shower to hanging up clothes to organizing CDs to playing baseball. Perhaps it is the last that saved me.

Baseball. One simple word, eight letters long, yet it holds more meaning to me than life itself. Baseball was something passed down: generation through generation, marking the time. It is part of my past; it’s part of your past. It reminds us of the good that could be and has been. There is nothing quite like that smell of fresh cut grass, the sound of a ball hitting a mitt, or the feel of the laces and leather. There is nothing like the pain, nothing like the joy, and nothing like the sorrow, nothing like the triumph. Nothing like the hope. There is nothing like baseball.

Baseball is something I’ve told myself that I can control. It’s up to me whether the ball hits the mitt or not. It is my responsibility to play. The game can be won or lost by me. Sure it’s a team sport, but in the end, it’s between me and the batter and the catcher. That’s what I thought I knew. For once, there was something I had power over. This thought calmed me as I grew up.

So Baseball became my obsession. It has marked me through the years as I have switched from position to position, team to team. It has brought me moments of glory, moments of triumph, moments of suffering, and moments of pain. I rubbed a ball during classes for comfort, slept with my glove for security, and went to prom in my cap to keep the game close.

It’s part of me; it’s all I live for. Like the alcoholic longing for the next drink, or smoker longing for the next drag, my fingers twitch, my body sweats, my eyes water, my heart beats faster longing for the feel of the ball in my fingers and glove on my hand.

It consumes me. Smooth and rough is the ball and laces. I need it in my hand. It calms me in all I do. I need to feel the stitches rolling off the tips of my fingers. I need that snap sound of the ball hitting the glove. I need the scent of the grass, of the oiled mitt, of the muggy field in the off-season. I need the ball as I need the bat.
I need to look out under my low cap, to see my target, to stand up, releasing back. I need the feel of the ball rushing out of my hand speeding towards the plate as my body flips around to see the batter swing and hear the POP of the glove – its more than baseball, it’s my drug.

I am an addict of the game. It dominates me in every waking thought and breath. It will consume me through all my dreams until my death. I am a slave to the game.

I thought I could control it, but it controls me.