Thanks for the memories, 17
It’s a perfect early spring evening; cool and saturated, the sun beginning to ease low enough in the sky to make everyone look just a bit more beautiful without disappearing us into darkness. We’re adventuring around at 3-something on a weekday, because we are underemployed and even more aggressively underpaid. On a day like this, at a time like this, those facts don’t loom like shadowy stressors – they are instead just leaving space for the surely bright, albeit currently ambiguous, futures we’ll embark upon.
We stop at Pike Place Market to giddily photograph a recently-gifted Mitch Haniger shirsey. The kerning is jagged and artless, the teal more green than blue, because it had to be custom-made. My heart is perched high in my chest, light as the soft wind that whisps up from the Sound as we make our way along First.
***
Rain from an unexpected downpour clings to the skin, coats and bags of the passengers of the northbound Route 5 and sluices down the bus’s windows, lending a distinctly human clamminess to the evening commute. We inch slowly through Belltown and join the tangle at Denny and 7th. I lucked into one of the lengthwise row seats and have my headphones in, intermittently double tapping the home button of my iPhone to toggle between the At Bat app, Slack and Twitter. The Mariners have – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – played a very silly game of baseball, befitting its afternoon streaming on Facebook. I feel wrung out from my day, laden down with the tupperware trappings and disenchanted spirit of a corporate commuter.
Waterlogged and defeated, I internally roll my eyes at the skitter of hope in my chest as they turn a double play in the top of the ninth to keep the game tied. Dee flies out, Jean manages a single, now Mitch is up. He’s done it all today, it feels greedy to hope for more. Rick Rizzs remarks on the soggy fans, covering their heads with all manner of objects as the roof remains oddly open. Then the crack, the call, and an unencumbered joy seeps through my body. The 5 trundles on and now I beam through the deluge.
***
The sky over Lake Union is beginning to darken, the J.P. PJs I donned earlier in a fit of pique now cultivating a chilling draft up my legs. I tuck the billowing bottoms into my wool socks, creating a charming pantaloon effect, and burrito roll myself into the blanket. Cold and stress collude to pull every muscle in my body taut, but there is a giddiness too, a breathless gasping of hope. There are miles, a lake, and too many buildings to count between us and the ballpark, but I swear I can hear the 44,000 voices willing their team to live for just one more day.
We’d considered buying tickets, but prices were riotously high (we’re no longer underemployed, though still underpaid) and I felt nervous to an inexplicable degree, like anything I did might cause a breeze that would send a quiver through the butterfly’s wings. So now here we are, all but alone in the dark on the side of a hill, cans empty, food long gone, WiFi hotspot only adding to the tension. Mitch swings, and as he drops low and stretches his arms out to collide bat with ball I am certain we are witnessing a man cashing in on a promise from the universe.
There is no statue, but there will be a Game 162.
***
I don’t know what Mitch Haniger’s future holds, but because of him I experienced a little extra joy, hope and love in my life than I would have otherwise. And because of him, I hold just a few more precious, golden bubbles of memories to carry with me well beyond that bright March afternoon, or that rainy June day, or the cool October night. From one human to another, I don’t think there’s any greater gift.