Turn the Page

This afternoon when I was working out, listening to my iPod, Metallica’s version of the Bob Seeger classic “Turn the Page” rumbled into my head. While the song has alway fired me up – for reasons I will get into later – today the tune immediately brought me back to last night, recalling what blares thru the air of Nationals Stadium when their big slugger Adam Dunn comes to bat.

I know that in the past I have extolled (some may say over-extolled) the virtues of the game, but, at the risk of belaboring the point, let me just say that what an AWESOME and celebratory environment it is where your theme song rings out when you come up to bat… hmmm, what would by my theme song? Well, last year I think it was “Suddenly I See” because somewhere along the way I had an epiphany of what I wanted to be and why the hell it meant so much to me. This year… maybe “Werewolves of London”… DUNH-DUNH, dunh-dunh, DUNH-DUNH-dunh-dunh; DUNH-DUNH, dunh-dunh, DUNH-DUNH-dunh-dunh. “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain… he was looking for a place called Lee-ho Flicks, oh to get a big dish of beef chow mein, ah oooooo-uh…” -- you get the idea. (By the way, I don’t care if those aren’t exactly the words, it’s how I hear them.) Why? Because it is a song that acts like it is telling a real story … You know: the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent, lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair…you’d better stay away from him, he’ll rip your lungs out, Jim… I’d like to meet his tailor!” Yeah! So would I. So would I. Every time I hear that song, I pick up the pace or dance in my seat. Make-believe rocks!

Yeah so the theme song bit when players come up to bat and the random “make some noise” flashing signs on the scoreboard simply represent the sheer joy and euphoria of being out with the crowd. I know I feel it every time I am at the ballpark, but the sentiment really hit home last Saturday when we went to a Nats-Cubs game with my buddy and his six year old daughter. It was her first baseball game. Dad thought that she might get bored with it after an hour or so, so we took separate cars, but she hung in there and was whooping it up all night. By the later innings she was imploring me to convince her dad that she could sleep there that night and go to the game the next day. She loved it! Finally, she had found a place where it was not only socially acceptable, but encouraged, to eat junk and scream and yell your head off at random intervals! Ah, yes. Maybe baseball is a game for the six year old kid in all of us. After all, they are playing what amounts to a kids’ game, right? But then it is also an old man’s game too, as evidenced by the geezers who offered to give the Mets tips on fundamentals: http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/ny-liball1512969594jul14,0,3814921.story


Ah, bless the Mets.

So, getting back to the theme song … Now, I am pretty sure not many of you have a healthy respect for Adam Dunn, but take it from me… he’s 5th in the National League in home runs so far (with 24), one behind the 2, 3, & 4, guys, but 10 behind big Albert Pujols who is really in a class of his own. If I recall correctly, he hit homers in four of the seven games that I have seen in person this year. So here he is: a bona fide power hitter on a team that has a 28-66 record …

He must feel like he is “on a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha” listening to the “engine moaning out its one note song”: a leader of a team that, however poor their won-loss record, leads the league in home runs but, like Adam Dunn, has shaky defense and they just can’t ever seem to consistently get it together.

“You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to ex-plo-ho-ode!” So, there he is: "up on the stage, playing the star again" … there he is, "turn the page." As he gets the rush from crushing the ball, he must also yearn to hide, to tuck himself up inside his ballcap.

As I alluded to earlier, that song moved me the most, made me want to clutch steel or pound my feet into the treadmill when I was at sea on an aircraft carrier. Allotted only about 30-45 minutes of time to crank out 100% of the day’s frustrations, sweating from the triple digit heat … “as the sweat pours off your body like the music that play-hey-eh” … chasing borrowed time – time to myself – and running away from having too much time – the time I spend working and we all spend away from home for many months… “later in the evening, when you lie awake in bed, with the echo of the amplifiers ringing in your head; you smoke the day’s last cigarette, remembering what she sa-he-head, what she said. …So here I am, on the road again [at sea again], here I am up on the stage [called on to lead], there I go, playing the star again; there I go… turn the page.”

In reconsidering it all now, I also find that I think that the alternating monotony and intensity is maybe a little like what my boss probably experiences on the road or even in and around Washington on a daily basis in public speaking events, meetings, press conferences, cross-talks where he sees and says and hears the same things perhaps too often. And he always tries to make what he says sound fresh for the fresh faces … preaching and pleading to keep people working hard, focusing on their tasks, saving lives for sure, saving money maybe … imploring diplomats and his counterparts to listen and learn as well as he does. To be just the leader and the star again, quietly trying to set the example, but “you always seem outnumbered but you don’t dare take a stand, take your stand” because the press or Congress or the Violent Extremists might mow you down. Hmmmm.

All of us who thrive and strive in these worlds, be they baseball, sea duty, or public service, at times just want to turn the page.

But what I think we’ll find when we do, when we flip back, we’ll find that the story – because we lived so intensely, cared so much, and screamed so loud – the story was probably pretty darn good.