Got 'Til It's Gone

No team in baseball has ever come back to win a five game series
after having lost the first two games. No team, that is, except for the
New York Yankees who, in their defeat last week of the Oakland
Athletics, made baseball history. The Yankees lost two home
games in a row, forcing them to make a comeback in the foreign
land of California, far from fans, far from home. But the Yanks
made it back to New York intact, did a bang-up job on those pesky
A's, and proved to the American public the power of perseverance.

But baseball feels different this year. The win, win, win attitude has
become a little less pronounced. (Or, at least, the "lose, Yanks,
lose" attitude has dissipated some). My own mother, devoted Red
Sox fan that she is, conceded: "I hate the Yankees, but this year I'll
give it to them. New York deserves it." Baseball means something
more than it did last year and the year before that. Baseball means
more this year than perhaps it ever did, because it signifies that
American enthusiasm is still alive and kicking: We will not
go gently into that good night.

Because even with anthrax threatening our respiratory systems,
people are still congregating in public places, indeed in the most
sacred of public places, the ballpark. I can hear the crowds
cheering and there is no sense at all that the American experience
has been ruined. Tickets are sold out. Bars are packed with rowdy
fans. This is not the atmosphere of tragedy.

"Don't it always seem to go," Joni Mitchell sang, "that you don't
know what you've got 'till it's gone?" Not so true, Joni. We know
what we have, what we still have. We know our rights and
our freedoms. We know the feeling of a crisp October evening, the
wind brushing against the window, the drone of the sports
commentators, the distant cheers of fans. We know and
appreciate all of this more than we did last year or the year before
because this year we are at war. This year looking ahead seems
grim, so we look at the now.

This is the now: It is October. The weather has started to change,
which means no more shorts or T-shirts or days spent in the
sunshine. This is the now: It is the precious few weeks before the
World Series begins, which means the crackle of AM radio and the
fizz of a good beer. This is the now.

I was out walking in the fall chill and a friend said to me, "I hate this
weather." He was shivering, as was I, and he tucked his hands
into the pockets of his jacket with force, as if to say, "Six more
months of this?"

"No," I replied. I had waited weeks for the first sharp breeze, the
first sign of fall and, despite the cold, I was enraptured. "I love the
changing of seasons."

And I do love the changing of seasons, the reminder that
everything is constantly in flux. And I do love baseball, and it is only
when I sit down and think about these things—really think about
them—that I truly appreciate them. It is only when I think about how
short this life is that I know that I wouldn't want to spend it
anywhere else.

And so I learned to appreciate life without forgetting how to live. I
continued to listen to the games, to immerse myself in the glory of
baseball—and so did everyone else.

The point of all this, of this terrorism, of this relentless series of
attacks on American soil, is to make us fear our own freedoms.
The point of all this is to make us fear our culture, to make us
wonder if maybe we are too lax in our laws, if maybe our society
deserves some major renovation. The men who flew those planes
expected us to stop everything, to stop living the way that we live. It
was a well-organized exercise in uprooting American values, in
removing the Americanness from America.

Hannah Selinger is a Columbia College senior
majoring in English and comparitive literature