2022 Baseball Season: Keep The Faith
As the proudly appointed “Positivity Consultant” for Dodgers Nation, I feel somewhat obligated to be just that. But, like many of you, I too have had a hard time finding the silver lining in everything happening to our beloved sport — namely, the players being locked out by the league — a delayed season, and the never-ending negativity on social media.
Baseball to me has always been about the people, and as much as many of us don’t care much for the business itself and its leadership these days, it’s impossible not to think about these personalities we have grown to care for, difficult to rest easy in the uncertainty of the future – theirs, ours, that of the sport many of us have loved since childhood.
I have no answers today, no one size fits all proclamation of hope and positivity, but as I sit and think about the uncertain future of two men in particular I have grown to admire deeply and have followed veraciously in their entire Dodgers/MLB careers, Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen — franchise legends currently without a contract — I remember that they are men of faith – which can mean a lot of different things to different people — and that faith has seemingly played a big part in shaping both of their the Hall of Fame careers to date.
I’m also reminded that own kind of faith – in baseball, in the Dodgers, and in life – has never wavered over the years, though there have been times giving up, walking away to avoid the hurt may have seemed the safer option. Along the way — as both a baseball fan and as an adult loving with depression — dark days have always given way to light eventually, and that light sure has been burned bright when it has, providing us with countless, priceless memories as Dodgers fans, and good times under the sun.
Though this is the time of year I would dearly love to be writing about the sun being on its way again (the Beatles song “Here Comes The Sun” will forever remind me of the hopeful beginning of a baseball season), I instead leave you with the reminder that it will indeed rise again for us as baseball fans…just later than we would like.
We just need to keep that faith.
