This was in 1940, with World War II
sweeping across Europe. Having grown up in Malta, a tiny island nation south of
Italy (for size comparison, the Denver International Airport is almost half the
land area in square miles of Malta), my grandpa had gone to Rome to attend
university. As a subject of Britain- since Malta was a colony of the British
Empire at the time- he was deemed an enemy subject upon Italy’s entrance to the
war. It didn’t help that he expressed criticism of Mussolini’s regime on the
radio, and my grandpa was imprisoned in Montechiarugolo Castle near Parma.
This in particular is what prompted
his sister to make her promise. Throughout the following war, Malta was heavily
bombarded by the Axis powers, in an attempt to bomb and starve the island into
submission and surrender, with its crucial position in the heart of the
Mediterranean being of vital importance. In 1942, Malta became the most heavily
bombed place on Earth in history. The people on the island lived through years
of air raid sirens, underground bomb shelters, and total blackouts at night.
One of my grandpa’s other sisters always loved telling the story of running
into a horse in the pitch darkness. But through it all, Malta never
surrendered, and my grandpa’s family survived.
Up north in Italy, the Mussolini
regime fell in the summer of 1943, and the German forces swept in from the
north to maintain control of the northern half of the country. Still imprisoned
in the castle, amid reports of the advancing Nazis and the specter of being taken
to a concentration camp, my grandpa escaped from his prison cell by tying
bedsheets together and climbing out the window. While running away from the castle,
a fellow prisoner of his was shot right nearby him, but my grandpa kept going
and made it out. Somehow, he made his way north to the border and hiked his way
through the Alps to Switzerland, where he stayed for the remainder of the war.
Since he survived, his sister kept
her promise and became a nun, which she has been ever since to this day.
I cannot imagine commitment and
sacrifice of that level. The most I’ve ever committed to anything is the
Baltimore Orioles. I cannot even begin to imagine devoting so thoroughly to
something outside of oneself.
Out of five children, Yvonne is the
only one left alive. My grandpa died in 2016, which is the only reason I’m even
writing about this in public. Auntie Yvonne never wanted him to know that she
became a nun because of him, and as far as I know he never found out.
The Orioles have always been a
central part of my life. After living my whole life knowing them as a last
place team, and after fourteen straight losing seasons, they finally turned it
all around in 2012 and made the playoffs. And of course they had to face the
dreaded New York Yankees in the first round, the most successful team in
baseball history, who I’ve spent my entire life seeing as the mortal enemy. Going
into Game 4 at Yankee Stadium facing elimination, something in the back of my
mind was telling me the Orioles’ smooth-fielding shortstop J.J. Hardy was going
to get a big hit in an important moment, and I kept thinking it over and over
before the game. In the 13th inning, J.J. Hardy hit a double off the
wall which scored the winning run, and the Orioles stayed alive.
When I was in middle school, I once
wore my Orioles shirt every day for a whole two-week summer camp. I miss being
able to flout standards of hygiene and cleanliness so thoroughly, without a
single care. I watched almost every Orioles game of the last decade, before I
took a much-needed break last season in 2019. Sometimes I would record the
games and watch them later, always trying desperately not to have the score or
the outcome spoiled for me. When I was in the full throes of Orioles addiction,
I would watch a game over again even if I’d found out the Orioles had lost,
even if it was 13-0. I’d suffer through the whole thing without a single
objection. Every single pitch.
I’ve devoted an inordinate amount of
time and care to sports in my life, sometimes (often) at the expense of more
important things. I live my life by the baseball season, the soccer season, the
basketball season. Sports provide a grander context in which even if nothing
else seems to matter in life, they still do. I honestly cannot imagine my life
being different.
Following graduation from high
school, after crashing out from dreaming of the Ivy League to end up enrolling
in community college, the Orioles were one of the few things that kept me
going. This was back when they were in the thick of their losing days, but I
spent several semesters exquisitely fixated on the hope of the Orioles winning
the World Series one day.
From 2012 to 2016, the Orioles had
the winningest record in the American League over those five seasons, but they
failed to win a World Series. Now, the Orioles are mired in last place again.
Sports have genuinely saved my life
on multiple occasions. More than once when I have felt like ending it all,
something in professional sports has been the one thing that I’ve been able to
hold on to or look forward to, and the one thing that has gotten me through it.
I have always had a special
connection to my grandpa’s sister Yvonne. As my godmother, she has always treated
me as her particular favorite, which is a unique experience for me. Being the
first-born, my older brother was always the center of attention in my family.
My sister has always had a special relationship with my dad. As the youngest
child, my younger brother has always had his own unique position in the scheme
of things. But to Auntie Yvonne, I am special, even though we live thousands of
miles away from each other, which I have always greatly appreciated.
I always thought that I wanted to
have kids of my own, but now I’m not so sure. It was something I never even
really thought about, I just knew that I wanted that one day. And when I was in
a relationship that seemed to me to be on a slow and steady track to
engagement, I started thinking about it a little more.
But now, drifting on the ripples of
ruined dreams, I’m not so sure I would be able to devote myself enough to being
a parent. I can barely take care of myself, let alone a child. It’s one of
those things where you always think that in the future, you’ll be grown up
enough and it’ll all work out. But here I am in the future, and I don’t know if
I’m able to truly commit to anything besides myself.
The sink dripped in time with my
thoughts. I thought of Niagara Falls, and all of that rushing water. I thought
of Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese two-way baseball player phenom. I thought of May
13, 2012, the day Manchester United lost the Premier League soccer title to
Manchester City with the last kick of the season. I thought of the woods behind
the house I grew up in. But still I could not put my finger on it.
When I was in high school, I sat one
night across the table from my friend at the Diocesan Youth Conference, a
convention where Catholic kids from all across the state gathered over several
days. It was late at night, and mostly everyone else had left the building. She
sat with her head resting on the table looking at me as we were talking, and I
had my head resting on the table looking back at her. I remember she asked me
what my biggest fear was. I don’t remember how she responded in turn, but I
remember I said it was people I care about falling into drugs. And that’s still
true today. I wish I’d stayed better friends with her and didn’t drift out of
touch, she was a really cool person.
Perhaps nothing can better
illustrate my fraught history with commitment to religion than what happened
when my family went to Vatican City. After seeing the Pope, as we sat in Mass
at St. Peter’s Basilica, I fell asleep.
I’ve fallen asleep inside a federal
prison, on a bench during cross country practice, on the floor at work. I’ve
even briefly fallen asleep at an Orioles game! (See, I’ve done it in both of my churches.) I’ve fallen asleep in
class hundreds of times, during tests, even during final exams in college. So
for my jetlagged eleven year-old self to fall asleep in the Pope’s church
wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary. But still, it happened.
Reading letters that my grandpa
wrote to his parents shortly after World War II ended, it is shocking how
outspoken he is about charting his own course. He repeatedly stresses that what
he will do in the future will not be to please them, or to satisfy the Church,
or to follow a sense of propriety. He clearly wanted to make sure that they
understood that point.
That independence runs in my family;
my mom inherited it from him, and I inherited it from my mom. Another value
that I have always treasured deeply is loyalty. If I come to be committed to
something or someone, I will stick by its side into eternity. Maybe it’s crazy
that instead of something worthwhile, I ended up making a religion out of
sports teams. And it’s very probably crazy that I decided to do that with the
Orioles.
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