I Saw Baseball
One of the last things I posted before quitting the blog in March was a thing about trying to see baseball for the first time in two decades by risking the exertion required to travel to Seattle for a Red Sox game as they played the Mariners in their opening weekend at home. I probably should follow up.
(One of the things I’m being reminded of as I put the blog archive back up is that, yes, I’m fairly good at the words thing. This, however, is going to be pretty workmanlike despite the nagging sense that a baseball post should have some poetry to it.)
In the end, despite the concerns with autism, anxiety, and chronic fatigue, I did make the trip. Likely made somewhat easier by having been able to land a better seat than the bleachers: eleven rows back on the third base side, almost exactly on the first base path if you extended it past home plate into the seats.
Traveling to Seattle was a bit of a clusterfuck, as Amtrak was running buses instead of trains due to landslide, which wasn’t great for my stress levels right from the outset. That said, I did what I had to do and communicated with whomever I had to in order to at least to be seated up front where the windows would help take the edge of any potential claustrophobia.
Hang on. Since I posted updates to my statuslog as the trip progressed, let’s just lay those out here.
Saturday, March 30
-
Woke to a depression fueled by last night’s anger that being autistic makes the sudden switch of my Amtrak train tomorrow into a bus due to landslide that much harder to deal with, and I have so much to get done today to prepare for tomorrow, and now tomorrow morning is several times more taxing, so my day trip to Seattle, my first trip out of Portland in at least a decade, for a Red Sox game, my first in twenty-five years, very well might begin with a noticeable spoon deficit, which bodes poorly for the quality of the rest of the trip.
-
I’ve for all intents and purposes been having a slow-motion breakdown all day, because this is what happens when I don’t catastrophize hard enough before an event: my capacities to work things through are severely diminished because I didn’t prepare a script beforehand for the worst of the worst cases, and a landslide switching my Amtrak train to a bus and all the things that throws into disarray is something my catastrophizing powers, compromised by the fatigue flare, simply never considered.
Sunday, March 31
-
Well, here I go: up before dawn to head to Amtrak where my train has become a bus, in order to get to Seattle for my first Red Sox game in twenty-five years.
-
I’m on the bus that should have been a train and was first on so I’ve got that frontmost seat on the right that presents the least chance of claustrophobic anxiety attack.
-
Okay, I am in Seattle, and in my seat eleven rows back if you extended the first base line to the stands on the third base side, and the tortuous bus trip that should have been a pleasant train ride is behind me and forgotten.
-
I’d like to thank the Boston Red Sox for winning my first live baseball game in twenty-five years, and to apologize to my autism spectrum disorder and generalized anxiety disorder for what I put them through to be there for it.
Somehow, I managed the entire game without resorting to earplugs, despite the amplified cacophony that for some reason modern baseball feels the need to press down upon its spectators. Being at a baseball game required having a beer or two but I don’t drink anymore so I availed myself of a decent-enough non-alcoholic one. Everything at the ballpark was outrageously expensive but I’d budgeted and prepared for that.
The crowd never felt claustrophobic, perhaps in part because I was in an aisle seat and in part because an outdoor ballpark gives a fairly wide open sense of space.
As expected, the days after the trip were vaguely grueling in a fatigue sort of way, but that was the trade-off going in, and it means that in theory if my levels more or less are the same next year, I can consider doing this all over again. The only trouble there is that next year the Red Sox come in the dead of summer, when the heat might be enough to make me have to beg off.
That’s for later, though. For now, despite the eventual nonsense of a season, I did indeed get to see the Red Sox play for the first time since the late-90s, and play a winning game to boot, and while it’s not a thing I could do on too regular a basis even if I had the opportunity, now I know that technically, depending on the context at the time, it’s a thing I can consider.