It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Quite honestly, back in April, I couldn’t discern the clock ticking on this season - even though I knew it was. The steady metronome of the second hand, moving inexorably towards the afternoon of September 3 is all that I can hear now. Certainly, September’s a pretty rough time of year for fans of minor league baseball because it signals the end of the season and the end of summer. Here in Ottawa, the pain is exacerbated by the knowledge that there is no light at the end of this long winter of discontent; there may not be a 2008. That reality is no longer within our hands to shape. We had our chance chances to make a go of it here, to make things work from an economic standpoint, but that time has now passed. It’s now been left for lawyers and politicians to debate, mediate and ultimately settle the future for us - to borrow the sports metaphor, we no longer control our own destiny. We blew it. It’s a truly helpless position, made all the worse by the realization that one of the players at the table has been remarkable in their consistency to do the wrong thing. I’ll let you decide which “player” that is. At this point, there’s very little use in spending more time on the subject - come what may.
During a guest appearance on yesterday’s internet broadcast, I had a lighthearted exchange with Dan Carle - it seems that something I’d blogged had been misinterpreted by the radio voice of the Lynx. We went to the tape for a review of the article in question, but before we got there I was absolutely confident that I’d be vindicated, because the first rule of the blog has always been Thou shalt speak no evil of anyone in the Ottawa Lynx organization. (And I think I’ve been cleared on the Dan Carle incident; sarcasm’s always difficult to convey without some qualification…, and I don’t mean that sarcastically.)
Which isn’t to say that I always got it right on the blog - there are a few things I wish I hadn’t written, but on the whole I’m happy with what I’ve done. I think - I hope, that I got most of it right - hopefully without making a caricature of myself; I’m pretty sure that this week’s increased blog traffic can largely be attributed to people waiting to see what train wreck I’ll create this time.
Why did I blog? Because I couldn’t just do nothing. To borrow a cycling analogy, I saw a gap that had opened and I tried to close it. It was important. At least it was important to me. I saw an organization…, a group of people whose efforts were being run down by local politicos and ignored by the press. Worst of all, they were faced with an entirely indifferent, inattentive audience - and yet they refused to throw in the towel. Indeed, through its complete and utter disrespect, Ottawa’s the one that declared no mas in this matchup. Make no mistake on this point: The Lynx have never wanted to leave Ottawa. Ottawa abandoned them. I wanted no part of that central truth, and so I started the blog. If nothing else, I hoped that it would bring others around, that they would have their own epiphany, their road to Damascus moment like I had had. And I hoped that through the blog, people within the organization would realize that there were people like us who hadn’t quit on them.
Why did I blog? It’s never been about the baseball. If you wanted baseball news, you could always just pick up the local paper. Nope. It’s been about the simple yet complex joy of being at the park with Doris and the kids, and more importantly a tangible and (hopefully) meaningful display of support for people we’ve come to greatly admire and deeply respect. Cue the tape.
Once again, as it has been so many times this season, my time is up.
I think I got it right.
