The End...and Yet the Beginning

Well, friends, it’s time. I’ve been waiting three weeks to get some distance and perspective to be able to write this post (for Nik’s sake, not my own). Sometimes in life, and baseball, unfortunate things happen. Like a season-ending injury, like perhaps a broken finger on your pitching hand. And that’s exactly where we currently find ourselves. On the DL. As in disabled list. As in, Nik’s season is pretty officially over.

This all happened three weeks ago-in St. Lucie. Luckily or maybe unluckily I was there. I saw the whole thing happen. I shot to the edge of my seat when that ball came back and hit him. Nik’s no whimp and when I saw that grimace I knew something was very wrong. In an instant, I felt everything I knew he was feeling. It was automatic empathy. The disappointment, the frustration, the discouragement. I like to think everything hit us in waves at the same time even though I was in the stands and he was in the clubhouse. I texted him immediately, are you okay? He responded that he thought so. It was swollen but they would look at it again in the morning.

Well, the morning brought no improvement. And let me interject here with the fact that he had an outline of the baseball stitches on his hand—that’s how hard it him. The trainer, Scotty, asked if I would take him to urgent care. After some poking and prodding from the doctor, he went in to get some x-rays. The doctor, clearly SO not understanding what this would mean to Nik, came back in and said well, you have a fracture! While Nik tried to talk his way out of having a splint or taking any official action to heal his hand, my heart sank. His face, oh it makes me almost tear up just thinking about it.

So here we are, three weeks later, with Nik still sporting a cute little splint. He said he felt ridiculous and grown people shouldn’t have casts. That may be true but he just looks so dang cute and helpless in it. It should come off either next week or the week after but he’ll still need to be taped and won’t be able to throw. So no more outings (which doesn’t mean no more training and lifting and running by the way). He finished the season (combined stats for both teams) with a 4-6 record, a 2.81 ERA in 89.2 innings with 28 earned runs, 22 walks and 87 strike outs. I couldn’t be prouder of him!

I’ve learned a lot in the last few weeks about the difficulties of the DL. First, you have to figure out how to be supportive and encouraging while not minimizing the fact that this is a huge disappointment and a major setback. Second (I’m horrible I know), you have to figure out how to maintain feeling bad that this happened when every bone in your body is rejoicing to have him back in your life. We get to go to dinner and the movies and people’s wedding receptions and date night. We get to see each other at times other than 10 PM. It’s amazing. But if you’re too excited, it feels awfully insensitive. Sometimes I wonder if the secret (or maybe not-so-secret) wish of my heart to spend more time with Nik caused this whole mess. Well, I’d just feel really guilty then, wouldn’t I?

And one can’t go around feeling guilty about such things as the secret wishes of one’s heart. So I determined to believe that nothing’s as black and white as it seems. There’s a whole lot of gray in the world of baseball. This injury is actually factually simultaneously the best and worst thing that’s happened this season. And how does that work? I certainly don’t know-it’s one of those mysteries of the universe like string theory and why people like Justin Bieber. But I do know it’s possible to find good in everything (don’t’ believe me? Take it up with ABBA) that happens in our lives. And I couldn’t be more grateful for this hidden blessing.