It’s strange to walk through the Jays clubhouse as a member of the media. I feel like I’m walking over a grave, or, at the very least, trespassing. Maybe I am, or maybe it’s just my perception. It’s hard to say.
Funny thing perception. For a while, during my player days, I was actually called “media” by some of my teammates as an (intended to be derogatory) nic-name. It was no shock to me as I knew why they did it. I liked to talk with the media a little to much, and then there was the whole book writing thing. In case you didn’t know, those are two of the things you’re not supposed to do as a player—write from within, or make close, open friends with members of the media. Both are seen as channels to let people who don’t belong into player’s personal lives in, or let personal things that shouldn’t be outed, out.
The writing of my books was something I always longed to do, but to make them sell I needed the media. That was the reason I talked to the media so much, at least at first anyway. But after a while I realized that the media was easier to talk to than the players. You’d think that wouldn’t be the case, what with our common bond, but such was the case for me. Media folks are just regular people, very few of them act elitist or suffer from superstition or paranoia or ego. Oh, and they like players who write… Im not to saying that all players are pricks, some are classy and some are A-holes—as it is in any group—but their is an aura in the big leagues that augments reality for everyone lucky enough to be there, at least to some degree.
In short, there is a bubble, a Big League bubble, and inside the bubble ridiculous and unreasonable things sometimes make perfect sense. At its worst it can be very much like a cult, where in thinking contrary to the cult can get you into bad social situations, shunned, or called a cancer. It can be something as simple transgressing the law of, no one else does it, so you’re wrong for doing it, or as blatant as fighting with a teammate in the dugout about a bad play, or an affair, or racial slur.
I’ll be the first person to tell you that my personal ambitions didn’t always gel well with players. But only because they were players, bubble dwellers, members of the collective. I worried for a time that I’d be haunted for the rest of my life for defying this collective, that the bubble would close around me forever and I’d never be able to go back to my past with any sense of pride or satisfaction.
Now that I come back, I realize two things. One: the bubble is a joke. The game ends for everyone and if you stick around in the bubble too long, or give yourself over to it too fully you end up dependent on it. Like an addiction you need that filter that, when you look through into the outside world through it, reminds makes you see people as less than your elite status, while those who like in are to see you as glorious for your choice of occupation. It many ways, it’s isolates you, and changes your perception of yourself in an unhealthy way.
The second thing I’ve noticed is that, to quote Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts”. Reality is a subjective thing, and the more time I spend looking at myself through the one I’m not longer a part of, the less effective I’ll be in the one I now occupy. I can’t got back, but I can move forward.