Sports – 10 Cities/10 Years

The last time I truly cared about baseball, I was 11-years-old and Major League Baseball was mired in a work stoppage due to a financial dispute between owners and players. I was too young to understand the complexities of the dispute or what it all meant, but all I knew was a bunch of already well-paid professional athletes were not playing the game they call a job because of money. I didn’t care anymore.

Before that, though, I was a baseball fanatic, a loyal fan of the Kansas City Royals, and specifically George Brett, Kevin Seitzer and, most notably, the inimitable Bo Jackson.

Since the mid-90s, I’ve rarely sat to watch a full game. A few times I’ve gone to a game in person, and on occasion I’ll watch a couple innings of a game, but ever since I was a teenager, baseball in particular and sports in general just haven’t grabbed my attention like they did as a child (college basketball and the Kansas Jayhawks being the massive exception).

Fast forward to my year in Boston. The Red Sox are dominating in the postseason and as I type this, Boston is leading the St. Louis Cardinals 3 games to 2 in the World Series, with a decisive run-lead in the 6th game of the series. I’m sitting here in my living room with my roommate with some whiskey and peanuts and I’m watching the game. And I’m rooting for the Sox to win it all.

Now, that may make me the very definition of a fair weather fan, but don’t misunderstand me: I’m rooting for Boston to win it all not because I like a bandwagon, but because I want to be here in the city for the celebration and to see one of the great, historical Baseball cities and teams do something they haven’t done in almost a century: Win the title at home.

It’ll be a truly historical moment. Like being in San Francisco the night Barack Obama was elected to his first term, hearing the mixture of cheers and protests as the famously liberal city celebrated the election while bemoaning the passage of Prop 8, the notorious anti-gay marriage bill. Or like working in New Orleans during a celebrity-packed, super-sized Mardi Gras that was split in half by the Super Bowl (another sports event I don’t care about). My interest isn’t so much in the events (though I was heavily invested in the 2008 election), but in the collective reactions of the populace.

There is no limit of cold pills who will sneer at something – anything – enjoyed by the masses, but such kneejerk contrarianism misses out on one of the fundamental human experiences, the collective celebration.

If Boston wins the series, Fenway will be a warzone of alcohol and raging serotonin. And I… I won’t be there. I’ll be in my apartment in Allston drinking whiskey. But with Halloween tomorrow and the weekend right after, the celebration isn’t going to end tonight. The city’s collective hangover on Monday morning is going to be brutal.

Not only would this win be an historic moment for Boston, it will likely be a momentous night in the life of many fans. Somebody’s going to sleep with that Special One tonight. Somebody is going to get engaged. Somebody is going to be conceived. Somebody is going to spend the night in jail (well, probably a lot of somebodies). Somebody is going to end up in the hospital. For some people in Boston, this may be the greatest night of their life (assuming the game keeps going as it is), and for others, what will start out as a great night will, due to too much alcohol, celebrating and/or emotions, end in misery.

Meanwhile, for some guy in Los Angeles, this night won’t even register a blip in his memory.

No, I’m not a fan of the Boston Red Sox, or even baseball. If Boston were to unfortunately lose this series, I’d be mildly disappointed for a few hours and then I’d probably never think about it again. But if they win, I’ll drink a lot of whiskey (I mean, more than my normal Wednesday load) and enjoy the residual ecstasy that will be seeping out of every bar, alleyway and pore in the city. To be here in Boston during this will be an experience. A communal experience. A human experience.

And I’m a fan of those.

[This post obviously deals with suicide. Do not read on if the subject makes you uncomfortable.]

Martin Manley killed himself.

This in and of itself isn’t so unique. Thousands of suicides happen without much notice. Manley was a public figure, a former sports writer for the Kansas City Star and editor for the website Sports In Review. However, what makes his suicide bizarre is that he created a website (no longer active; going to the URL now could subject you to a virus) to explain his reasons for his actions. The final thing he wrote was a post for SIR.

In his final post, Manley explains:

The reason for my departure is 100% within my ability to control. You see, earlier today, I committed suicide. I created a web-site to deal with the many questions a person would rightfully have. It’s called martinmanleylifeanddeath.com. It went live today. In my opinion, there is no question which you could conceivably ask that I have left unanswered on that site. My goal with this post is closure for SIR.

Martin Manley shot himself in front of a police station. His final post touched on some of his reasons, but mostly he seemed to just want to put everything in order. The website he created was split into 2 categories, ‘Life’ and ‘Death.’ I won’t try to summarize or pull quotes. There was too much there to be crammed into a single blog post. The man laid bare his entire existence, from beginning to end, and if people are interested, there are mirror sites where people can still read his writings.

There are two reasons this story caught my eye (besides for the sensational angle of it):

First, he was from Kansas. He says that he lived in Topeka and then moved to Overland Park. Both of these cities are about 30 minute drives (in opposite directions) from my hometown of Lawrence. While I haven’t lived in Kansas in years and I was never one to read sports stories in the newspaper, I have to imagine that I have a lot of friends and old acquaintances that were familiar with this man, maybe even regular readers.

Secondly, there was something he wrote in his Pictures section of the site:

These are pictures of me when I was around one. My mom said I was always a happy baby. It seems odd to me that would be the case considering I’m not sure I ever really learned what happiness was as an adult.

Emphasis mine. That really stuck out to me, because my mother has said the same thing of me. She says I was her “sunshine baby.” This has always struck me as odd because for as long as I can remember, I have dealt with depression. I’m sure for anyone who has dealt with lifelong depression it’s hard to remember a time when you could be roundly described as “happy.”

If this story blows up, and it likely will because of its odd, viral nature, it will almost certainly spur a conversation on suicide. I hope it does. But if the comments on related articles are any indication, the conversation may get buried in dross. As soon as a public suicide hits the internet, the opinions start flying: People should be allowed to kill themselves. People who commit suicide are idiots. Only God can help you fight depression.

Everyone brings their preconceived ideas to the topic and nothing of importance ever gets discussed. The conversation takes bunny trails off into topics such as “Is depression genetic?,” “Is suicide wrong?,” and “Is there a God?” Personal agendas get brought in and pretty soon no one is talking about what really matters: How do people who have suicidal thoughts cope?

There is no single answer for everyone, and I don’t feel like getting into my personal beliefs on the topic. (I’ve done so elsewhere.)

It’s that phrase that keeps coming back to me: “My mom said I was always a happy baby.” We all have loved ones in our life and we think we know them, we think that we know what they’re capable of. Part of the reason that suicides so often take us by surprise is that most of us pride ourselves on being perceptive, at least when it comes to the people in our lives.

The TV show House M.D. had an episode where a main character committed suicide. At the time, there was considerable online chatter about whether it was just for shock, many arguing there was no hint that the character was going to do it. But, as unexpected as the episode was for me, it also struck me as incredibly true. My own personal experience of suicide was with someone who I (and, I imagine, most of the kids who knew him) thought was the happiest, most well-adjusted person.

I wasn’t familiar with Manley. I’m sure as people unpack his website and his backlog of articles things will come out that will make his suicide “obvious” and easy to predict in that perfect 20/20 hindsight sort of way. And maybe he had hinted at it to his readers for a while, I don’t know.

But the broader truth is that suicide isn’t something we usually can predict, especially not with our loved ones. There are those who display early warning signs, but for every person on suicide watch, there is a ‘happy baby’ who takes their families and friends by complete surprise.

I think what Manley was trying to do (what the writers of House were trying to do too) is bring this difficult conversation to the forefront and get people talking. Your opinion on Manley’s actions are irrelevant. It happened. Where do we go from here?

If there is any one person in culture having this conversation the right way, it’s the stand-up comedian Maria Bamford. She talks openly in her routine about her Bipolar Disorder and suicide. One of her best bits is called “Stigma” and you can listen to it on Spotify. I can tell you that for someone with depression, it is one of the funniest, most cathartic comedy routines I have ever listened to.

I don’t know if society will ever be capable of taking on this topic in a way that doesn’t fall back on preconceived judgments and fears, but I hope that if anything positive can come out of Manley’s death, it will be a willingness to look at this subject with fresh eyes.

Let us not hide from this.