“Thanks to
Base Ball…we have been transformed into quite another people.” – Harry Wright, manager, Boston Red Stockings (1871-75)

   I didn’t get my son hooked on baseball. Instead, he got me focused on the game or, more specifically, on the Boston Red Sox. As the result of his influence, I find myself spending a part of each day not only watching the games but checking the box scores. This kind of behavior didn’t make much sense to me before I became a fan. In fact, any pastime can be made to look foolish by people uninterested in that particular avocation. How many times have we heard non-fans of sports say things like (about golf) "I can’t imagine why anyone would want to waste time trying to get a little ball to go into a hole…

    In my pre-fan days, I would say, about baseball, "The game is too slow." But, now, I find the experience of watching a Red Sox game immensely enjoyable.
   Self care is about finding ways to relax away from work, to shift our attention from the intensity of caregiving to an activity that may be completely different. Recently, I spoke with a grief counselor who
works with the families of dying patients. Among her current clients is the mother of a daughter who died shortly after her thirteenth birthday. Her life work is to provide compassionate presence day after day to people who are living the worst moments of their lives. How does she relax?
   "I love to go white water rafting," she told me, her warm eyes sparkling with joy. "And I love to ski."
   What a marvelous balance to the daily work of sitting calmly hour after hour counseling the grieving. She has been doing this work for fourteen years and says she loves it. But that is because she finds the work is meaningful and because she has learned to balance the intensity of counseling with a completely different kind of activity.
   Of course, it’s good if things we do in our free time can be genuinely relaxing. That’s one of the challenges faced by Red Sox fans, many of whom approach their favorite sport with stunning intensity and not a little negativity. Between 1918 and 2004, the Red Sox had some reason to be negative. As every baseball fan knows, that was the length of time between World Series victories for Boston’s most
beloved team.
   But back in ’04 when the infamous "Curse of the Bambino" (created when Babe Ruth, the Bambino, was foolishly sold to the Yankees) was finally extinguished. So now, one would think that Boston’s faithful, including thousands of nurses, doctors and other caregivers, can finally sit back, relax, and enjoy America’s pastime.

-Erie Chapman