It was smoldering hot as I arrived at Civic Stadium for the Eugene Emeralds game Thursday night. The decrepit stadium was built in 1938 and now the warped roof is cabled to the stands. I was officially covering the slums of American baseball, sitting in what they called the press box, which amounted to nothing but two rows of stands carved out with green plastic lawn chairs. I nodded to my fellow press box members, but was quickly dismissed as an outsider.
I had to ask myself, Why am I here? What is my purpose? The answer was clear; I was there to cover the people and their escape from reality. My central theme was complacency; the self-satisfaction people experience in their day-to-day lives, accompanied by poignant unawareness of the world.
Subsequent to studying the freaks and geeks surrounding me in the press box, I began to wonder how long I could put up with watching the game. A game nobody cared about, especially not the 3,255 person audience, a large majority of which had come to enjoy $1.50 beer on “Thirsty Thursday.”
The loud speakers blared Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” after the third inning and the beer garden was calling my name.
“Ivan!” And again, “Ivan!”
It was Dan, a fellow graduate student from the University. “How is the game coverage going?”
“Game coverage?” I asked. Oh yes the game. “Who cares; none of these people, huh?” I stood up, grabbed Dan and claimed that we had to make our way to the real story.
The beer garden was nothing but a seedy bar within the park; before I knew it I had finished two cold ones.
Unexpectedly, the game took on a new life. These people were drunk and had no idea what was happening on the field. If you are going to avert reality you might as well go big; to borrow from Jack Kerouac, “The only people for me are the mad ones… who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” Everyone at that moment just wanted to let go, to forget about suffering, to drink to the ever-disappearing American dream. Better to boldly and passionately pass the time than to slowly wither away.
The game was no longer important; the real news of the day began to swirl in my brain like a hurricane. The truth was that on this Thursday the world was in disarray. Two days earlier there was a series of terrorist train bombings in Mumbai, India. This ruthless carnage left at least 200 people dead and more than 700 injured.
Our own country, at war with terrorism, a faceless and perhaps unconquerable monster in addition to myriad other problems. More than 2500 American fatalities since the war began on March 19, 2003. After waging war for 3 years, terrorism continues to rear its ugly head.
“Are you going to be standing in the way for the rest of the game?” shrieked a drunken woman. I awakened from my desolate daydreams and turned toward her party. “How am I supposed to enjoy the game with you blocking my view?”
“Do you mind if I interview you for my story?”
I found out that she comes with her company every year for the cheap booze, without which she and her cohorts would have little interest in the game.
I asked for her opinions on the news of the day regarding wildfires and the ever-lingering theme of war.
“I don’t like to think about those things right now, I’m here with my friends and family trying to have a good time. What kind of story is this anyway?”
I continued to question people about why they had come to the game; receiving answers like, “to get my money’s worth on beer” and simply “to get drunk.”
At one point I launched a flirtatious conversation with a former sorority sister from the University, asking, “What was the big news of the day?”
Puzzled, she searched for an answer. “It’s not as hot today as it was yesterday,” she said. “Ya know what, I go home and I sleep. I don’t watch the news. I don’t need a negative influence in my life.”
I needed a beer after dealing with these people; unfortunately, the beer service ends after the seventh inning. Their attitudes took hold of my entire thought process. Like so many Americans, they were filled with complacency and ignorance, wrapped up in their own material worlds with no need to learn about the real world and those who suffer day after day. To quote Thoreau, “most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”
At that moment Craig Cooper, an all-American from Notre Dame, blasted a solo home run that sealed victory for the Ems. The ball was not the only object leaving the park. Dan and I stumbled out into the parking lot and headed to the nearest bar. The game proved to be more than I could swallow, so I began to drink myself into a frenzy of crazy rants about the world. The rest of the night was nothing but a blur of madness and drunken desolation.
The next morning my roommate John shook me out of my drunken coma. I was surrounded by a feeling of angst and soullessness, as though the living world were now nonexistent, as if I were outside my body. I dragged my zombie-like remains into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. Who was this hideous creature starring back at me?
I had a sudden epiphany, an intuitive grasp of reality. My goal the night before was to go out and do a story about the scum of Eugene and my fellow oblivious Americans. The truth is I am the monster, nothing but a lost drunk in a world full of suffering and misdirection, soaking in my own hypocrisy.
Ivan Miller is a University graduate student in Journalism