So wrote Bart Giamatti about baseball in 1977. Giamatti, who was the president of my university while I was attending, would go on to become the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Some people fail to see the connection between my two favorite sports, baseball and footy. But Giamatti’s quote about baseball seems as if it could have been written with footy in mind -- especially if one is a GFC member in 2013.
It is now Wednesday morning here in Beverly Hills. The date is Sept. 25, 2013, a couple of days before the Grand Final and footy has broken my heart.
Another one of my college professors, author Elie Wiesel’s favorite phrase was, “And yet.”
And yet.
And yet as much as it will hurt to watch the Hawks or Dockers take this year’s flag – one I was convinced was rightly our own – I can’t possibly imagine, cannot even conceive of somehow trading my GFC membership to be part of the purple haze or Hawk-rabble. Not even this year. Not even with a premiership in hand. I’m just as patriotic as the next guy, but when I recently heard “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” at Disneyland, I couldn’t help but cringe. Good thing the LA Opera is currently performing “Carmen” (on Grand Final day, no less).
This year we fell less than a straight kick short of the GF, and as much as we can’t help but feel “so close, yet so far,” ultimately, we still have something that no other team has. We have the Geelong Way, so ably embodied by such Geelong luminaries as coach Chris Scott, skipper Joel Selwood and non-players such as Geelong’s first directly-elected mayor, the recently retired Keith Fagg, a class act if ever there was one.
I’ve always considered my baseball Dodgers to be the classiest team in baseball. Well, everything about the Cats from Frank Costa, Colin Carter and Brian Cook throughout the entire organization says that the Cats are the classiest team in footy: a team which belongs to our members, as well as the Geelong Community at large, both in and out of Geelong.
Who doesn’t hate losing? But isn’t it an unfortunate fact of life for most of us who aren’t Charlie Sheen? Chris Scott said it so well: “I think we’ve won well in the last few years, and it’s really important that we lose well.”
Yep, if we have to lose, let’s at least lose well. Playing the game as it should be played. Doing things as they should be done.
Thank you Chris Scott, Joel Selwood, and the entire Cats organization for a thrilling year of footy. Heartbreak is sometimes just part of the experience of living, and I feel so lucky and so incredibly proud to be a Cats member, to have made the pilgrimage to Geelong this year and to have experienced first-hand Kardinia Park and the glory that is both footy and the GFC.
Bart Giamatti once said: “The largest thing I've learned is the enormous grip that this game has on people, the extent to which it really is very important. It goes way down deep. It really does bind together. It's a cliche and sounds sentimental, but I have now seen it from the inside."
Little did Bart know that he wasn’t only talking about baseball. He was also talking about footy. And how spot on he was. It does connect us. Even across time-zones and over oceans. And sometimes even across time. Tribalism isn’t always a bad thing. Not when your tribe is the Geelong Cats.
So while I continue to cheer on my Dodgers into the baseball postseason with the hopes of a dual Dodger-Cat championship (last achieved in 1963) dashed for this year, it is with great hope that I turn to 2014, footy-wise, even before this year’s Grand Final.
Yes, this year we lost well, if oh-so-heart-breakingly. All things being equal, let’s do our best in 2014 to win well. And let’s do it like nobody else can. Let’s do it the Geelong Way.
John Mirisch is the Mayor of Beverley Hills, California and along with his son Vin is a Geelong Cats member.
