Reese Kaplan -- Sometimes Life Interferes With Enjoying Baseball

It’s been a rough few months for me personally and as such it’s a little difficult to get too caught up in what the Mets are doing right or the things they’re failing to accomplish.  Every now and then you get a gut punch (or two or three) that stirs you back to the reality of things as they really are and you begin to understand that a missed hit and run, a caught stealing, a fat pitch given up over the middle of the plate or a less than optimal fielding play really don’t seem all that important.

At the end of March I left a job I’d held for 14 years and it was the result of doing a favor for the company executives trying to resuscitate a client account that was threatening to walk away.  My thanks for that was losing my job when the client said on day one they wanted us out of there the moment our contract ended.  As a result, my company had nowhere for me to go as I’d recommended someone be promoted to replace me at the account here in El Paso and it clearly was not his fault that this sequence of events transpired.

After working the account for its final six months, the company was actually very nice to me, offering to extend my last official working day to April 1st which would buy me another month of healthcare.  They also gave me a severance package that I guess was a reward for 13.5 years managing and helping them profit from their biggest account.  I assumed it would not be all that difficult to find a new job, but like they say never assume.  

My wife and I had booked a trip to Egypt a year ago but then the COVID pandemic hit and we were told to postpone it.  She wanted to cancel the trip but I said it’s not as if I had a job here I would be missing and it was already paid for, so we toured the pyramids and other artifacts.  

Then came the next blow -- we had to put our dachshund down who had lost his appetite and muscle control.  He was a rescue, so there was no clear knowledge of his true age, but from the amount of gray on his muzzle he was clearly in his autumn years.

As luck would have it, just before we left for Africa a consulting firm in Georgia had a client here in El Paso in need of help.  It was not exactly the kind of work my certifications and advanced degrees matched, nor did it pay the rate to which I’d grown accustomed, but it was a nice environment and it gave me something to do.  I paid off my mortgage to manage to accommodate things with a lower income.  After going through the usual unemployment mood swings, I came to accept this twilight of my own professional existence as acceptable and now I’m looking forward to the day when I will officially retire.

Later that month we discovered a tumor on the leg of my bigger dog and it’s been a regular matter of shuttling him in and out of the veterinarian.  He didn’t react well to many of the medicines and his appetite was off, but a change in prescriptions helped him recover a somewhat more normal lifestyle.  The leg is badly swollen and at over 15 years of age it’s not likely prudent to subject him to surgery or amputation.  Today I woke up to uncontrolled bleeding from the wound area.  I’ve confined him to his crate for the day and will look to make a decision about him tomorrow.

We can’t do that today because as my wife was flying back from a business trip at the end of the week she received word that her older sister was in the hospital with some breathing difficulty.  She is asthmatic so it was not unusual for her to have respiratory challenges.  The nurses said she was hanging around the ER while awaiting for a bed to open up.  

While joking with the nurses she coded and died very suddenly.  It was the result of lung issues connected to her asthma.  Somehow I was able to get her on a flight to South Carolina at 6:00 AM Saturday to join her family at this difficult time.  I drove her to the airport at 4:00 AM and returned home to nursing the sick dog.

Last night I was watching the Mets-Dodgers game and for the first time in my entire life found myself totally disinterested.  Yes, I’ve lost a sister-in-law, the financial security of my old job, and one dog already with another one having a very short term lease on life.  

My other two little dogs are both north of 12 years old, so I will be facing their end soon, too.  Somehow whether Aaron Loup got out of his inning, Brandon Nimmo drove a single in extra innings to tie the game or whether ex-Met Billy McKinney caused irreparable harm really didn’t seem to matter much at all.  

I apologize for this outpouring of emotion.  It’s not designed to be a “Woe is me!” kind of acclaim for pity.  It’s just a reminder that sometimes we forget baseball is entertainment to take us away from our day to day lives.  Occasionally, however, it’s not quite enough.  These situations will become memories and I’ll enjoy the game again.  I think it was the cumulative result of being alone here last night.  Everything just kind of came together at once and not in a good way.  Tonight I’ll retrieve my wife from the airport if the weather is cooperative to allow her plane to land.  Monday I will go back to work and slowly the gears will start turning again.  Then I’ll be the one leading the cheers of, “Let’s Go Mets!”  2021 may not be their year, but like life events, it too shall pass.