Samba Pa Ti

This hurts right now. Here is what’s on my mind. I’m sitting in a hotel room, in Boston.

 It’s quiet, late night, around four or five. The sky’s darkness is beginning to peel, fading into morning. It lightens, almost becomes a chalky gray, heavy, beautiful.

 I’m staring out the window, a smile glued to my face, still awake as my father and brother sleep.

 Earlier in the day, I had attended act one of what became a latter day Boston massacre.

 By evening, I had watched game two, an extraordinarily entertaining slugfest that would prove to be superfluous in the grand scheme of affairs, the Yankees earning an ugly, but deserved W.

 Too excited to sleep, my restlessness stretched deep into night, until I finally stopped fighting and took in the skyline, enjoying a moment of peace.

 It hasn’t been easy for me the past few years. It hasn’t been easy.

 As I sat there, watching over a city asleep, a caretaker to tired eyes, I reflected.

 How lucky I was.

 With my dad, with my brother, a second straight summer buoyed by a baseball trip, this time to Fenway Park, all things green, all things alive.

Some people will say this Yankee season was a complete and utter failure. People with pens, fools with an audience to express their invalid anger, their contempt for happiness.

Anger sells. They need the anger. So they fester it, they try to make you hate what you love, so you can come back for more, so you can absorb their venom.

Not me.

 They lost. When you don’t win, you lose.

A team beats you.

And there’s nothing you can do about it.

 The sun begins to burst forth from the clouds. Outside the window, an environment begins to stir, a hum, activity, life.

 My I-Pod plays Samba Pa Ti by Santana. I just keep staring out the window, framing this moment in my mind, so I can go back whenever I want.

Anything, right now, that could make me this depressed, this angry, this confused, anything that could cause these emotions and be so utterly pointless, anything like that has to be worth something.

I’m sitting here at 5:11 in the morning, attempting to explain what went wrong. Attempting to justify my anger with simple reason.

Pitching…. Pitching… pitching….

And yet…. when I think of the 2006 Yankees, ten years from now, when this meaningless, momentary anger has long since faded, so much a Boston night, what will I think of, besides the good?

The sun will always arrive, transcendent of the bleak.

 This is why I watch Baseball. Because I like it… because it’s a part of me, because it’ll always be there.

The 2006 season, for the New York Yankees, is over.

 I mourn now, but I’ll always have that morning.

– Matt Waters