It’s kind of weird now that I think about it; it’s the postseason, and my team isn’t playing October baseball. I don’t have to watch the Baltimore Orioles find new ways to lose games anymore. But back in March, when it was Opening Day, I didn’t know how much I would need this season, this sport.
Depression is something you really can’t plan for; it doesn’t care if you’re a full-time student — it will take you out for weeks with no hesitation. You won’t leave your apartment, or your bed (and if you do, it’ll be to lie on your couch), you won’t change your clothes for over a month, you won’t shower or eat, and you’ll fall back into your insomniac ways. It crept back in and sank its hooks in, but I still tried to take my meds when I could, tried to make it better. It was a hard couple of months, and it’s a miracle I didn’t fail the semester. It was like falling in a hole, a familiar hole at that, and I tried my hardest to climb out but then it happened: I was coming out of my episode, the baseball season was starting, and the rest feels like history.
I started going to baseball games again in 2024 after growing up around the sport. I tagged along with my dad and brother on Memorial Day and just kept going. I kept up with the Orioles’ scores and made my mom watch the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game. I think at first my family probably thought this was just a hyper fixation that I would forget about in a month (fair), but it stuck. During the postseason, I kind of fell off because the Orioles didn’t make it far (wild card sweep, thank you, Kansas City), and I had other things to focus on, but I celebrated the Dodgers’ World Series win and saw some of the off-season trades, like Nationals legend Juan Soto going to the Mets. Going into the New Year, though, I wasn’t even thinking about watch baseball, so maybe it kind of was a hyper fixation fluke. Food for thought.
What I do know is that it feels wrong to say that baseball saved my life, because I don’t think that’s necessarily true. But I do think it brought me back to life. It was such perfect timing, feeling like I hit rock bottom mentally and then finding something to hold on to, to pull me out of my head. When I think back to late March, when I had Opening Day for the 2025 season on my calendar, my Colton Cowser milkman t-shirt, and a cow print bucket hat ready wear, it gives me a lump in my throat. I was excited for something again; I was looking forward to something, and that means so much when you’re just trying to find reasons to get out of bed and keep going. I’ve had depressive episodes before that took so long to come out of, with the help of medications and therapy no less, but this time was so different. I don’t know why it happened. The time feels like a blur, like I was dissociating through the whole thing. And that’s why this sport will hold such a special place in my heart — this season too — because it brought me back to myself. I was smiling and living and feeling like a person again. And yeah, maybe my life started to revolve around watching games, but it’s so much better than the alternative.
Now, I don’t do things casually. It’s a fatal flaw I know, but if I’m in, I’m ALL in, and so I knew I had a lot to catch up on in the world of Major League Baseball. I knew the Orioles organization pretty well from the 2024 season, but I wanted to familiarize myself with the players across the league and some of the lingo I didn’t know (If you want to know what an ERA is, please ask me because it took me MONTHS to grasp). A lot of my favorite players are outfielders because that’s an athlete — the way they just annihilate themselves all over the grass is amazing and pure entertainment. You rarely see infielders spread themselves out the way outfielders do when going for balls (granted, it’s not exactly their job, but still). Tarik Skubal became household name to me in the world of pitching. If you want to see some insane shit, watch Skubal pitch; it’s truly incredible watching him dominate on the mound. Baseball edits also started to flood my TikTok (who gave the sports fans editing software, I don’t know), and they were life changing (I think about this Shohei Ohtani x Mike Trout one on the daily). I even started going to University of Connecticut baseball games because I became so in love and obsessed with the sport (the best was when I’d be watching the O’s at the UConn games because I’m nothing if not dedicated).
I can laugh now, but this was unfortunately one of the worst times I could pick to become a baseball fan because my home team (well, one of them — sorry Nat’s), the Orioles, had a truly unspeakable season. Nothing compared to what the Rockies were doing this year, but still, it was rough. But I still watched. I watched every single game, all 162. Wherever I was, if there was a game, I was watching or listening to it. At one point, I was using a VPN to combat the blackout restrictions, and I think that’s when my mom really understood how serious this was for me. One memory that I always laugh was when we had a semi-formal for Her Campus. Of course, I had to look and see when the O’s were playing because — like we’ve established — I wasn’t missing any games, and of course, the schedules lined up perfectly: they were playing in Arizona that night. So, there I was at the semi with my phone out, watching the game the whole night. Most people at that point probably would’ve just left, but I had already bought my ticket, so I figured I would try to be social, but in reality, I was tucked away at a table most of the night, trying to understand what was happening without subtitles on. My mom had even suggested I ask the bartenders to put the game on, but it wasn’t on any primetime channels, and I think the Huskies workers would’ve drawn the line at me casting my screen on their TVs.
Regarding the season, it was a mess. But it’s the kind of mess you can’t always prepare for. Throughout the season, we were littered with injuries, specifically in our pitching, and the people we had on the mound were not doing what we needed them to. I hated one of our off-season acquisitions, 41-year-old Charlie Morton — I called him grandpa and knew if he was on the mound, it was going to be a rough nine innings. It’s hard to watch a team you love and that you know has so much potential play so poorly. There are so many standout moments from this season— not all bad and not all good — but there’s one game that has stuck with me since it happened: Easter. Let’s just say it was not a happy 4/20.
Let me set the scene: it’s April and my sister gets tickets to go an O’s game for my dad’s birthday on Friday April 18, and since I don’t have classes on Fridays my mom gets me a bus ticket to come home and go to the game (my first in-person of the season). We’re playing the Reds, and we lose, but it feels so good to be back at Camden Yards that I don’t even care that much. On Easter Sunday, I get back on the bus to go back to Connecticut at around 10 am, with the O’s playing at 1:30. I switch buses in New York and start watching the game — oh, did I mention that grandpa’s pitching? Yeah. I had to (well, no, I didn’t have to, but I chose to) watch the Orioles get absolutely WRECKED by the Reds. On a bus. We went 24-2 that day. Easter Sunday, may I remind you? We let the Cincinnati Reds score TWENTY-FOUR TIMES. It was truly unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed. That day, I knew this season was not it, there wasn’t going to be October baseball when we were barely 2 months into this season pulling this shit.
And I say this with love — I love this team, I really do, but this season was far from our best, and everyone on the team and the higher-up knows it too. This season brought such a mix of emotions. Getting to watch our top prospects, Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers, get called up and make their debuts in August, and seeing Basallo get an 8-year extension were happy times. We got some aces on the mound in Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish around July and played some good baseball down the stretch. Our first sweep of the year was against the Yankees, and we had some sick walk-off moments (also we played really well when we went to extras. I would always say give the Orioles 10 innings and they can get it done). But we also saw our manager, Brandon Hyde, get let go, and we lost key veterans in Cedric Mullins and Ryan O’Hearn at the trade deadline (I’m still not ready to talk about Mullins). And all of that is why you play 162 games in the season because it all matters, from game one to game 162. You put it all out there and if you fall short, you have to be able to pick yourself back up, and if you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be playing the game.
That’s one of my favorite parts of baseball: the teams play 162 games. That’s 162 chances to win, to put your all on the field. I love this because you get to watch these teams and these players have ups and downs, knowing that every game matters at the end of the day. There aren’t dynasties or teams that dominate because of the nature of the sport.
A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote this about the last Red Sox game in 1977: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”
I think that this quote encapsulates what makes this game so special. And now that season is over and I don’t have something to watch every day, it feels a little empty, but my headspace is so much better than it was a couple months ago. I’ll make it through the winter and before you know it, Opening Day will be here.
While baseball didn’t fix me or cure me by any means (I believe in my anti-depressants more than my baseball team), I’ve come to realize, especially now that the season is over, that it gave me a spark. It brought me that feeling I had when I first got into writing. That almost childlike joy of getting to have something so special to you that people might not get, but it doesn’t matter because it’s yours. It felt so dark for a bit, and I had no idea how I was going to get out of it. I wanted to go home and just quit because it was all too much. But I was able to clear out the cobwebs in my head and breathe again. I think it’s beautiful how this thing that was such a big part of my life found its way back to me, and I was able to fall so deeply in love with it all over again.