The Times They Are A-Changin'

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know when to just eat a hot dog

Note: if this is your first time reading The Enni Way, start here to understand my summer of going (strategically) insane about baseball.

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May 3 - Mariners @ Rangers (W, 2-1)

May 4 - Mariners @ Rangers (L, 1-8)

On my way home from the Boston game, I was feeling the itch for something to change. As I mentioned in the first of these newsletters, part of going strategically insane about baseball is out of love and hope for my beloved Mariners. But another is about shaking out of a profound rut; changing my environment so I can change the habits that led me to feel so blocked. And then I saw a college guy on TikTok talking about 75 Hard.¹

Here’s all you need to know about 75 Hard: it’s a personal challenge where, for 75 straight days, you commit to working out, drinking lots of water, not drinking, and reading a little every day. I know, I know. This is borderline man-o-sphere self-optimization stuff. But in her book Better Than Before, all about changing habits, Gretchen Rubin talks about how some people are successful at implementing gradual changes and others need sudden, significant shifts. I’m the latter. I was ready for change, and that regiment has a lot of it (no supplements required!).

This shift was just one of the ways my trip to Texas was going to be a very different baseball watching experience. Because for me, going to Arlington is stepping into my earliest days as a sports fan.

In April 1994, the Texas Rangers debuted a brand new baseball stadium in Arlington. It was beautiful. Its pink Texas granite and red brick exterior featured tall arches. The facades were covered in limestone carvings of longhorns, Texas stars, and scenes from the state’s history. It was designed to evoke classic ballparks—the field had purposefully irregular dimensions and a hand-operated scoreboard. It was called The Ballpark in Arlington, and was such an elegant homage to the history of the game that it was given a nickname: The Temple.

Maybe the architect hoped that evoking the great palaces of baseball would summon comparable game play; at this point in their history, the Rangers had yet to appear in the postseason. For the next few years, it worked. On July 28, 1994 Kenny Rogers threw a perfect game there, just the 11th in MLB history. The Rangers hosted the All Star Game in 1995 and won their division in ‘96, ‘98, and ‘99. 

For a brief window of that time, I was an elementary school kid living in Arlington. My brother was in kindergarten. And my dad’s company had season tickets, so we saw our first-ever major league games at The Ballpark.

I remember mostly night games, and views from the first base line, ice cream in upside-down helmets, dad teaching me to keep score, and the time mom was hit in the gut by a curving foul ball.² We rooted for Iván “Pudge” Rodríguez, Juan Gonzalez, Will Clark, Mark McLemore, and basked in the legend of Nolan Ryan. And one vendor in our section achieved local celebrity status for his booming, nasal cry: “hawwwwwt dawwwwwwgs!”

Thank you to Mom, who always knew to keep the truly important things

The Ballpark is where my dad shook off any allegiance to the Mariners (ironically, just as they were heating up). My dad loved Texas. The Rangers became his team.

But The Temple isn’t the stadium I was visiting this trip. What ultimately doomed The Ballpark was the oppressive summer heat. In Texas, even a night game in August will leave you sitting in a pool of sweat. The Ballpark in Arlington still stands—it’s called Choctaw Stadium now, and it hosts soccer and UFL games. But in 2016, the team announced they would be building a new stadium nearby with a retractable roof and air conditioning. By that time, trends in ballpark design had changed considerably. Rather than strive to evoke historical monuments to the game, the Rangers built an enormous, $1.1 billion mall.

The new ballpark is impressive in scale, like a jumbo jet or a nuclear reactor. There are some visual elements that hearken back to The Temple, like red-bricked archways. And by the home plate entrance I saw a familiar face: a bronze statue of Pudge to celebrate his 21-year Hall of Fame career, most of it spent with the Rangers.

Once inside, I was stunned by the view from my seat. The baseball diamond is gorgeous. The wall of windows over left field gives the impression of an open-air stadium year-round. Luckily, I was there early enough in the season that the night was clear and relatively free of humidity, so the roof remained open all game. There were some oh-so-Texas elements (cheerleaders) but hey—Texas being proud of being Texas is part of the state’s campy charm.

But the concourse is a vast, anonymous, airy expanse of commerce. Again, there are nods to the stadium that was: several hot dog stands throughout are named HAWWT DAWWGS, in honor of John Hunter, the vendor my family remembers so well. But it didn’t seem like the commerce had any meaningful relationship to the baseball. My seat came with access to one of several lounges that are sunk at or below field level. The lounge was like a sports bar, with its own food and beverage options. The walls were littered with TVs where everyone was keeping up with the game we were ostensibly there to see live, because the subterranean angle made it impossible to follow. When I asked someone at the team store if they had any HAWWT DAWWG merch, he didn’t understand what I was asking. And the woman I asked about scorecards straight up didn’t know what those were. The moment I left my seat, I may as well have been at the newest, shiniest wing of DFW Airport.

Change is a part of life. Sometimes we seek it out, but most of the time it’s demanded of us. Sometimes change is progress and, though it might be uncomfortable, it doesn’t have to be scary. Staying flexible (physically and neuroplastically) is important. Starting this new routine was a way to shock myself out of a bad place—to cut out distractions and regain focus. My dad becoming a fan of the Rangers was his declaration of independence from the Pacific Northwest, the only home he’d ever known. He chose Texas and he chose the Rangers. That’s a powerful thing.

But as comedian Josh Gondelman said recently in his mini-special Trauma Response: “Not all change is progress; not all the new stuff is good.” Chase Life Park is where plenty of kids will see their first major league games and they’ll remember them—hopefully—with intense fondness. But I’m not going to pretend that anything about the place is even trying to evoke the magic of watching baseball the way its predecessor did. It’s a generic event containment structure, like dozens of others being built all over the country. “ I think that is one of the great projects of aging, is to be open with your heart and mind to the future, and the beauty that change can bring into your life, into other people's lives,” Josh told me and Zan on a recent episode of On the Bleachers. “And then part of it is being discerning with your perspective that you've gained over years and knowing: this part stinks.”

The Mariners won the series against the Rangers. We were sitting at #1 in our division. Arlington isn’t what I remember, but it doesn’t have to be. The Rangers won it all in this strange new place, and I’m focused on the Mariners’ quest to do the same.

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🗣️ This week’s On the Bleachers, Zan and I talk about her getting really into… tennis! Plot twist.

🏳️‍🌈 Happy Pride Month, everyone 🧡💛💚💙💜

1. The program is for 75 straight days, you do five things: drink a gallon of water; stick to a diet (any diet; no alcohol); work out twice a day for at least 45 minutes each time, and at least one of those sessions must be outside; read 10 pages of a book; and take a picture to track your progress. If you want to know more about 75 Hard, I recommend this Reddit post and really, that’s all you need. I listened to the creator, Andy Frisella, talk about creating the program on his podcast, but that guy seems like an annoying gym bro at best, and a straight up grifter at worst. And his intentions aren’t important. Truly it’s just a simple structure: 5 steps, every day, for 75 days.

2. Luckily she was being super-Mom and holding all of our coats on her lap, which softened the blow. But a woman sitting behind us grabbed the ball and wouldn’t give it to my brother, who was like 5 years old and the most adorable little guy in the WORLD, whose mother had just been beamed by said ball! It was a fucked up thing to do, and she got booed out of the stadium… with the ball. I hope whoever she gave it to cherishes it and looks at it every god damn day!