Getting your money's worth...

During some rousing discussion in class today about the cop-out that is Cather's epilogue to The Song of the Lark, I was reminded of a Hemingway quote that I took note of while reading The Sun  Also Rises, and it got me to thinking about life and how it works. Here's the quote:

You payed some way for everything that was any good . . . Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was ;earning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money's worth. The world was a good place to buy in.

Aside from re-realizing why I love Hemingway so much, this quote got me thinking about life, especially in regard to the most recent version of my philosophy on how it works. See, since so much of my life has revolved around baseball, I tend to relate everything back to it. Recently, I've realized that one of the things I love about baseball so much is how, in my opinion, it reflects life so well.  In giving some advice earlier this morning, I brought up the old analogy of the scales of life, and of balance and harmony and equal & opposites and all that. In baseball terms, it goes a little something like this:

A player that's a .300 hitter is going to hit .300. That's it. Slumps come and go, and they are bound to run their course no matter what you do about it. Like, as former Padres' catcher Terry Kennedy said, the common cold. As a player, you just keep plugging away, putting your work in and moving forward with the faith that, eventually, you will pull out of it. And, if you're a .300 hitter, you will. Then, in theory, for every slump, you're going to have a hot streak to balance in out. For example, you might hit .200 in April, but go on a tear in June and hit .400. Those two months, roughly, cancel each other out bringing you back to your true average.

To put a face to this argument, let's take a look at current Pirates' first baseman, Adam LaRoche, one of the better examples of this theory. To start, LaRoche is a career .273 hitter. In 2008, LaRoche had a typically horrendous start, hitting just .163 in 23 games in April (and one in May). However, he also had a typically strong finish, hitting .321 in 23 games in September and October. Now, let's take a bigger sample. In 87 games before the All-Star break, LaRoche hit .251; in his 49 games after the All-Star break (he spent some time on the disabled list), he hit .304. What was his average, when all was said and done, at the end of the season? .270, just three points below where his career numbers would indicate.

See, that's why they play so many games in a baseball season. The nature of the game is that there are going to be ups and downs, highs and lows, much like the nature of life. But that's why we (hopefully) get so many days in life. You can't judge things by a day or a week, a month, or even a year. You've got to try and see the big picture, the entire season, the entire career. Because, in time, things always even out right to where they should be.

So, how does this relate to Hemingway and Willa Cather? Well, that Hemingway quote is describing that very thing. In order to gain something, you've got to give something up. Nothing comes for free. Why do hangovers exist? To balance out the feeling of the night before. They are the price we pay for that great feeling of drunkenness. Just like slumps and hot streaks, just like paying for things---this is the way of the world.

This is what Cather ignores in her epilogue. In order to be great, you've got to make some sacrifices. The entire novel pays this close attention, and does a fine job of describing Thea's sacrifices as well as her successes. Unfortunately, the epilogue completely ignores this fact.

But seriously, read the book. It's awesome.