a.k.a. V.J.

Like Al Capone in the 1987 film version of The Untouchables, I believe that baseball is often a good metaphor for life. Take, for instance, a team’s starting-pitching rotation. We tend to think of the quality of each starting pitcher as being independent from each other. You have five starters, and the assumption is that each one is more or less a silo, with no effect on the team’s prospects on the days he doesn’t start.

But say one of your five starters gets injured for a long stretch and there isn’t a good replacement available. That hole in the rotation forces you to stick some tomato can on the mound who can never make it past the fourth inning. A few weeks of that situation causes the bullpen to get used more and eventually wear down. Because the relievers are exhausted, there’s more pressure on the four remaining starters to go deeper into their games, thereby wearing them down. Then you have an entire staff full of tired arms giving up more runs. That means the team is frequently playing from behind, eventually causing hitters to get demoralized or press too much and then the run production tanks. Pretty soon, your team is foundering as badly as the 2025 Orioles. It’s a cascading effect.

I’ve found myself suffering from some cascading effects in the past few weeks. In this part of the world, the whole month of May has been gloomy, cold, and rainy. Traditionally, May is when true spring weather finally shows up around here, so to have unseasonable cold and nonstop rain right now is a double bummer. Everyone is grumbling about it.

Because the weather sucks, I can’t/don’t feel like going out and doing things like walking the dog, mowing the lawn, nature hikes, or just generally being outside. Staying in the house and not exercising has increased my tendency to eat like crap and affected the quality of my sleep. I’ve been under a constant low-hanging cloud of peevishness and fatigue. It feels like something isn’t quite right; something but no one thing in particular. Life has just felt 5-percent less enjoyable across the board. Mother nature decides to serve up a crappy spring and that reality cascades down to me being planted on the couch, eating Twizzlers, and watching YouTube videos about how dismal my Orioles have been.

Fortunately, cycles — even vicious ones — can be broken. Cascading effects can work for you as well as against you. This morning, despite the suboptimal weather, I drove to nearby Liverpool and forced myself to take a stroll in Onondaga Lake Park. The whole time, it was chilly and overcast and sprinkled a little bit. As walks in the park go, it was no walk in the park. Nonetheless, I got a couple miles in and felt a lot better afterward.

When I got home, most of the lawn was dry enough to mow, so I did that. A little later on, we took our dog Millie to the beach for the first time (she wasn’t a fan). By mid-afternoon the sun started to poke out from the clouds, while a few hundred miles to the east down I-90, the Orioles managed to beat the Red Sox.

For one day, anyway, I got my 5 percent back. All it took was a little nudge to redirect the cascade in the right direction.