April Baseball and First Vacations

How important is a good start?

You can’t win a division in April, but you can lose one.

Some variation on this phrase has been written many times in the field of baseball coverage, the idea being that a good start guarantees nothing about the future, while a poor start can torpedo a season before the calendar even turns to May.

On its face, the statement is illogical. Games in April count the same as the games in August or September, and there have been teams who started poorly only to turn things on in the summer. The 2021 Atlanta Braves went 12-14 in April and then won the World Series. Two years earlier, the Washington Nationals sat at 12-16 on April 30 before winning their one and only title. In 2015, the Texas Rangers won just nine of their first 25 games and still managed to win the division.

But the statement isn’t really about what’s possible or what’s happened as much as it is about the feelings of what will be possible based on what’s just happened. In today’s parlance, it’s about the vibes.

The Kansas City Royals are off to a strong start this season, with a 10-6 record and a run differential higher than every other team in baseball. Royals fans know it can all fall apart in a moment, of course. There is no guarantee the rest of the season will go as well, but it was important to avoid a disastrous start, if for nothing else than to avoid the damaged psyche and burden of digging out of that early hole. They had to keep from creating a deficit that would become insurmountable.

---

My family took a week-long trip to New Mexico last week to visit my sister and her family. Despite never taking the kids on the road for more than three hours at a time, we decided to make the 13-plus-hour drive rather than fly. It was going to be our first long trip in both mileage and duration, as we hadn’t really stayed away from home for more than an occasional long weekend ever since our oldest was born seven years ago.

Needless to say, I was terrified.

I was worried the girls wouldn’t tolerate the drive well, even with the trip broken in to two days. I was worried it would start off on the wrong foot and we would be stressed and exhausted during the stay, which wouldn’t allow us to relax and enjoy ourselves. Most of all, I was worried that this experience would color the girls’ perception of every future family vacation, or that we would no longer be able to take future family vacations like this.

Logically, I knew this was nonsense. One bad trip when they’re seven and two wouldn’t mean they’d hate the idea of going on a trip when they’re twelve and seven. But it was hard to fully convince myself of that. I wanted things to go well, but more than that, I wanted to avoid beginning their vacationing lives with a bad vibe.

---

In the weeks leading up to the trip, I agonized over everything. Which route we would take, where we would stop for the night, what we would eat, and crucially, what would entertain the kids for 13-plus hours. Was it healthy? No. But was it helpful? Not really.

Sure, I could plan the route for the most part, roughly figure out where a good stopping point would be that first night, and all of that. But once we were on the road, it was anyone’s guess how things would go. Everyone has a plan until they’re trapped in a car with a toddler and a first-grader for half a day.

So when we left Omaha, I had some idea of how I wanted things to go, as well as an idea of how I expected things to go.

Much to my surprise, the reality was much closer to the former than the latter.

Overall, the trip was fantastic. The girls did quite well in the car, outside of a few extra snack requests and Joker throwing up said snacks when we were less than 10 minutes from home. We had a few bedtime tantrums in the hotel, but I was able to pull myself together eventually. Rainbow Flower was generally a great big sister and helper, and even though neither child slept much in the car, the drives down and back were relatively calm, with the exception of the gale-force winds. Could have done without those.

And because those parts of the trip went well, it was easier to enjoy ourselves. We loved the time with my sister and family, and we also got to connect with my old college buddy and best man, who we hadn’t seen in more than a decade. The scenery in the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado was incredible, the kids got plenty of cousin time, and we even took a fun hike where they climbed tons of boulders with no fear. (I, on the other hand, had plenty to spare.)

The hike was a great end to the day until our two-year-old stopped paying attention to where she was walking and tripped over a cactus. I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted to remove dozens of cactus needles from the legs of a screaming, writhing toddler before, but I strongly recommend against it. I would rather wrestle a feral wolverine.

Still, that fall didn’t seem to bother Joker all that much. By the time we got back to my sister’s house, she was ready to play with her cousins again. Apparently, kids are pretty resilient at bouncing back from negative experiences.

Obviously, it was great that we had a fun trip, but there was no need to put so much pressure on the details, and on myself. What mattered was the fact that we got to spend a week with each other in a new place, experiencing new things. And while we didn’t wrap up a championship last week, we learned a bit about ourselves and what we could handle. Hopefully, that will put us in a better position for the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that.

The entire lead-up to the trip, I had been looking at this as April baseball. As it turns out, it was Spring Training.

This is not the cactus she fell into.