Sometimes I feel like a character in a sitcom. I make some mistakes, have a few laughs along the way and, in the end, as the music swells, I learn my lesson. Maybe there’s a hug, credits roll, see you next week. Except I haven’t really learned anything because I need to make the same mistakes again next week and I need to emotionally learn my lesson all over again. Otherwise we’d all be deprived of 22 fresh minutes of comedy and it wouldn’t be a very long-running show.

For the last decade, I’ve taken some time every other year to write about my experiences working for the Windy City ThunderBolts. The first time I did this, it was because in many ways, the season hadn’t gone the way I wanted it to and I thought it was worth exploring all the ways in which that summer hadn’t been a waste after all. The second time I did it was because in many ways, the season hadn’t gone the way I wanted it to and I thought it was worth exploring all the ways in which that summer hadn’t been a waste after all.

Do you see what I’m getting at here? By the end of each of my essays, I come to the same conclusion: The ThunderBolts missed the playoffs, I had my share of struggles but in the end, it was all worthwhile because I got to take in some magical moments and spend my summer at the ballpark.

It’s a good lesson and one that’s certainly worth learning, but why do I have to rediscover it every season? And why do I keep insisting on being unhappy for the first half of the summer before I start to recognize that maybe working for a professional baseball team, troubles and all, isn’t such a bad way to earn a living?

As I pondered these questions, I looked back to 2019 when I was apparently a lot smarter than I am now. Back then, I came up with the crux of my problem: “If you insist on being miserable, you probably will be. But the world of baseball offers far too many opportunities for happiness to allow yourself to languish in any downcast feelings.”

I wrote that about an event that occurred in 2018, so five full years have passed since my revelation that proved not to be too revelatory because I keep writing about it again every two years. Then again, five years is a long time to run a successful TV show and plotlines are bound to be recycled. And I’ve been with the ThunderBolts for 15 years, so I’m starting to approach Grey’s Anatomy territory. That’s not even a sitcom, so I feel like I’m losing my metaphor. Maybe I’d be better off playing this straight from now on. Here goes:

This year was unique in my time with the ThunderBolts for two primary reasons. The first was the amount of time I spent at the ballpark. For ten years as the team’s broadcaster, I traveled to every road game, meaning my work was truly full-time but this is the first time I was actually part of the full-time staff. That meant, when the team traveled, I came into the ballpark every day. I stopped going on road trips four years ago, so you’d think I’d be used to it by now but this year felt different because I didn’t get to turn the ThunderBolts part of my brain off when the team wasn’t around. I was in the office, so I was still invested but I wasn’t broadcasting which just felt weird and unpleasant.

The second reason this year stood out was because in July, we played host to the Frontier League All-Star Game. This created a lot of extra work and while the work wasn’t fun, it always felt gratifying. Except when something went wrong, which turned out to be all the time, so maybe it wasn’t all that gratifying after all.

The event itself went by in a blur. After months of planning, I barely had time to acknowledge whether or not it was a success but there was one moment that I know will stick with me for the rest of my life.

The day before the All-Star Game was the inaugural Frontier League Skills Competition. We had spent over a year planning it, cooking up most of the ideas from scratch with no idea if they would play well or not. My favorite event was the precision hitting challenge. Players had to hit targets that were positioned around the field and end by hitting a sacrifice fly to a teammate in center field. We had done a couple of run-throughs prior to the day with almost no success but, after making a few tweaks to the format, we proceeded anyway, praying that it wouldn’t be a total disaster.

The first hitter was Gateway’s Andrew Penner and, when he hit the first target on his first swing, I was ecstatic. No one had done that in our trials. He went target by target, hitting each one – not all on his first swing but close enough. By the time the final ball was hit and a great over-the-shoulder catch was made on the “sacrifice fly” in center field, completing the circuit and bringing the crowd to their feet, I was so excited I almost jumped out of my chair. I checked the clock and couldn’t believe what I was looking at: 64 seconds. That number meant nothing to any of the thousand-plus people in the building. This had never been done before, so nobody knew if that was a good time or not. But I did. Going in, I wasn’t sure anyone would actually complete the event, so we set a cap of two minutes, 30 seconds to ensure that we wouldn’t go all night, waiting for hitters to finish. When the first batter clocked in at just over a minute, I was thrilled. For the first time, I knew that this event could work.

I was one of only two people who knew what that 64 seconds meant, maybe the only one. It’s surreal to be surrounded by people watching the same thing that you are but to be looking at it through a completely different lens than everyone else. That they never knew how significant that moment was is the reason that it was successful. I reveled in that success for a moment but quickly had to move on because the rest of the night was still long and draining.

That’s the sort of thing I often look for in a season that is long and draining as well: those small moments that seem to make everything else worthwhile. This year felt different in that I wasn’t able to find any in ThunderBolts games. Quite frankly, I don’t have too many positive or negative memories of the 2023 ThunderBolts. Mostly the games seemed to roll by in the background, hardly worth commenting on (which makes it a good thing that I’m no longer a commentator). Maybe my love of baseball has started to wane. Maybe my current job just doesn’t excite me as much as my old one did. It’s also possible that I’ve just been worn down by 13 years of losing and a winning season would totally change my perspective back.

When I started working in this industry, I believed the importance of it resided in the action on the field, the players, the results of the games, but I may have had that all wrong. It’s much more about the overall experience of being at the ballpark, the atmosphere, the people you meet along the way. I met many wonderful people this summer and was extremely fortunate to have had a dedicated and delightful press box crew who absolutely made the experience of coming to the park every day worthwhile.

Aristotle argued that happiness is not about fleeting emotions but about the quality of one’s life in total. Therefore, in baseball terms (I’m sure Aristotle was a great baseball fan), I shouldn’t let the frustrations of May overshadow the good that can come out of a 96-game season. And I shouldn’t let a decade of losing taint what I’ll still undoubtedly look at as a successful partnership between me and the Bolts when all is said and done.

Working for the ThunderBolts has been one of the greatest blessings of my life and, especially as time has gone on, I’ve tried to contribute as much to the organization as it has to me. I’m not always sure how successful I’ve been but I think the effort alone would satisfy Aristotle. (I’m not convinced that Aristotle is the ultimate authority on happiness but he’s spent a lot more time thinking about it than I have so I’m willing to cede to him on the issue.)

Over this season’s final month, I spent a lot of time beating myself over the head with the same old lesson: Baseball is fun! I should stop complaining so much! And even though that might not always be the best path towards feeling better about yourself, it did largely work for me. I took more time to appreciate where I was this August and I definitely enjoyed the last month more than the time preceding it.

As I write this, it’s been over a month since the last game of the season and the summer is already fading into a nostalgic blend of pleasant memories. Sometimes, I have to read back over my angry journals from the summer to remind myself that I didn’t actually enjoy it much while it was happening. That’s an issue that I’ll continue to work on. Maybe next year I’ll be better at learning my lesson in the first act. A happy, well-adjusted person might not make for a great protagonist in a sitcom but it’s probably OK to acknowledge that there aren’t any cameras rolling and I can have a good time at the ballpark, even if nobody’s watching.