Batter Up, Craig, the Upside of Failure, Puppets & Hanson

AND FOR THE other side of the coin today...

We've got two of my favorite cultural confluences -- the start of the Baseball playoffs, and a good old fashioned immigrant's story. I'm fond of saying that I'm an immigrant myself, and the son, and the grandson of immigrants. Going from one place to another, and living with a split identity is the hallmark of who I am, and the major driver in my creative work. It feeds my writer's propensity to be an outsider, and to challenge any country's ingrained cultural assumptions about itself, its people, and its place in the world.

I've always been drawn to immigrant stories, but the book I'm enjoying now, combined with the pitching trip I took to the USA last week has reminded me how so much of my makeup is also informed by the specifics of the nation of my birth, and how I was raised with those values.

I've been a Canadian citizen since 1993. I love Canada, and the city that I live, Toronto. There are other places in Canada that I love well -- be they recent crushes like St. John's or my long-smouldering, dirty affection for Montreal.

But in how I've been socialized, and socialize -- the way I choose to frame and share my opinions; the confidence I have in taking risks & approaching conflicts both creative and personal as things to be embraced and worked through, rather than avoided -- all of that is a function of the circumstances of my birth; of a sense of exceptionalism that I will never quite escape, even as I find it tempered each day by the wisdom and skepticism of those who surround me.

I'm an American. And I know why y'all love Hockey so much, but it's the Crack of those October bats that really get my blood pumping every fall.

Anyway -- the book, which I listen to on Ipod a little bit each night before I go to bed (my preferred method for bios by performers -- it's how I enjoyed Steve Martin's Born Standing Up) is Craig Ferguson's American On Purpose.

It's a wonderful memoir. And in the preface, he writes something about Baseball and America that I think is something that all writers should have pasted above their workplace.

Failure is not disgrace.

From the preface:

One of the greatest moments in American sports history was provided by Bobby Thomson, the "Staten Island Scot." Born in my hometown of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1923, he hit the shot heard round the world that won the Giants the National League pennant in 1951. Had Bobby stayed in Glasgow he would never have played baseball, he would never have faced the fearsome Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca in that championship game, and he would never have learned that if you can hit the ball three times out of ten you'll make it to the Hall of Fame.

Today I watch my son at Little League games, his freckled Scottish face squinting int he California sunshine,...and I rejoice that he loves this most American game. He will know from an early age that failure is not disgrace. It's just a pitch that you missed, and you'd better get ready for the next one. The next one might be the shot heard round the world. My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by failing until we don't.

Finally, -- a little Craig Ferguson from last night. Makes me smile.