Like a catcher trying to frame a pitch for the umpire, we’re waiting on the call.
How do we validate feelings of Vin Scully Separation Anxiety as a real deal? Is there a Post-Poet Depression messing with us?
Even if grief counselors aren’t available at Dodger Stadium on Opening Day, can we rationalize there’s no cure to be found in feeding our neurosis with a dozen Dodger Dogs smothered in onions and tears?
Southern Californians have had Vin Scully as their entry point for Dodgers baseball coming up on 60 summers. Now, there is a real need for some kind of psychological exit strategy. One that not only accepts the Hall of Fame broadcaster’s decision to go into retirement last October but deals with some reluctant apprehension of what comes next on Opening Day 2017 and he’s not there.
No one said this was going to be easy.
Get a grip. Deep breath in. Slow breath out.
Better? That’s actually a real start to this process.
Dr. Randye J. Semple, who specializes in mindfulness-based therapy, depression, mood and anxiety disorders as an assistant professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, offered to help identify what’s going on here and how we get our heads and hearts around it.
“I would not put this into the category of separation in the anxiety realm at all, but more of what happens during bereavement, where there is depression and loss,” she said. “What you hear now is the way people talk when a favorite grandfather passes away, someone for whom we had a fondness and a connection. There has to be a grieving process.”
Using mindfulness techniques, Dr. Semple suggests the best coping mechanism is to focus on what is happening in the present. When attention is focused on a sad or unpleasant event, there are negative emotions – often remorse, self-blame, regret, maybe some anger, no matter how pleasant the situation may have been. Compare it to the feeling when you get home from a great vacation and then have to go back to work.
Conversely, when your mind wanders into the future and tries to anticipate what will happen when listening to a game with someone who isn’t Scully – that would be young Joe Davis, who is taking over as the primary signal caller – there might be emotional feelings of worry and uncertainty. The mind often fills that unknown with catastrophic anticipations.
“Something in the past isn’t going to change – Vin Scully has retired, and ruminating over that is unproductive,” Dr. Semple said. “Ruminating about the future and his replacement isn’t productive, either.”
Shifting to a meditative state “isn’t about the power of positive thinking or pushing things away in the mind,” she added. “The technical term is decentering, seeing one’s thoughts as thoughts, without emotional attachment to the thoughts. We tend to believe everything we think, but thoughts are just thoughts.
“Sometimes it’s easier to explain intellectually but it has to resonate emotionally.”
One coping mechanism used recently by fans was attending one of the four appearances Scully made in Southern California during the Distinguished Speakers Series – before an auditorium of several hundred people, he gave a speech and then took questions from the audience.
One of the things Scully repeated at the lectures: “It’s better to be gone and not forgotten than to be forgotten but not gone.”
John Ondrasik, the San Fernando Valley-based singer-songwriter who performs as Five for Fighting, said his take-away after seeing Scully in Thousand Oaks was that “Vin is where he wants to be, which is comforting. The fact that he’s out doing these speaker series gigs also means he still will be able to share with us his wisdom and his golden voice, just not from a booth over a diamond.”
Elex Michaelson, the KABC-Channel 7 news reporter out of Agoura Hills High and USC, said he was struck by “how sharp at peace he seems” with his retirement, saying he didn’t plan to attend many Dodger games or even watch them on TV. “It may soon be time for Dodger baseball again, but our evenings won’t be quite as pleasant without Vin Scully at the mic.”
Ulisses Sanchez, who heads a consulting firm in Los Angeles, was part of a meet-and-greet with Scully, getting a photo taken and “fulfilling a life-long dream … Now moving forward, just like every season carries its own precious memories, this season will allow for new memories to be made that will give me an appreciation of being alive today and seeing first-hand the passing of the baton to Joe Davis.”
That healthy attitude is what. Dr. Semple calls a common cognitive rationalization.
“It’s a trick of the mind to create pictures from insufficient information in a way that’s subjective and done primarily to make us feel better,” she said. “It’s like connecting stars in the sky and creating constellations.
“It’s a useful tool, but it’s not realistic. What’s realistic – this has happened, spend time grieving and processing it, have good chats with other people and get on with life.”
Then again, to some, seeing Scully could be a reminder of their own mortality, recalling the pain they felt when the Lakers lost their long-time broadcaster, Chick Hearn. The same will likely happen to Kings fans as long-time broadcaster Bob Miller retires in a couple of weeks.
“I left (the appearance) feeling kind of empty and sad after it,” admitted Victor Wear, an attorney from Loma Linda. “It really didn’t ease my pain.
“People have had such an invested connection to Vin Scully all these years, and I know it will be difficult to turn on the TV for home games and not hear him talking. I went to his farewell ceremony last year and that was emotional … and the fact he’s not coming back is kind of making me emotional all over again. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle this.”
Dr. Semple adds that unhappiness is a given if one tries to control what will happen.
“We actually control very few things – but what we do control is how we respond to things,” she said. “It’s healthy in a sense that the mind needs to adapt to change. When the mind goes into a comparison mode, it generally defaults to negative thoughts, but that is also a survival characteristic.
“When the first game of the season arrives, some fans will be focused on that game and getting to know the new announcer. That’s staying focused on the moment. Not the past or the future. It’s the same game.”
