I’m not a huge basketball fan, but I love the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. It may be the best sporting event in all of sports. Especially the weekend of the first two rounds. And especially this year. I don’t watch all the games, but I watch a couple games each day that interest me and try to catch the highlight shows at the end of the night. This year’s first two rounds last weekend certainly lived up to the madness of March Madness. Buzzer-beating game-winning shots, the #1 overall seed going down, elation, heartbreak, chaos, poise, desperation, and confidence. Just a few things from the first round alone. Every game for the seniors is potentially their last, and every freshman that takes the court has a chance to do something historic. Underdogs can win and overrated teams usually reveal their weaknesses. All of our brackets are busted. It’s madness, complete madness.

While March Madness might be the most exciting sporting event, baseball is my favorite sport. Yes, baseball over football. At no point in a baseball game is the game over until the last out is made. There is no clock. There are no flags to be thrown. No turnovers. Baseball is the only sport that can’t change from offense to defense in the middle of a play, the defense must get all three outs to change sides. And one of the most interesting things in comparing baseball to all the other team sports is that every ballpark is different. In all the other sports, they have the same playing fields, same dimensions, same yard markers, same goal height. No two ballparks have the same dimensions, only the standard 60’ 6” from the mound to home plate and 90’ between the bases.

My life sometimes feels similar to March Madness. It’s chaotic and anything can happen. It’s had excitement, surprises, moments of success, and plenty moments failure. And there are times that even though I’m living my life, I can’t believe what happened and would like to see a replay. I get happy when a good thing happens to me and I get upset when a bad call happens that’s not my fault. Sometimes I feel like that team that’s down by 5 with 15 seconds left but doesn’t have any timeouts left to stop the clock to regroup in hopes of making a final effort to avoid defeat. I’m probably like the 16 seed that people root for as the underdog, even though they know there’s no chance of winning.

But a 16 seed won a game this year, for the first time ever.

March Madness also means that Major League Baseball is right around the corner, something I start looking forward to as soon as the world series ends. My life is like the madness in the first weekend of March Madness from time to time. PTSD doesn’t follow a season. The symptoms come and go as they please. Sometimes my frustrations turn into anger. I become depressed without warning. I go from having a great day to a horrible day in the blink of an eye. I’m often on edge and tense and hypervigilant. I get stuck in that madness sometimes, some of which is from outside sources and some of which comes from within my own mind. I don’t always do a great job of looking passed it. But I’m learning. I’ve found that the periodic madness of my life doesn’t last, I just have to make it through it, that there’s something ahead that might be good. It helps to find things to look forward to. But even then, it can sometimes be a challenge.

Even with the unpredictable madness, I see baseball coming. In baseball, the game ain’t over until the final out. No lead is insurmountable, no clock will expire. And no series is won or lost until the final out of the final game. And I’m still in the game. It’s madness, but I’m still in the game, still swinging for the fences. I’m striking out a lot, but every once in a while, I connect and hit one out of the park. And if I find myself at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, with the game on the line, I’ll make contact or I’ll go down swinging.

The madness of life is a given. Don’t get stuck there. Something better is coming, whether you can see it or not from where you are now. Thanks for stopping by this week. Good day, God bless, and Go Red Sox!

Dave