My job is to write about baseball, which means that, for the most part, it’s my job to create novel circumlocutions for the word “jump.” How many times can you say someone’s exit velocity jumped, their whiff rate jumped, their outfield jump jumped to the 82nd percentile before your editor wants to slam you with a thesaurus? I didn’t want to know because I bruise easily.
I estimate that I write the word “jump” about 20 times more often than I actually jump. No one dances that much on any given day. Unless you’re in the gym, unless you’re playing sports, unless you’re a kid, there’s not a lot of jumping in life. This is intentional. This is the result of the way we build our lives. We put everything at your fingertips. We have neighbors downstairs. We wear sophisticated shoes. Beyond the décor of Barnes & Noble, nearly every aspect of our lives encourages us to remain seated. Jumping in jeans is rare. All in all, this seems like a bad thing.
Every once in a while, jumping is a matter of practicality. There was no way I was dragging the ladder out of the laundry room just to get this stupid cake pan off the top shelf. I’m not going to backtrack five blocks just because a small portion of this sidewalk is blocked by a low fence. I was staring at the backs of different people throughout the concert and I just wanted to have a clear, unobstructed view of the band. In that moment, we jumped out of a mixture of despair and anger, never thinking that what we were doing could be beautiful, elegant.
We’re just trying to get through the day. There’s an out and there’s a runner blocking the route, so of course we’re going to wait for the jump, protect the ball and sprint with everything we have on the bases. Of course, we sprint full force, step over sliding runners, soar through the air like avenging angels in a celestial dunk contest, and throw down the first pitch perfectly. How else should we turn the doubles situation around?
We jump because we don’t know what else to do. Is this normal base operation? All four batsmen in this game are senior players. You are moving from first to second. The show is right around the corner. You’re digging hard, but you don’t have a chance to get to second before the ball gets there. You don’t even have a chance to get there in time to try and break the double. But your shoes are dazzling and unrecognizable. Might as well jump. Your feet become dazzling and they launch you into the air, directly into the path of the ball. You do a 180-degree turn, lower your head, and for a fleeting moment you look out at the world like the Ska in the Operation Ivy logo.
This isn’t baserunning 101. This is a ropes course because you are not a newbie at running back. You’re Thickey Henderson, the muscle baron in the infield, and you barely notice the ball clanking off your helmet and bouncing 25 feet in the air. You played cool. You adjust the helmet that hits your face, continue chewing on the wad of gum, and stroll off the field, as it happens so often. You’ve broken the double game the only way you can. You used your head.
Never mind that batsmen end up being left out. Never mind that your nonchalance didn’t convince six umpires that jumping right into the pitch and deflecting it with your skull was a normal, acceptable way to run the bases and not a textbook example of interference. So what if your leap is just delaying the inevitable? That’s the point. Falling is the definition of jumping. If you never come down, then you haven’t really jumped. You take off, you get airborne, you launch. Jumping describes the act of bouncing off the Earth, gaining a temporary foothold in a losing battle with gravity. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.
Everyone dreams of flying. This rings true. Personally, I don’t remember ever dreaming about flying. I dreamed that I had fallen, that I was already falling into certain death, and woke up suddenly, flooded with cortisol. Mainly I was worried about not being able to sleep.
When jumping is not a means to an end, it is a joyful activity. This is frivolity. We literally jumped for joy. This is a light expression. I would touch the ceiling and I would grab this leaf as I walked through the tree. I made a baseball fly up and lift the entire country, and it was not a feeling that could be contained. I may be bound by gravity, but there is a power within me that cannot be suppressed forever. There will be times when you feel like you will never descend, times when you will rise above the grammar of things and the rough bonds of the earth, but that will be enough.
Everyone jumps for the first time. We were all too young to remember it, but there was one time we pushed off the ground with all our might for the first time. Maybe we are still young and really don’t know if we will come down. Maybe we don’t know yet. We have not spent enough time under the double yoke of gravity and life, making every moment of our lives bow to the omnipresent impossibility. Maybe we jumped just to know what would happen next.
