Those sports fans living in the Washington, D. C. area have been riveted this year by two wondrous developments. The first is wondrous only by local standards: the Washington Nationals (or Nats) are poised to make the playoffs for the first time in their seven-year-history. The other is something I myself have never seen in baseball: the Nats’ ace pitcher Stephen Strasburg is limited to a set number of innings. Once those are used up, he will stop pitching regardless of where the Nats are in the standings. His manager recently predicted that he will pitch no more than three more starts.
After dazzling in his rookie start in 2010 (14 strikeouts in his first game in the majors, a major league record of 32 in his first three), Strasburg tore a ligament in July and had to undergo major surgery, which kept him out for most of the following year. This year, however, he has a 15-6 record and leads the league in strikeouts. Because he is coming back from major injury, however, the Nats have had to agree to 165 innings maximum. Throwing more that that would threaten his future and, for that matter, the long-term hopes of the Nationals.
Normally for Washington, a pitcher hanging up his glove at the start of September wouldn’t be a big deal. After all, in a normal year, the Nats would be so far out of first place that more than a few players would be hanging up their gloves, at least metaphorically. Washington has historically fielded such bad baseball teams that, back when they were the Washington Senators, they were the team selected for that Faustian Broadway hit, Damn Yankess. In the musical, a deal with the devil is required to pull them out of their perennial place in the cellar. Wouldn’t you know that, when they finally have the best record in baseball and boast pitching that could take them deep into October, there would be a catch.
Maybe there has been a deal with, if not the devil, then at least a supernatural agent. Their situation sounds suspiciously like that of Valentin in Honoré de Balzac’s novella Peau de Chagrin.
Translated as The Magic Skin, the novel is about a bankrupt gambler who is prepared to kill himself but, at the last moment, is given a magic skin that will grant him whatever he desires. Imagine this as Strasburg’s magical arm. The catch is that every time a desire is granted, the skin shrinks and he loses vitality. When it shrinks away to nothing, he will die.
The story is a powerful comment on the psychology of materialism and capitalist society. We think we will be happy if our material desires are fulfilled—if we made more money, won the lottery, had a bigger house, wore nicer clothes, etc.—and we are driven to gain these things. With every success, however, we only become more aware of materialism’s inability to speak to our real needs. Those who can have everything are particularly aware of the one thing they can’t have, which is eternal life. We can see this graphically in the life of Howard Hughes. who became pathologically fearful of germs and obsessed with death and who retreated into a hermit’s existence.
Valentin anticipates Hughes. He starts his new life with an orgy but, rather than finding fulfillment, he becomes obsessed with the skin’s shrinkage and does everything he can to stop from desiring. Food, clothes, and visitors are regulated carefully with this in mind, but he can ‘t entirely banish desire.
While the story s not an exact fit for our purposes, it opens up some insights into the mental turmoil of Nats fans. Early on, they reveled in the way that Strasburg threw with abandon, as if there were no tomorrow. More sober now, they still want to him to pitch brilliantly and win games. There are few pleasures in sports more exhilarating than watching your ace go toe to toe with the best hitters in the game and come out on top. In a tight contest, we become breathless with every pitch. Times seems to stop.
Yet with every Strasburg pitch, Nats fans are aware that the biological clock is ticking and that he has reduced the pleasure that he could have given them in the future. They have had to quench their desires. They want him to come out of games where it appears that the game is in hand. They want him to pitch every seventh game rather than every fourth. They can’t root for him to pitch baseball’s holy grail, a no-hitter. As I say, I’ve never seen anything like it.
In the end, Valentin decides that if he can’t entirely banish desire, he will go out in an orgasmic death in the arms of the woman he loves. Wouldn’t that be something with Strasburg? Imagine that he yields up his future as he pitches the Nats to a World Series championship. (Of course, we’re talking about way more than 165 innings for that to happen.) That’s how it happens in the movies: in The Natural in his last at bat, Robert demolishes the scoreboard with a homerun (while the movie simultaneously demolishes the more pessimistic ending of Bernard Malamud’s novel).
But no, Strasburg must come back to pitch another year and the year after that. His doctor and his manager are right. As hard as it is, we must put our desires on hold.
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