Willie Stargell

Something came in late today that portends major problems--for my client and, in its own way, for me.

As soon as I got home, I realized that I couldn't stay. And so, I turned around and came back again. I called, later, to check on Maia and Kristina, to say goodnight to Maia, and to ask Kristina to call me later on.

When I start a case, there's always a moment of exhilaration: there is a chaos of people, and events, and law before me, and it's up to me to impress my mind upon those things and turn them into some kind of structure. The exhiilaration is the awareness that I have in that moment that I am about to take a creative role in time, that without the plunge into the world that I am about to make, the things that will happen would never have happened. It is a Shiva moment.

This is different.

I know for a certainty that there is pain ahead, for my client and for me. There is no chance of a painless ending to this. But I must walk into the fray, regardless, and make of it what I can.

In the 1979 World Series, with his team behind the Orioles 3 games to 1 and losing the 5th game 1 to nothing, Willie Stargell homered in the 6th inning with a man on base. The Pirates did not trail again in that game. And in the end, they won the series, 4 games to 3.

No one had given them a chance.

Willie Stargell had won that series, and everyone knew it. Of his performance, he said, "Sometimes you have to be a man."

It wasn't in him to be sexist. He was saying that when you are called upon to act, you have to answer the call.

How simple and natural a thing: to answer the call. It is what life is about. And yet how difficult. How easy it would be to give up.

John, Monday, May 23, 2011