I'll get back to my draft previews tomorrow with a look at Jason Hill, but yesterday's events at Virginia Tech left an impact on me in an unexpected way. I don't know any students at Virginia Tech. I've never been to Virginia Tech. I don't even know any graduates of Virginia Tech. Some of my friends do (it being a common college choice for Northern Virginians, which said friends are), but I've never met any of them. And so, while the idea of the sanctity of a college campus being shattered horrifies me (and worries me, as this is my off year between undergrad and law school), it was something that happened to someone else. There was no real connection, no person I knew to check on, send my condolences, or to identify with. The events are tragic and horrible and every other word you might think of to describe it, but they have no effect my life, or anyone in it.
At least, that's what I thought until this morning, when in the course of my morning routine, I stopped by Pulling a Blyleven and found out that one of the authors is a grad student at Virginia Tech. RK was, thankfully, able to avoid the tragedy, but his post struck me in an interesting way. I've never met RK, could not pick him out of the crowd, nor do I even know what "RK" stands for. Yet, if he'd been injured, or killed or effected by this tragedy, well, it would have been the same to me as if someone I knew in real life (read, not from the internet) had been effected. I can think of a whole host of bloggers of whom I could say the same thing. Which, when you think about it, is an interesting thing to say, considering I've never met any of them, nor do I know much about them outside of what they choose to write on their sites. And yet, somehow, through the written word, a community has been created, a community that could not have existed 20 years ago. And while normally that community just adds to my enjoyment of my favorite sports teams, today, it brought home to me a tragedy in a way that would not have happened before. This here internet really is an interesting piece of technology, isn't it?
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1 comment:
I think I can speak for RK in saying that this is very well said and I think for all of us baseball in general and, even moreso, the Twins blogging community is at the same time a place where one goes to avoid what causes stress in the real world but also a space that offers a sense of support when tragic events like the one at VT occur. It's comforting, no matter what, to know what the Twins will almost always be playing everyday from April to September and this constancy is a sort of buffer for the chaotic nature of the outside world.
--cheers,
WV
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