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[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, there's still plenty of space. Leave a comment with a prompt. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
All journeys in the Tarot begin and end with the Fool. As they do in life. Baseball, only sometimes. The card in question that corresponds with The Fool is The Rookie. Stepping out from the dugout, bat in hand, a young player wearing the number zero begins the journey to the plate, as the catcher and umpire look at him expectantly.
A rookie in any professional sport is someone in their first year of playing pro. All of the knowledge that comes from experience, all of the habits, both good and bad, don't exist. There is no tendency to exploit, no film to watch, no previous knowledge. (Ish. Getting to Major League Baseball usually means playing a few years in the "minor" leagues to develop a player into someone who can perform at the highest level. Some people never make it to The Show, as it's called. But generally speaking, a rookie doesn't have enough information known about them to be useful.) They are beginners on a long path, with success and failures, good days and bad, salary negotiations, merchandising, and endorsement deals potentially in their future. They are the unknown quantity. Because of that, rookies often have a good year - even good pitchers will get hit by rookies because the pitchers don't know which ones will be effective yet.
On the more metaphysical plane, the Rookie represents the elusive quality of "Beginner's Mind", of approaching everything without preconception, prejudice, or assumptions, so as to be able to see things as close to as they are as possible. The Rookie is untapped potential, waiting to manifest in whatever direction their coaching and experience takes them. Whether their career is long, short, full of fame and fortune, or being a day-to-day player that turns in a solid career but never becomes a household name (although both Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken, Jr. became famous for the length of time which they turned in solid day-to-day performances for decades), it's not known. And lots of people want to be able to get back into the Rookie's mindset, to be able to push out all of the things that aren't relevant to the game, the next out, at-bat, or pitch, and to be able to just experience the game as the game itself and have fun. Win, too, but the game has to be enjoyable, or the 162-game season, plus practices, training, and playing in the spring leagues, is going to take its mental toll on a player long before the physical toll ever gets to them.
Why start with the Rookie? Because someone asked for his opposite, the All-Star. And, as they say in Ann Arbor, you can't have one without the other.
All journeys in the Tarot begin and end with the Fool. As they do in life. Baseball, only sometimes. The card in question that corresponds with The Fool is The Rookie. Stepping out from the dugout, bat in hand, a young player wearing the number zero begins the journey to the plate, as the catcher and umpire look at him expectantly.
A rookie in any professional sport is someone in their first year of playing pro. All of the knowledge that comes from experience, all of the habits, both good and bad, don't exist. There is no tendency to exploit, no film to watch, no previous knowledge. (Ish. Getting to Major League Baseball usually means playing a few years in the "minor" leagues to develop a player into someone who can perform at the highest level. Some people never make it to The Show, as it's called. But generally speaking, a rookie doesn't have enough information known about them to be useful.) They are beginners on a long path, with success and failures, good days and bad, salary negotiations, merchandising, and endorsement deals potentially in their future. They are the unknown quantity. Because of that, rookies often have a good year - even good pitchers will get hit by rookies because the pitchers don't know which ones will be effective yet.
On the more metaphysical plane, the Rookie represents the elusive quality of "Beginner's Mind", of approaching everything without preconception, prejudice, or assumptions, so as to be able to see things as close to as they are as possible. The Rookie is untapped potential, waiting to manifest in whatever direction their coaching and experience takes them. Whether their career is long, short, full of fame and fortune, or being a day-to-day player that turns in a solid career but never becomes a household name (although both Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken, Jr. became famous for the length of time which they turned in solid day-to-day performances for decades), it's not known. And lots of people want to be able to get back into the Rookie's mindset, to be able to push out all of the things that aren't relevant to the game, the next out, at-bat, or pitch, and to be able to just experience the game as the game itself and have fun. Win, too, but the game has to be enjoyable, or the 162-game season, plus practices, training, and playing in the spring leagues, is going to take its mental toll on a player long before the physical toll ever gets to them.
Why start with the Rookie? Because someone asked for his opposite, the All-Star. And, as they say in Ann Arbor, you can't have one without the other.
