863: Championship Window
57:58 Share

This message comes from Allianz Travel Insurance. From visiting the in-laws in Indiana to sightseeing in Sicily, traveling can be stressful. An all-trips annual travel insurance plan can help you tackle every trip you take with confidence. Visit AllianzTravelInsurance.com.

On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Michelle Obama says she's reinventing herself. I don't know if my ambition has ever fully been able to actualize itself. I think I'm now at a stage in my life where all my choices are mine. I'm Rachel Martin. Listen to Wildcard for a conversation about balancing family and personal growth with Michelle Obama.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Emmanuel Jochi, sitting in for Ira Glass. So about two months ago, I left work in the middle of the day and joined about 100 million people worldwide in a very particular kind of prayer.

Now, I wish I could tell you that I was praying for a fix to any other world's problems, but I wasn't. Instead, I was standing in a crowded bar in downtown Brooklyn, screaming my lungs off for my favourite British soccer team, Arsenal Football Club. Arsenal are my hometown London team. A lot of the fans in the bar are just like me. There's quite a few Brits, lots of black 30-somethings,

Probably because when I was a kid, I swear Arsenal catfished an entire generation of us into supporting them. They played some of the best soccer I have ever seen with a team full of all these black legends. They went an entire season without losing a game in the British Premier League. And then they stopped winning and decided to break my heart every year for the next 20 years.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, I have seen some things. I've seen us lose by record margins. I've seen two separate seasons derailed by horrific, why did you show that in slow motion leg breaks? I saw one of my favorite players leave us for our rivals, beat us to win a trophy, and then thank us sarcastically afterwards.

Arsenal have sometimes upset me so much that for the sake of the people I love, I have had to deliberately skip games for day of family events just because I don't want to look stricken in our photos. But then three years ago, lots of things just kind of started to go our way.

We finished that season as the second best team in England. And since then, it just feels like we've been inching ever closer to becoming winners again. We've got this young coach my mum says is far too pretty to be so smart. We have a star player who, I don't know, I love like he's my own son. And this most recent season, we went on this miraculous run in European soccer's biggest competition, the Champions League.

I'm talking defensive masterclasses, big upsets, players scoring the kind of goals they've never scored before in their entire lives. It felt like the conditions at that moment for Arsenal were perfect. We had the right players, the right coach, and some of our opponents, they were having an uncharacteristically bad year. Which brings us to the day I left work to go to the bar.

We were now at the end of the season in maybe the biggest Arsenal game in 20 years. Arsenal were playing a French team, Paris Saint-Germain, in the semi-finals. A team we knew we could beat. In fact, we'd beaten them earlier in the season. All we had to do was do it again. And walking around the bar that day before the game, I had two different feelings from people.

The first was joy and optimism. Like, wow, we could actually win this. Then there was the second sort of nagging feeling, which was people experiencing how great this moment was and feeling dread because of it. Nervous. You look nervous. Because I'm a realist. Say more about that. This is a good opportunity, but I feel like we're at the tail end of our good opportunities. Like, it's been good opportunities now for, like, three years.

And I think we're on the other side of the curve. Like, it's ending. This good period, it's been too good for too long. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, or other hat to drop, whatever that saying is. This feeling, that if we didn't win this trophy right now, that it might never happen for this group of players, was something I heard a lot. Next year, we could lose some players. And the other teams could be better than they were this season. There are just too many unknowns.

And that was making so many Arsenal fans nervous. Maybe this was as good as things were going to get. There's a name for a period like this. It's called a championship window. A period of time when all the conditions for your team to win are just right. And as this game was about to begin, I looked around and was like, oh, that's where Arsenal are. It felt like all of us gathered there had this front row seat to something historic. Something we would definitely tell our kids about one day.

And that's what today's episode is about. That period of time. So this week, while the boss man is away and I am in charge and the conditions are just right, I come to you with stories about championship windows. And not just ones that are about sports. I'm talking championship windows for your body, for your feelings. Stories of people trying desperately to seize their moment and finally win their own personal championship. So stay with us.

Support for This American Life and the following message come from Dataiku.

AI can be a kind of raw power. Take control of AI with Dataiku, the universal AI platform. It's built for business teams and AI experts alike, designed for trust and engineered to scale to fit your tech stack today and tomorrow. From analytics, models, and agents, make AI flow through your enterprise. Don't just keep up with AI. Control it with Dataiku, the universal AI platform. Find out more at dataiku.com slash thisamericanlife.

Support for This American Life comes from GoodRx. GoodRx helps keep your prescription costs low. From diabetes to allergy relief to heart health, save up to 80% on prescriptions for you and your family. And

It's This American Life. Today's program, Championship Window. We've now reached Act 1. Pregnant? Pause.

So this story is about a championship window that billions of people around the world have passed through, though many of those folks have completely missed it. Connie Wang was in that category. She has the story. During my first pregnancy, I kept a log of all the weird things that happened to my body, beyond the obvious ones like a growing belly and swollen ankles. These changes were random and sudden and almost sinister, as if my body was messing with me just for the fun of it.

My gums bled. I broke a tooth. My boobs began to itch from the inside. Varicose veins sprouted all over my legs and other places too. The pinky on my right hand clicked each time I bent it. And my right foot, and only my right foot, was always hot. There were some nice things that happened too. My horrible acid reflux disappeared. And the back pain that I've had for five years also stopped bothering me.

When I read this list to my doctor, he told me that everything I was experiencing was perfectly normal. He explained that some of the symptoms were so the fetus could better leach the nutrients, calcium, and blood out of me and into it. The other elements were because my body was breaking itself apart so that it could eventually extrude a whole other body.

Then, my doctor said, after the delivery, all the pregnancy hormones that made me so pliable and scrambled would leave my body, and my bones, joints, organs, and muscles would find their way home again and lock back into place. Most of the things on my list would disappear, but some things might remain. Among everything on the list, it was my back pain—rather, the lack of back pain—that I wished would be a forever thing.

I had tweaked it in my 20s during a move, and for five years, it kept me from doing basic things, like tying my shoes without sitting down on the floor or even leaning over the sink to brush my teeth. Pregnant, even with a massive belly and jello legs, I could lower myself onto the floor to squat without my back giving out. It would be amazing if the pain never returned.

My doctor said that was unlikely, but my mom actually had a whole theory about how exactly to keep my back pain away. She told me I should actively take advantage of the window of time right after I gave birth before my body lucked back into place. She wanted me to zuoyuezi, to do postpartum confinement. ♪

The word confinement sounds worse than it actually is. Technically, you are not actually confined. There are no locks or constraints, which is extraordinary when you hear how draconian the rules of confinement are, according to traditional Chinese standards. No cold foods, including cold beverages. No spicy foods. No strong flavors. And no deviating from the strict diet. No bathing. No washing your hair. No open windows or air conditioning. No leaving your home.

No bare feet, no exercising, no housework, no reading, no TV, and absolutely no crying. And you have to do this for at least 30 days. This kind of methodical postpartum bed rest is actually pretty common in many cultures where new moms receive a lot of help, especially right after birth. So, obviously, not in America.

And the promise of confinement, in Chinese culture at least, is that at the end, not only will your body heal from the delivery, but if you really do it right, you can guide your body back together in a way that's even better than before you were pregnant. If you do it right, my mom told me, you could fix your back. It didn't have to be that bad, she said, especially if you got rid of the outdated rules invented before germ theory and indoor plumbing.

I could wash my hair and watch TV. Still, no, I wasn't going to do it. I had always found confinement to be sort of offensive. Treating a woman as a delicate, breakable, incapable doll seemed insulting. I considered myself to be the exact opposite.

Frankly, I was surprised that my mom was so into me doing confinement. She raised me to be independent and nonconformist, just like her. She insisted that I should always have my own bank account, even as a fourth grader. That as a woman, I should always be loud and precise at everything I did. That I shouldn't just go along with a thing just because everyone else was doing it.

The result of all of this is that now I am a stubborn person who loves to believe I'm right, especially when it contradicts common sense. Here's an example. My whole life, I never exercised. And was even kind of proud of it, even though doctors and physical therapists told me my back would never fully recover unless I did. But there was just something so uncool about doing little squats in my living room or spending $30 on a Pilates lesson.

$50? How much is Pilates? My mom is like this, too. She refuses to look at maps because she's made a decision that she can't read them, which is absurd. Because she's an accountant who also once edited engineering manuals. Anyways, my mom admitted that she had been skeptical of confinement, too. She'd actually skipped it the second time she had a kid, my little sister, something she eventually regretted.

According to mom, the benefits of confinement were a mystery until she tried to go without. I should save myself the trial and error and just listen to her. Of course I didn't listen to her. I gave birth via emergency C-section 10 days after I was due. When a nurse admired how quickly my wounds were healing, it activated the overachiever in me, and I became determined to prove how talented I was at healing.

When the doctor said she wanted to see me walk around the hospital ward once in the next 24 hours, I did it three times. When she told me to wait two weeks before bending over or climbing stairs, I did it as soon as I got home. I felt all sorts of messed up, but also proud of myself for being able to do it. Plus, my back was miraculously still pain-free.

There's actually a video of me on my first day back home with my newborn in my arms, lowering myself onto the concrete sidewalk so my greyhound could sniff my kid's head. I posted this video on Instagram, and I remember beaming with pride as more experienced moms commented, "'Squatting? Already?' Meanwhile, my mom was side-eyeing me, passive-aggressively urging me to sit back down, to put socks on, and to quit drinking so much cold seltzer and drink some bean porridge instead."

It took two weeks for my back pain to return, and when it came back, it was so much worse than it was before I was pregnant. I had to lean against the walls to walk down the hallway and often found myself stuck on the floor, flat on my back, dialing my husband, who was on the other side of the house, for help. I figured out a way to leverage my baby out of his bassinet with a baby blanket and a hinging movement so I didn't have to bend over when I was picking him up.

It was infuriating. It was bullshit that my pain had come back even worse. It wasn't just my back. My pelvic floor was barely functioning. My C-section scar continued to burn for months after my surgery. Taunting me was the fact that I somehow grew half an inch, evidence that my body had changed in a measurable way, just not at all in the way that I wanted it to. I had happened upon a magical window of opportunity and completely whiffed it.

I had been given a chance at getting better, and instead, I'd used this time to get even worse. Fast forward four years, and I got a second chance. I got pregnant again, and like before, my back pain disappeared. I wasn't going to mess it up this time. So I set up the guest bedroom for my mom and cleared my calendar for 30 days. ♪

I figured the first day would be the easiest. After all, I was in the hospital. I would wear socks and rest as much as I could. My first test of willpower was one hour after I gave birth. A nurse offered me ice chips, which I declined, against the rules. But a parade of medical interns kept showing up with ice water. Do you have room temperature water? I would respond in a saintly and goodly way.

By the fourth or fifth time, I began to mutter my question through a scowl, asking for my disgusting, lukewarm water. My husband would absentmindedly swish his own bottle around, and the ringing peals of ice against metal sounded like the beginning of an argument to me, which was, if you're keeping track, also against the rules.

My doctor told me I had to do two laps around the ward before I could be discharged, which also bumped up against confinement rules. So instead of pushing myself to do more, I pushed myself to do the bare minimum. I took my first lap nearly 24 hours after she had asked, and it took me nearly 30 minutes to complete the small circuit.

At home, my husband played with our three-year-old while my mother showed me that she had stocked the kitchen with special confinement food. Overnight oats, hard-boiled eggs, blueberries, and raw cashews. There was a crucible of boba fin, a porridge made of red beans, jujubes, and goji berries that would help me replenish my hemoglobin count. The taste was pleasant and mild, and I was to have it any time I was thirsty, which was constantly.

I ate my weird spread of nuts and fruits, porridge and eggs, like some kind of storybook bear who lives inside of a cottage, and found myself oddly satisfied. Maybe confinement was less like a prison and more like an omakase, where you give yourself over to the will of the sushi chef for the sake of your own enjoyment. I had been worried about how I would manage all the sitting. At first, I had the TV on all the time, playing in the background as a matter of habit.

But then I found myself going hours without paying attention to whatever was on and just staring at my sleeping baby without thinking about anything in particular. I felt pretty proud of myself for all this nothing. I had eaten vats of beans. The couch had a me-shaped dent in it. I never even thought about my back. It never bothered me even once. I must be healing so well.

And so, one day during the second week, I decided to pick up all the toys on the floor of my son's room while my baby napped. And then I decided I wanted to go see what it would look like if I moved the lamp from the left side of the kitchen to the right. And then what the bookshelf would look like if I separated the nonfiction from the fiction. I snuck a mini ice cream cone and ate it in one bite and then ate four more.

My mom noticed me puttering around the house and told me I should go sit down. I rolled my eyes but went back to my perch on the couch. Later that day, I went to the bathroom and noticed that I was bleeding more than usual and the color was off. I took my blood pressure and it was higher than it's ever been.

I found my mom who was napping with the baby, and I told her I didn't feel good and that I was scared, which made me feel worse and even more scared. And so I started crying because I was like, this is it. I have internal bleeding. I have preeclampsia. No, posteclampsia. I'm bleeding out. I thought I was rearranging some books when really I was signing my own death certificate.

I panic called my doctor and while I was on hold, I used my mom's phone to call my sister, who's also a doctor, and everyone told me that the bleeding was fairly normal. As for the elevated blood pressure, I was likely just having a panic attack. I suddenly realized how fragile I was, both physically and mentally, which was a new thing for me to accept.

I had hated the idea of confinement because it meant being treated like a weak and broken person. But that is what childbirth does. It breaks your body. Practicing confinement acknowledges that truth, which I was discovering is a much better option than ignoring it. I returned to my couch divot with a new resolve. ♪

Two weeks later, I was officially done. And, dun-dun-dun, confinement worked. My back felt great. My C-section scar was almost totally healed. Compared to my first time, my body was working a thousand times better. The biggest change in those 30 days, though, wasn't to my body. It was to my mind.

I was calmer and happier, but I was also less stubborn. I had new proof that sometimes it did make sense to just go along with the thing everyone else was telling me to do. So a few weeks after confinement ended, when I felt the tiniest twinge on my back that would usually signal the beginning of another bout of horrible pain, I tried something else. Instead of just taking Advil and hoping it'd go away like it used to,

I signed up for a physical therapy workshop and started doing little squats in my living room. Old Connie would have never done this. I'm still doing them. A year later, I tie my shoes with ease and brush my teeth no problem. So shout out to my mom in Chinese confinement. I bow down to both of you. And I don't even have to hold on to anything to do it.

That's writer Connie Wang. This story was produced by Diane Wu, and we first got the idea to do it from Erin Rees. You can read more about Connie and her mum in her book, Oh My Mother. Coming up, a group of people I can only describe as cursed try to change their fortunes. And, well, I tell you about something that's made being in the office a little awkward. That's in a minute on Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. Start selling with Shopify today. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Go to shopify.com slash NPR. It's This American Life. I'm Emmanuel Jochi filling in for Ira Glass. Today's program is called Championship Window. Stories about people trying to achieve their goals in that brief moment where everything is possible.

We've reached act two, Cry Hard with a Vengeance. This next story is about a man who might be in the championship window. It's actually a guy you've probably heard on the podcast version of this show more than any other person besides Ira. A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. That is my co-worker, Seth Lind, the guy who voices the warnings before our sweary episodes. We actually sit next to each other in the office.

He's sensitive and kind, has this great sense of humor. He is the only one at work, I think, who laughs at all of my dad jokes.

Did I mention that he's kind? Anyways, there's this one other thing about Seth, which is that he never cries. I mean, I have cried. I have cried. But in thinking about the time, I can remember two times. I remember crying after a breakup in 2008. And I remember crying when watching a documentary about

when a child reached his artistic potential and that moment overcame me. And so when I say I don't cry, it means like I have cried, but I don't really know I could anymore. Seth used to cry when he was a child, but the breakup and the documentary are the only times he remembers crying as an adult.

And both of those were extremes. The breakup was very, very sad. And the documentary, which was about the children of sex workers in Calcutta, that was very, very triumphant. Besides that, though, I think it's actually easier to talk about the stuff that Seth hasn't cried at. He didn't cry when his grandparents died. Didn't cry when he saw his wife in her dress on their wedding day. He doesn't remember if he cried when his first kid was born.

but definitely didn't cry when the second was. Seth's wife thinks it's odd and a little bit sad that he doesn't cry. And Seth, he regards it as a personal failing, wishes he could be more like other people. My father-in-law will cry at most goodbyes in a really sweet way. Oh, just like anytime you... Yeah, like we're gathering and it's just like, okay, I'll see you in a month or whatever. He's very wistful and sad to part with.

because of a love of being together. And that, I can't fathom that. The idea of being overcome in that moment. It seems, I'm envious, it seems wonderful and so foreign to me. Seth knows that thing you're thinking. Wow, a man, unable or unwilling to cry. How newsworthy. But he has a theory about why he is the way he is.

When he was 15, Seth had to get a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat. And this pacemaker, it was this model that increased his heart rate based on body motion or exercise. But it didn't speed up his heart rate based on his emotion. So anytime Seth was angry or sad or anxious, his heart rate stayed exactly the same. And so my theory is,

is that that is related to not crying, that the physiological phenomenon of being overcome by emotion is limited by this machine. It sounds like what you're saying is you don't have a heart. Like, metaphorically. Like, that's why you're not crying. Yes, I agree with you, Emmanuel. I mean, I do have a heart. It's just, it's electrically...

This is, for the record, not scientifically correct, which Seth knows. Pacemakers don't affect your ability to cry. But a couple months ago, Seth found out he needed to have open heart surgery. Like, urgently. The doctors told him that there was a problem with the largest blood vessel in his heart, his aorta. That if they didn't replace part of it, that it could burst and kill him. Seth didn't cry about it.

Instead, he told all of us at work about it in the most casual way possible. He messaged us all on Slack and he said, quote, Hey, if things go pear-shaped, it's been fun. But after the surgery, he woke up in the hospital on heavy painkillers. And it wasn't until about five days later that it all hit him. I was writing a note on my phone, a Mother's Day note to my wife, Gabrielle.

And I was typing in the notes app alone in my hospital room. I was writing about my appreciation for her as like a mother to our kids and as a partner. And I was absolutely overcome and started weeping. Oh, man.

Yeah, I started crying. And I also had the feeling of, oh my gosh, I'm crying. I'm alone. No one's here to see this. Gabrielle isn't here to witness this. So I pulled out my phone to try to capture this moment, you know, like seeing a Bigfoot in the woods trying to get it on film. I mean, it's so funny to me that you were like, like, no one's here to see this. That was the thought that popped into your brain. Yeah.

Yeah, I was like, of course I'm alone. No one's gonna believe me. I have seen this video Seth took of himself crying, and I gotta say, this is no single thug tear kind of joint. Like, Seth was ugly crying. I'm not gonna play it though, because it, I don't know, just feels a little too vulnerable to share.

Seth did share the video with his wife though. She was moved by it. Glad for him. And ever since then, Seth's been thinking about that cry. How those tears just rolled on out. How he had no control and was just overcome. But here's the thing. Seth hasn't cried since. And recently, he's been wondering, was that it? Like, was this just another freak crying accident that will likely never happen again?

My hope is that this wasn't just a window, but I don't know. I mean, I think it was probably the extremity of the surgery. Just the pure, like, gratitude for still being alive. So, like, I think...

I hope I will cry more, but I do think it's possible that this was just such an extreme situation that that was a little bit... That was the thing. Yeah, that was the moment. Okay. Well, so you've come to the right place. And I say that because I want to find out if this was a window for you, if this was a one-time...

And to help us do that, your co-workers and I created a set of triggers for you. Are you serious? I'm dead serious. I spent hours yesterday compiling a list of things that make us cry. So we're going to start with our first one. Yeah. We're doing this now? Oh, yeah, we're doing this now. Oh, wow. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. I just feel so...

It feels so unlikely that I'm going to cry and I feel bad for my, in the future. Don't feel bad. Okay. All right. Yes. Level one. So obviously it's June and, uh, you know, we, at the time of year, we have a lot of graduations from college, from high school, and there is this trend online of people posting like graduations. And I just want to show you this. Okay. You want to describe what you're seeing? Yeah.

I'm seeing a graduate. It's like a high school graduate. Oh, he's putting his own gown onto his dad. Yeah.

I feel so confused. What do you mean? Is the dad graduating? Is he thanking him? No, the kid is graduating, but he's saying, I did it because of you. You really deserve this. Why is this making you laugh? No, I just... I explained to Seth, look, most of these folks are immigrants. And what they're doing is they're saying to their parents, listen, this accomplishment I just made

It's really yours. That's so sweet. I don't feel anywhere close to crying. Okay. I feel like I'm appreciating their emotion. It is okay that you didn't cry, Seth. You know why? Because there's more? Because there's more. Just to say, I had a bunch of videos queued and ready to go.

I had Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream" on Britain's Got Talent, which my coworkers want me to make clear makes me and only me cry. I had the ending to the randomly extremely violent children's movie about rabbits, Watership Down. The opening scene from the animated movie Up. But first, there was this next one. It was an old sports video. I want you to picture it. Yeah. It's the 1992 Olympics.

Barcelona. Okay. It's a 400 meter race. Okay. And this young British sprinter. Yeah. Derek Redmond is like in the race of his life. Big deal. And the eyes of the world are like watching him.

So the race starts. Okay, that's him right there, like, streaming away. He's looking pretty good. Okay, white and purple? Yep, yep, yep. Okay. He's really great. He's 400, he has to run all the way around. Yeah. And then right here, his hamstring goes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, jeez. Oh, he's down. So, you know, only 40 seconds of race. All the other runners, like, finish without him. Yeah.

And then he decides, oh, okay, I'm going to keep on trying to finish. He's like basically hopping on one foot almost. Yeah, he has no hamstring. Like it's gone. Oh, God. All of a sudden this guy comes up. Wow, he's like being his crutch. That's Derek's father. He's run onto the track to make sure his son finishes. To help him.

And it's funny because the security people, they don't know that it's his father. So they have come onto the track and he's having to wave them away to keep them away from him. And he's like, I'm going to finish with my son. And this man is, it's just, he's collapsed in his father's arms and they're finishing together. That was just... Oh, Sam. I didn't think that was actually going to work. I would have bet any amount of money I wouldn't. Wow. I'm, my mind is blown.

My heart, I suppose, more specifically is blown. This part of me, I have to say, even as I am feeling uncomfortable and sad and kind of crying myself, this part of me I've got to say that it's just like, did you actually just cry for real? Yeah, I mean, I think I, yeah, I want to be really honest because like I think I was trying to feel open to it. Yeah. And so I think I could have not. I could have stopped it.

And maybe that's something I would actually do without knowing it. But then I actually felt it and it and I still sort of am like it's I don't know what's happening. I don't it just feels it just feels like feeling. I'm so glad for you. What about that video do you think made you cry? The I think it was seeing he's in he's in so much physical pain.

And he's in so much, I imagine, emotional pain at just losing this shot. But I feel like through that, you can see he's also crying from joy that his father is there. And then shift my vision to the dad who is waving away these security people and he... And is being relatively stoic, but is also clearly overcome in his own way. I think it just...

It felt both kind of tragic and so, like, victorious at the same moment. And it got to me. And I can't, yeah, still can't quite believe it. As I sat there, listening to this grown man who had almost never cried in his adult life struggle to find the words, his eyes still slightly watering, I didn't know what to say. I just started sniffling.

Which is normally what happens when someone cries in front of me. I am, for the record, a crier. But I'm really just a crier because I often find it easier than saying the right thing. For me, crying is like a shortcut. The best way to let the people in my life know that I love them and that I care. And it struck me that for years, Seth hasn't had that. And now, well, he does. ♪

Act 3, Benched Expectations. So like I said earlier, championship windows are these periods when the universe has conspired to make it so that for once, everything might go right. And this last story is about a very particular version of that. It's about two baseball teams who, I should say, were not playing for a championship. Like, they were doing kind of the opposite, actually. They were playing to finally not lose. And they were playing to finally not lose.

If you combine the records of these two teams, they'd lost 141 straight games between them. 141. But now, the stars had aligned. Because after all those losses, after all that heartbreak, there was this little glint of hope. Because next on their schedule, those two teams were going to play each other.

Which meant, for one of them, the losing streak would finally have to end. Right? Like, there was no way around it. No matter how bad those teams were, one of them was going to win. My colleague, David Kestenbaum, talked to some of the players before this historic matchup. And then he went to the game to see how it all turned out. Here's David. I wanted to know what it was like to go so long without winning a single game. To not win and keep coming out, that takes a particular kind of person.

Both teams are in New York City. I reached out. First, to Yeshiva University. Their team, the Yeshiva Maccabees, Yeshiva's losing streak was at 99 games. And I know everyone knows how to add one, but for them to lose would mean 100 straight losses. Yeshiva did not want to talk to us for this story, which I will just say I get. But the other team said okay. The Lehman Lightning, who had 42 straight losses. Lehman College is in the Bronx. It's part of the city university system. So I went to visit.

And I want you to meet one player, Justin Chamorro, the starting pitcher. Justin has a kind of shy smile. When we started texting, he wrote, "Hey, David!" Three Ys, David in caps, two exclamation points. His team hasn't won in two years. And I know all the stuff people say about how losing builds character and bonds you together with your team and teaches you life lessons. I mean, sure. But also, and I appreciated Justin's candor here, it is not fun.

I've never been this long of a losing streak a day in my life. It's actually depressing. No, let me stop. But it's hard. It's difficult. I say it challenges me mentally, physically. It's draining. It's really draining. Yeah, same way. How do you feel after the last loss? The last loss weighed on me heavy because Mount St. Mary, they're a good school, but we also competed to their level.

Playing games like that where you're constantly in the game and then you just lose it, that's exhausting. That's what sucks out of everything, honestly. It's not just him going through this. It's a whole team that every game says to themselves, this time, and then has it not happened. There's a lot of frustration. You have people upset at themselves, the coach. There's a lot of stuff like that. But in the locker rooms also, it's very quiet, you know,

It's an eerie atmosphere in the locker room, honestly. But we pick each other up. That's what we do. A bunch of people on campus must know about the streak, right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure everybody knows about the streak. I'm pretty sure. I mean, it's no secret. There's multiple videos out there on media outlets that highlight it. He's talking about the upcoming game. The internet liked the idea that his team was going to play this other losing team. One post called it the worst college baseball game of all time.

I asked Justin why, when the other team did not want to talk, he was willing to. He said he wanted the world to know who they really were. So here's a little bit about Justin. In his bedroom, he has the following. A poster of Muhammad Ali, an Xbox, shoes, a bag filled with baseballs from the best games he's played in, one from when he was 11.

Oh, and textbooks. He's a bio major, planning to be a physician's assistant after all this is over. Maybe work in a clinic. He said, that's my second love. What's your first love? Baseball. Oh, I love baseball with a passion, yeah. Like since you were little? Oh, since I could remember, yeah. What do you like about it?

Well, I like how competitive it gets. I like the fact that it's a game based off of failure and that when you actually succeed, it feels that much better. Yeah, they say like if you get up at bat and you fail seven times out of ten, you're doing great, right? Yes. That's a tough proposition, you know? Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, essentially, you're failing more than you succeed, but you got to look at it on the bright side. You're also playing a sport that involves a tiny little ball with a round bat and you have nine fielders. So...

Funny to think about it that way. Justin says he does sometimes, to remind himself it's just a game, a very hard one. So what do you do to turn things around? This is a Division III commuter school. Most of these students live with their families. A lot of the players have jobs in addition to school. Justin wanted me to point that out. He also wanted me to point out that there is not a big budget for baseball here. No scholarships for players, no batting cages or pitching machines to practice hitting with.

But they practice almost every day, sometimes for hours. The truth is, it's probably their last chance to play like this, with a coach and a real team. This is a moment in their lives that will end. No one is going on to the pros. And for Justin, this is his senior year, almost the end of the season. And it would feel different to go out with one win. So, to try to turn things around, their coach, Coach Delgado, gives them grades after every game. He has them write in journals about what they did well and what they need to work on.

And they are not a superstitious bunch, but it's kind of hard not to be, a little, after a streak like they're on. Your brain is looking for some reason. Justin's coach eats the same breakfast before every game. The players do not step on the lines before a game. That's a classic. They also do not allow crossed bats in the dugout. I know we've tried playing without walk-up songs. Walk-up songs. You know, when the hitter's walking out to the plate? They used to play a clip of a song through the loudspeakers to get them psyched up.

Got rid of those. Yeah. So it's just silent at home games. How did it feel the first time? I was kind of mad because I like my walkout song. What's your song? One is I'm Good by David Guetta. And it's I'm good and I'm feeling all right. I'm about the best time of my life. Yeah, that's that song. That song you won't be hearing. Other songs you won't be hearing. Lemonade by Gucci Mane. Nokia by Drake.

Do you think about how it's going to feel when you eventually win? I think about it every single day. One streak has to end, and I'm very confident that ours will end tomorrow. Game time. It's a Tuesday, 2 in the afternoon, at a turf field in New Jersey, far from both schools. And yet, so many people, like 300, some baseball nerds, drawn, I think, by the strangeness of the situation,

It kind of went viral online. These two teams that had together lost 141 games about to play each other. One of them had to finally win. I had no idea how this was going to go. No one seemed to. Mostly the people who show up are fans. Some have never been to a game before. Lots of Yeshiva supporters hoping the 99 losses would not turn into 100. Do you have any cheers?

No cheers? I'm going to make him up on the fly. Why you? Why you? Why you? And plenty of Lehman fans. Here's one. Francesca Angelis came to support one player in particular, the shortstop,

He's her boyfriend. It's funny. He sleeps, he eats, and he talks baseball. Like, he dreams baseball. Like, I'm telling you, it's funny. Sometimes he will flinch. He's sleeping. And he's, I'm like, what's happening? He's like, I'm getting a grounder ball. So yeah, he's in the game always, you know. I settled in on the Lehman side, right up against the fence near the dugout.

The game starts and immediately does not go well for Lehman. Yeshiva, the other team, is at bat. One of their players hits the ball deep, but the fielder is there. Should be an out. Oh, there it is. So he missed it. That right there should have been caught. Then another ball hit in the air. Oh, that should be a routine-er.

Let's see if he makes it. Oh! Man, que malo. So, yeah. The guy narrating here is a former Lehman player named Eric Venn, who'd come to watch the game with his girlfriend. He knows Justin and all the players. Right after that, another mistake. Yeshiva scores. It kept going. Oh, that should be a routine out. Oh! And that's an error right there. Do they look nervous to you? Oh, yeah, definitely. Another one scores.

Yeshiva scores again. So it's 2-0. And if you're thinking, oh, I know how this will go. Justin's team will bounce back. Can I remind you this is real life? A tiny ball, a round bat and all that? And that is Justin out there pitching. A real human being. The Lehman players do score one in the next inning. Both teams actually play pretty solidly once they settle in. There's some truly incredible moments. That was an amazing play right there. That's like ESPN top 10 right there.

But by the end, going into the last inning, Lehman is still behind. The score is 6-4. They have this one last at bat, and they need to score two runs to tie it up. They do get a runner on first. Then this guy Eli steps up to bat. Let's go, Eli! No way, man. Yo, Eli, tie this shit. Let's go! One swing, baby. Right field. The pitcher walked him.

It's a huge moment right now, right? So somehow, someway right now, he's got to make something happen with that bat. Next batter steps up to the plate. The pitch. Yeah! Let's go! Let's go! So right there, hit by pitch. Now it's a bases loaded right now. This pitcher's obviously flustered up right now. They get a hit.

Oh, let's go! The runner on third races to home plate and scores, and then another runner scores. Let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Now they just tied the game up right now. They need one more run to win. The shortstop, number 18, who, remember, feels grounders in his sleep, gives the look to his girlfriend, steps up to the plate. Yes, I done it!

Did you say, "Let's go, honey"? No, let's go 1-8! But yeah, that is my honey. 1-8, that's his number 18. He grounds out, though. So the game is still tied, and it ends up going to an extra inning. Lehman scores one to put them ahead, and then Yeshiva steps up to bat. Lehman just has to keep Yeshiva from scoring one last time. They get the first batter out and the second batter. And then Justin, who's still pitching, has been pitching the entire game, faces batter number three.

One strike, two strikes, and struck him out. Lehman won. All right, that's the game. Walk off right there. Chris, our impromptu narrator, and his girlfriend kiss in celebration the way I think people do when wars end. It just feels like the thing to do. I walk out onto the field to find Justin, the pitcher, whose hand was actually bleeding.

seemed appropriate. In the middle of the game while I was pitching, I snapped the curveball a little too tight, and I guess I cut myself, and that's what happened. And I just kept playing with it. How do you feel? I'm so excited. I'm so happy. I'm jumping for joy on the inside. This doesn't do justice as to how I feel. I just wish my parents were here to see it. They were at work. Remember, it's a Tuesday afternoon. So the Lehman streak was broken.

And for the Yeshiva Maccabees, their streak was now at 100 straight losses. But at some point that will end, probably. It has to, right? Sometime, the universe will shift. The stars and the planets will be in the right spot. The ball will take that weird hop that gets you an extra run. They'll get their championship window. In fact, did I tell you this was a doubleheader? Lehman and Yeshiva had a second game to play against each other.

Here's what happened. After the first game, almost everyone left. It was getting late and super cold. One person on the way to their car pointed out that Yeshiva had run through like four pitchers, so who could they possibly have left? There didn't seem to be much point. But the two teams played again, and somehow, Yeshiva, after 100 straight losses, they won. Finally. No!

The championship window had opened for both of them. And then it closed. Turns out it was the only win either team would have for the rest of the season. They both went on to lose every remaining game. Justin, the Lehman pitcher, graduated the other week. He told me he still thinks about that game. Their one win. He can replay every pitch in his mind. His fingers felt warm and tingly, like every pitch he threw was going to be perfect.

You could say the stars were aligned that day. But there's another way to see it. The stars had nothing to do with it. They made it happen. David Kestenbaum. He's the senior editor of our show. So there is, of course, one last piece of business that I...

have to take care of, I guess, which is I got to tell you that Arsenal, my favourite soccer team, the ones who were in that game I was watching in the bar at the beginning of the show, they lost. We ended the season with nothing. Again.

And on the way out of a bar that day, I ran into a couple of Arsenal fans arguing about the state of the team. The inquest had well and truly begun. I think we were the better side today. You have copium out the ass. We were not the better side today. The first half, we had them on the ropes. So, yeah, folks were reacting to the loss in different ways. But in the last couple of weeks, there have been whispers about new star players who could join Arsenal next season.

And the thing I keep hearing from my fellow Arsenal fans is genuine excitement for what might happen. People honestly think it could really be the year. They're absolutely delusional for saying that. And also, I totally agree with them. Yeah.

Our program was produced today by Angela Gervasi and me and edited by Emmanuel Berry. The people who put together today's show include Thea Benin, Michael Comite, Aviva de Kornfeld, Cassie Howley, Seth Lind, Tobin Lowe, Catherine Raimondo, Stone Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Anthony Rowerman, Ryan Rumery, Alyssa Shipp, Christopher Svetala, Marisa Robertson-Texta, and our managing editor, Sara Abdurrahman.

The version of Take Me Out to the Ballgame you heard in David Kestenbaum's story was made for us by Matt Peters and Matt Schellenberg. You can find their music at deadmenmusic.com. Special thanks today goes to Abby Adamson, Peter Satiri, Tan Copsi, Sophia Musa, Senna Jochi, Jason Andrew, and everybody over at the Brooklyn Invincibles. Special thanks also to the two Arsenal bars where I camped out for a couple of weeks for this episode, Highbury Pub and Fancy 3.

Special thanks as well to Daniel Melamud, author of a recently released book, This is Football, A Must Read. And thanks again to Bell Woods, Denali Marks, Rowan Groom, Lindsay Galza, Christian Keptinger, Benjamin Remy, Alison Cutler, Eric Brooks and Ching Lee.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. And there's videos and lists of favorite shows and tons of other stuff there too. Again, that's thisamericanlife.org.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. And thanks as always to my boss, the big man, Ira Glass. You know, when we first started working on this episode, he found it really surprising when I suggested that I be the host.

I swear, every day, over and over, he just kept asking, Why you? Why you? Why you? I'm Emmanuel Jochi. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life. Next week on the podcast on This American Life, Mahmoud Khalil was in detention for more than three months because the Trump administration said he engaged in anti-Semitic activity in Columbia University protests.

We talked to him about the Shabbat and Passover services he's been to with his Jewish friends, the Jewish author he read in detention, who he connected to so deeply, and playing a Jewish character in a middle school play in a Palestinian refugee camp. And funnily enough, not a lot of my friends wanted to take this role, so I got a special thanks for me agreeing to take the role. The real Mahmoud.

Next week on the podcast, we're in your local public. This message comes from Jackson. Let's face it. Retirement planning can be confusing. At Jackson, we're working to make retirement clear for everyone, starting with you. Our easy to understand resources and user friendly digital tools help simplify your entire experience. You can have confidence in your retirement with clarity from Jackson.

Seek the clarity you deserve at Jackson.com. Jackson is short for Jackson Financial Incorporated, Jackson National Life Insurance Company, Lansing, Michigan, and Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York. Purchase New York.