Existentialism on Game Night: Rage, rage against the dying of the universe's light

Life is mitigated chaos. It's mostly disjointed noise and arbitrary action that we attempt to ascribe meaning to, often fruitlessly. But there are salves for the existential burning; structures we employ to navigate the static. Baseball, with its rules and order, is one of the good ones. It makes sense.

And then on Aug. 10 scientists announce that new stars are being born slower than old ones are dying off and as a result, the universe is dimming very, very slowly. It means we've reached the start of a many-billion-year fade out for everything -- and what are we even doing here, anyway?

These are the moments of lapse in our carefully curated baseball, the moments when the crushing realization sets in that our world is not forever. When ballplayers realize that even if it takes billions upon billions of years, there is always an ending for everything, and choose to not go gentle. When, there on the diamond, they rage against the dying of the universe's light. This is existentialism on game night.

On Aug. 18, Clayton Kershaw looks up at the skies and sees nothing but a vast nothing. "It is space that dooms us," he says. "There is nothing for us there." He seeks the opposite. He seeks earth. He attempts to burrow himself deeper inside the planet, insulating himself from the dangers above. He hurls a baseball at the surface. He will dig his way through.

Chris Stewart,  it seems, will join Kershaw inside the Earth. 

Miguel Sano attempts to have words with the universe face-to-face by ripping his way through the atmosphere. The universe politely declines.

In the middle of a pickoff attempt, Miguel Cabrera decides he has had enough with the charade. He jettisons his glove and flees the premises. What's the point in pretending that in a few billion years, this won't all be gone, anyway?

Jackie Bradley Jr. watches a baseball fly over the wall at Fenway Park. "That ball knows not of our dying universe," he says. He decides to join that ball. 

Kevin Kiermaier tries to do the same, but is denied.

On Aug. 16, we glimpse an alternative universe where position players are pitchers and pitchers are batters. It is a universe where everything is the opposite, where the light is not decreasing. As such, it is a universe where nothing makes sense. 

But it is not our universe. Our universe is dying. But we will not let it go quietly. We will rage,

rage,

against the dying of the universe's light.