That's Ballgame - Lessons Learned from Kevin Devine's "Make the Clocks Move"

by editor Michele Catalano

I’ve been a Kevin Devine fan since 2013, when my daughter Natalie played his album Bubblegum for me when she got it for Christmas. Kevin already had about ten albums out at that time. I was so smitten with Bubblegum that I spent an entire day on Spotify going through his music, falling deeper and deeper in love with every album I heard.

I didn’t listen in order, just clicked on whatever I saw first; so I didn’t get to Make the Clocks Move until last. I was on my couch, headphones on (my husband did not share my taste in music), ready to dive in. I remember it was a rainy spring day. A good day to stay inside and play havoc with my emotions.

***

I knew when I met my husband that he was a recovering alcoholic. He had been sober several years at that point and had his life together. We fell in love, he moved to Long Island from California to be with me, and we settled into our life together.

There were six good, sober years. He rose in the ranks in his job, starting out as tech support and moving up to product manager in a few short years. He was making good money, we were happy, and things were better than they’d ever been in my life. I was living a dream.

The thing about being a recovering alcoholic is the desire to have a drink is always there with you. At least it was for him. It was something he often fought, but he always came out on top. Until he didn’t. Work was stressful, and the pressure to drink on work trips was ever-present. He often traveled to China and South Korea, and his fellow workers and clients encouraged him to drink. He always said, “No, thanks.” Until he didn’t.

He started drinking again in the fall of 2012, on a trip to Florida. He called me, drunk, from the hotel pool. Nothing was ever the same again. He eventually lost his job, and I was determined that he wouldn’t also lose me. We would work through this together, get him back into AA. He’d get another job, stay sober. We’d write off this chapter of our lives as a brief misstep.

****

I was ready to spend about 45 minutes making myself familiar with Make the Clocks Move. I had no reason to expect anything other than another album of beautiful lyrics, lovely melodies, and Kevin’s charming voice.

The album started. I leaned back on the couch, ready.

A few strums of the guitar, that familiar Kevin Devine tone. I was already comforted by the sounds.

A good man doesn’t drink,

And I’ve been drinking alone.

So what does that make me

My hands they always shake,

And no one’s callin’ my phone.

So what does that make me?

What was I in for? I sucked in my breath at those lines and prepared myself for what might be ahead.

Because I’m selfish enough to want to get better,

But I’m backwards enough not to take any steps to get there.

And when you realize it’s a pattern and not a phase,

It’s what you’ve become and it’s what you will stay,

That’s ballgame

I glanced at my husband, passed out on the couch opposite me, the coffee table littered with empty beer cans. He was sleeping sitting up, a semi-cold Miller Lite clutched in his hand. It was seven in the morning.

I wanted to stop the song. I wanted to start it over again. I wanted to hear the part about it being not a pattern but a phase. It’s what you’ve become and it’s what you will stay rang in my head. I was on the first stanza and already feeling choked up.

***

I made a lot of mistakes during his drinking days. He would ask me to stop on my way home from work to pick up beer, and I complied. I would also drink with him. I think that was my way of being a part of his life, even though he was drifting further and further from me. I felt helpless and sank into despair, which did nothing to help matters.

He wasn’t a bad drunk. He didn’t yell or get mean or even drive while he was drunk. Mostly, he stayed on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep, watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie, drinking beer after beer. Sometimes there would be vodka. It all made me so sad. I’d think about the life we were living before he started drinking and feel angry at what we were losing; then I’d feel guilty about being angry. I knew he had a disease, that he wasn’t sabotaging our lives on purpose. I buried my anger, hid my sadness, and carried on with taking care of him.

Being a partner to an alcoholic is a burden. I carried his alcoholism around with me 24 hours a day. I’d go to work and spend my eight hours thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, if he was drunk, if he was applying for jobs as he said he would, if he was feeling despondent. I was nervous, anxious, depressed, and it showed in my work. I’d call in sick often, just to be home with him, to keep watch over him.

***

I let the song carry on.

‘Cause I don’t got room in my life for anyone else.

And I’ve driven away all the people that can help.

And I still don’t even know what I need to do to fix myself.

My husband wasn’t an emotional person. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings, nor did he share any kind of emotional talk with others, including me. He wouldn’t talk about his alcoholism. He thought he had it under control and called himself a functional alcoholic; neither was true.

I went back once again to the beginning of “Ballgame,” studying it as a guide. I listened carefully to the words, the tone, the inflection. I listened as if it was my husband talking, as if he was finally telling me about himself.

There’s a clamp around my chest that tightens every time I lapse into another sorry story,

About my miserable collapse.

A brown box I keep encased in glass and dust off whenever I want your pity.

I was projecting, seeing so much of my husband in these words. I felt as if I was finally getting the smallest idea of what he was going through, what he was thinking. I thought about his previous stints in AA, before he met me. I thought about how, when things were particularly bad, he would thumb through his well-worn Big Book and tell stories—about his former hardships, about how much he was a part of his AA meeting back in Sacramento, about how he rose from the dead. Slurred, drunk ramblings, the same stories each time. But I listened, always, and never pitied him. I only empathized, to a faulty degree.

Kevin’s words and plaintive guitar work played out in my headphones for a good hour. Just “Ballgame” on repeat, while I contemplated the lyrics, while my husband snored. I finally got up, pulled the beer out of his hand, and started to clean up, the lyrics running through my brain.

And when you realize it’s a pattern and not a phase,

It’s what you’ve become and it’s what you will stay,

That’s ballgame

It really felt like ballgame. This was it. At that moment I realized that my husband had accepted his fate, as if he was C-3P0 and this was his lot in life. No, this wasn’t a phase, it was a pattern. I had to accept that. “Ballgame” was taking me places I had closed myself off from. I decided to take the ride, to see what happens.

***

I didn’t know how to deal with him. I was new to all this and had no one to talk to about it. I thought about joining a group for partners of alcoholics, but I didn’t want to offend him. He didn’t think he was an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker. But he was drunk more often than not, and it was killing me. I went from being an extremely happy person to an absolute wreck. I often tried talking to him about it, but he didn’t want to discuss it. He’d only say that he would try to stop, and that night there would be ten more beer cans on the coffee table.

I covered for him with my family. Whereas he had once been an integral part of our family gatherings, now he would more often than not be a noshow. I’d make all kinds of excuses for him. This normally gregarious, funny, charming man was now hunkering down in our house. When he did show up for a family dinner, he was quiet and in a rush to get home. It was tiresome and nerve-wracking to have to lie for him all the time, but I wasn’t ready to tell my family that he was an alcoholic.

I should have been more vocal to him about the strain it was putting on me. But I didn’t think I needed to add to his already cumbersome burden. I didn’t want him to know I was despairing. I didn’t want him to know I was an anxious mess. I didn’t want to put all that on him. So I kept it to myself.

***

I learned some things from listening to “Ballgame.” I learned a little about myself and a lot about my husband and where his head was at. I knew I wasn’t going to make him go back to AA, no matter how many times I begged and pleaded. I knew I wasn’t going to get him to stop drinking, no matter how many times we talked about how he was going to end up dead. I knew it had to come from him, that he was stuck in a zone that wasn’t letting him find a way out. I extrapolated so much from this song that it fundamentally changed the way I viewed my relationship, myself, and my actions.

***

One day in August 2016, he started having heart palpitations. He thought he was having a heart attack. I drove him to the nearest hospital—he did not want an ambulance and the hospital was five minutes away—and was admitted. As he was lying in his hospital bed, with wires and IVs sticking out of him, I told him, “You can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”

AA took over his life, and I took a back seat to the meetings. That was okay, I thought. He’s doing what he has to do to stay sober. Who am I to ask him for some of that time he spent at meetings? He quickly charmed everyone in AA and established himself as a speaker. He joined committees, met with his sponsor, went out to dinner with his newfound friends. I was lonely and feeling neglected, but I once again let his alcoholism, even in recovery, dictate my actions and needs.

I wish I could say we had a happy ending, but it was not to be. His sobriety gave him clarity, and in that clarity he saw that he wanted out. I had stuck with him through four-and-half years of beer and vodka, of anxiety and loneliness and worry, only to have him take off when he was sober long enough to feel empowered by it. That previous life we lived, in which we were incredibly happy, was not coming back to me.

****

I eventually devoured the entirety of Make the Clocks Move; it’s now one of my favorites of Kevin’s albums. In the 12 years since, I’ve become something of a Kevin Devine superfan. I have more records of his than of any other artist. I now call Kevin a friend. He’s absolutely the kindest, most thoughtful artist I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. I want him to know about the clarity he provided me, the means to move forward he gave me, the understanding I derived from “Ballgame.” People interpret songs in wildly different ways, and in ways that are wildly different from how the songwriter intended. What I got from the song was helpful and beneficial, a bonus of projecting those lyrics onto myself.

I spent years as an afterthought, being put on the back burner, playing second fiddle to alcohol. Being a partner to an addict is indeed a burden. Most of that burden comes from feeling guilty—about what I could have done to help him, what I could have done differently, what I did to cause him to drink. I’m trying to unlearn all of that now, to teach myself that it wasn’t my fault that he started drinking again or kept doing it for years, at great harm to his own health and our relationship.

I keep Kevin’s words close to me. I listen to Make the Clocks Move often. “Ballgame” may still gut me, but the rest of the album plays out like a comfortable blanket. I would call this record a friend.

I don’t even talk to my ex-husband. Haven’t in about two years. And every time I think of him I shake my head no and whisper, Ballgame.

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