There are few things that sting as badly as when your team loses. I just experienced one of those things - my team got swept by their division rivals. I feel a slight sickness in the pit of my stomach because my team didn’t pull through and the other team won three games on some bullshit luck. I wish I could bottle this feeling and analyze it. I wish I could get the feeling down on paper in the form of a story. I would really have something if I could manage to do that. The story would have to involve some crushing defeat at the hands of an inept opponent.
Yeah, there are few things that sting as badly as your team’s loses. Baseball gives a unique opportunity to feel those losses more than any other sport. You see, the baseball season stretches from early April to late October. That’s almost seven full months of pain. And unlike other sports that are played once or twice a week, baseball is played nearly every day. During those seven months you could see your team fall seventy times or more, but usually less if they’re good.
Being a baseball fan to me is like watching a group of friends compete. You get to learn the guys’ names, what arms they throw with, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. You follow them through their good times when the balls jump off their bats and over the fences and their slumps where they can’t seem to do shit. You see heart shattering failure after colossal failure. You see people try with the entire minds and hearts and come up empty nearly every fucking time.
To me, baseball is a window into life. You try your guts out over and over and over only to have your face stepped on and your dreams smashed. But then there are the successes, the times when the ball goes over the wall in the ninth inning and you are by yourself rounding the bases at a slow, self-satisfied trot. There are moments when the emotions well up inside your chest and the smile can’t be pushed off your face with any exertion of force. These are the times that every sports fan wants to see repeatedly. However, it doesn’t work like that.
Success is bland without the bitter taste of defeat. Winning doesn’t feel as good as it possibly can without a good measure of losing. We all want to win, we all want to get the job done, but usually we falter, we skin our knees when we drop to the ground, we strike out with the tying run cautiously leading off from third. These are the moments that contour our lives with deep valleys and steep ridges, and without them we would most definitely be more boring than we already are.
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