The Dark Hour of the Soul

So your team didn’t make it the playoffs. Mine either. As I believe Fitzgerald once referred to “the dark hour of the soul”, this can be a baseball fan’s dark hour. Your team isn’t in contention. Or your team made it to the playoffs! But then it ran into the damn Phillies or the man with the golden arm, Cliff Lee. This is a tough time to be a fan if you’re not the Yankees, Phillies, Giants, or Rangers. 

So what do you do? Do you jump enemy lines and root for another team? How do you even choose another team after 162 games of cheering and yelling at your tv screen and drowning your sorrows in pre, during, and post game alcohol choices? Are you disloyal for suddenly jumping on ship with the Yankees and hoping that there’s a repeat of last year just so they kill the Phillies? Or do you wish the Rangers the best even though you’re still bitter that after a few Golden Sombreros in April, you dropped Josh Hamilton from your fantasy team and then he became a sober wunderkind and your boyfriend beat you in fantasy baseball? No, you’re not bitter at all.

This is the time when we put aside our alliances and we watch good, solid, postseason baseball. You don’t have to find a new alliance or root for anyone if you don’t want to, I know how fragile egos can be after watching your team not make the cut. Just watch what we all love to begin with: the actual game of baseball. In the postseason, it’s even more dramatic and sometimes poetic. Finish your beer, put aside your anger at this season, pray for some moves in the offseason for your team, and play ball.