Well, That Hurt

There are times when I am not sure I am in sync with Tennyson’s “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”, at least to the extent one applies it to rooting for a sports team.

For most of my life I either was a fan of a really lousy baseball team or had no team at all to support, having grown up in or just outside of Washington DC. While painful, it was sort of a calm, comforting painful. Low intensity, though at the time I did not recognize it as such at the time.

However, this has now all changed. Over the last three years, the Nationals twice had the best record in the National League (once the best in baseball) sandwiched around a season where they were favored, and failed, to do that still a third time. In the two years they made the playoffs, they lost in the 5th game of the initial five-game playoff series, after leading 6-0, a game I attended in 2012, and lost in four, last night, by giving up one run on a bases-loaded walk and another on a wild pitch. At least this year, the loss was out-of-town and I merely watched it on TV in tense agony until it ended after midnight.

By the way am I the only person who seems to wake-up around the same time no matter when I go to sleep?

Baseball is a funny sport. The first part, the regular season, has a slow rhythm to it. Teams do well that are deep in quality. Even the best teams lose 40-45% of the time, the best players make outs 55-65% of the time. The playoffs are sharp and quick, a roller coaster ride with an unpredictable, often inevitable finish; where a single player can change the results either in a positive or negative fashion. The goal of a 162 game season is to minimize the impact of luck and whim over time, the results of a five (or seven) game playoff series is the epitome of random bounces, seeing eye grounders, and luck disguised under the heading of clutch playing. On the other hand if Wilson Ramos had just moved up Bryce Harper from second base with no outs …

Ah well, it was a very enjoyable season even so. From the first game of Spring Training we attended almost eight months ago, to the many games Ellen and I experienced (especially the stretch where we went to seven of the ten game winning streak the Nationals had), to the gnome hats that Ellen made, which she was only able to use at home or when we went to see the Doubleclicks, Yom Kippur inconveniently happening when the Nationals started their ill-fated playoff run. Our walks to the park from Gallery Place or Union Station, even when I left my Fitbit at home which meant the 2.1 mile walk didn’t really exist (the step counter’s version of the tree falling in the forest when no one is present), have proven that Ellen is willing to still put up with me even when we spend a lot of time together (remarkable after 33 years).

Looking forward to next  year’s Spring Training visit, in case no one realizes it they play this whole darn thing again each year. I guess I will withhold judgment on Tennyson, but I will note that if he had written “Tis better to have loved and lost, over and over again, than never to have loved at all”, I might not be in complete agreement.