What I love about baseball is that (yes it breaks your heart, starts in the spring, ends in the fall, yadda, but) it teaches you to lose. And lose a lot. 162 games. Even in the best season, you’re still going to lose almost a third of everything.
And today is just another loss. Perhaps it’s a bigger loss because history records that a team didn’t receive a special ring. And it is designed to break your heart when a team you admire came so close and a few bad calls, a few bad plays changed the history of fortune.
I grew up a Dodgers fan. I watched Hershiser pitch that final outing in Game 5 against the A’s for the 88 WS win. The minute he threw that strike he looked towards the heavens for a single moment. I’ll never forget that.
I was just a boy but it struck me how it was a game of the gods. And even the players, though shot through with majestic athleticism, were mere mortals passing through the gates for a single moment on the mound when Hersh looks up: fortune, brief smile, how art thou?
Much will be said of Dave Roberts for blowing it 30 years after our last win. Just as Yu took it on his shoulders last year, perhaps Wood, Jansen, Grandal, Madson will all drink some taste of that chalice as well this year.
But for a team to be down so terribly in April and to beat all odds by autumn, snatch lightning from fortune’s crib in the middle of the night, to come to the World Series, the gods, I say, pitched a filthy inning this year on behalf of The Los Angeles #Dodgers
And though it would quench the weary Dodger heart to end the tale by wearing a ring, tragedy nor comedy behaves so well. And perhaps rather than to throw the cup of blame about, it’s quite reasonable to conclude that the Red Sox were the superior team.
And it matters not the fan’s level of deserving or devotion, loyalty, hope held, prayers cast. We practice those not so much to win but to be nearer the divine. And the gods in their wisdom mostly teach us to lose. 3 strikes. 3 outs. One third of the year, lost. That’s baseball.
Congratulations to the Red Sox for an outstanding season. And to our #Dodgers — the words of Vin Scully thunder, eternal, deep in autumn, backed by angelic organ music, It’s Time For Dodger Baseball. And the fans, in their caps and jerseys reply, Was there ever not such a time?