I am running my shaking fingers over the edges of curled and yellowed Strat-o-Matic Yankee cards from the 1998 season, talismans of a wasted life. Life had meaning then. Now it is a void leading to an abyss.
I've thought of calling suicide hotlines, but even I cannot bear to face the thought of a grown man confessing to terminal despondency over an aggregation of steroidal mercenaries who care no more about me than my mother did. But I do need help.
I need it, but I don't deserve it, because I am an asshole, and I therefore embrace this sickness unto death over a baseball team, spasmodically, comically clutching for rays of hope and meaning while typing manically to no one. The bleakest form of despair is the knowledge that one is damned and that there could be no other outcome--that my despair is a form of justice.
Beautiful writing. Captures the torture of fandom perfectly. Thank you.
ReplyDelete... and, I should add, the Yankees don't deserve our passion. And yet we give it to them every year without fail. Especially after last night, I'd like to somehow twist this around to suggest that they are the assholes for abusing us, but at some point, we have to take responsibility for the fact that we keep showing up for another whipping.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is trying to decide what kind of team we're seeing out there.
ReplyDeleteIs it a young team, on the way up, which loses a bunch of games just because guys are too young and raw to lay off the outside curve, or make silly mental mistakes on the field? Stuff that will all turn around with a little experience, making those close losses into wins?
Or is it something worse—a team full of young guys who really aren't that good, but just looked that way until the league adjusted?
That was supposed to be something this year told us. Instead, we got to see a lot of Todd Frazier and Chase Headley at-bats, and Jaime German innings.
"Not for nothing" ( what my mob-related secretary used to say ), but this Asshole Tom guy seems perfectly normal to me.
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