Aaron Judge, Jaxxon Dart, and Fill In The Blank (And why it doesn't matter)

I have been a sports fan my entire life. It is my preferred mode of entertainment. I appreciate the not knowing, the not guessing, and especially the not figuring out how it ends.

Well, to be fair, we all pretty much figured out how “Running it back” was going to go. I mean they basically told us that they wouldn’t fix the major problems, we would win ninety-plus games but not the division, and that they would have to beat the Red Sox to make the “real playoffs” .

Yet, even in the above example, we still don’t “know” how it will turn out. The Yankees “could” win the World Series. They won’t. I’d be stunned if they beat the Red Sox. But they “could” win it all.

It’s a crap shoot. Well, crap anyway.

While watching the Giants last weekend, a game where they lost Jaxxon Dart, damaged Malik Nabors, lost Brian Burns, and saw Andrew (Giancarlo) Thomas limp off the field, again, a song kept playing in my head.

It was Jimi Hendrix’s “Castles Made of Sand”.  

Hendrix, while not a castle made of sand, washed into the sea too soon as well.

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Fandom is such a strange thing. To root for a team is to end the year in disappointment. Pretty much always. For everyone. 

Only one team wins a year and then immediately struggles to repeat. Sometimes going decades in-between “Here comes Willis!” and “Knicks in Five!”  

Some teams never win at all. The Buffalo Bills went to the Super Bowl four years in a row. Four. Years. In. A. Row. From 1991-1994 Didn’t win any of them. 

The Atlanta Braves with Madux, Glavine, Smoltz  etc. won division titles 14 of 15 years and won the World Series once. 

You know who wears all those New England Patriots, “Perfect Season 19-0 Super Bowl Champions” T-Shirts? The ones they printed up for immediate sale?  

“Unused Super Bowl loser shirts are donated by the NFL to nonprofits like Good360, which distributes them to families in need worldwide.” 

Worldwide because the only people in the USA that would wear those shirts are us.  As a thumb in the eye of Boston fandom.   

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So why do we do it?  Why do we drop $150 on a Tuesday for a ticket with the understanding that they might totally suck that day? That the players you want to see might be taking the day off. That Aaron Boone might decide to have a back-up catcher bat clean up?

Let’s face it if Aaron Boone managed the Beatles they would have kept Pete Best but had him play lead guitar and put John Lennon on drums.

What other ticket has that kind of risk?

So maybe that’s the secret.

The risk. The hope. The lack of guarantee.  Maybe we watch because there actually is a possibility. A miniscule one. That we will see something organic and amazing.

A potential 29-point comeback that looked like it was going to end in failure with our best player missing the final shot. And then a hand comes out of nowhere to tip it in.

Years of suffering erased. Overwhelming joy.  A joy that can only come from years, decades of suffering defeat.  A joy that resonates now and will resonate in nostalgia.

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Aaron Judge. Jaxxon Dart.  Fill in the Blank. 

Their injuries don’t matter. 

If we win…  if we win without them, it becomes the stuff of legend.

If we lose it becomes yet another deposit in the bank of disappointment we call fandom and will make when we finally win that much sweeter. 

There’s a reason that Chris Chambliss's Home Run brought tears to my eyes.

For the record, right after that we got swept.

The next year Reggie hit three home runs in one game and the tears flowed yet again.

The bank was finally empty.

And then slowly filled up until 1996.  So it goes.

It’s why we watch.