On any summer morning, it is one of the first thoughts to drift into my head, as I stumble downstairs to prep the coffee machine: We won last night. With my coffee, I savor a tribal glow of triumph and plow through various accounts of my boys’ heroism—the rehash in the newspaper and Metsblog.com, the highlights on radio and TV. Birds sing. The sun streams through the windows. When the Mets lose, which is more often than not, I wake with a vague feeling of deflation, and skip the highlights and the game stories. I do not wish to relive Bay striking out with the bases loaded, or K-Rod blowing a save, or yet another injury to a key player. Those bums! My coffee, on these mornings, has the ashy taste of defeat. The birds are silent.
I am fully aware of how ridiculous this is. At times, I try to will myself to care less, but my professions of emotional distance are fraudulent—a coping technique. I’ve been this way since I was 8, when I began my summer mornings by pedaling my bike to the newspaper store to find out if the Mets had won, and if Koufax had beaten Marichal. For those of us with the baseball affliction—or, for that matter, intense loyalty to any team—there is no cure, nor do we want one. Once every decade or two, you win it all, and by God that championship is glorious, transcendent—redemptive. When you lose, it is a little taste of death. Yet that death deepens your bond with other members of your tribe, and you all go down together, loyal to the end. There’s some consolation in that. Or so I tell myself.
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