The spiritual lessons of sports

When the Chicago Cubs last won the World Series, in 1908, Teddy Roosevelt was president, women could not vote, radio was still in development, and 99.99 percent of the 7 billion people now on Earth had yet to be born. You've got to admire the loyalty of the Cubs' fans. I surely do, even though my Mets — who haven't won a World Series for a mere 29 years — just extended the Cubs' misery for another year with a four-game sweep in the National League Championship Series. All sports fans know the agony of defeat, but Cubs fans are in a special category. They have earned our awed respect, like saints who defiantly proclaim their faith — and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" — even as they are burned at the stake. The greatest fans, I would submit, are not those whose teams have compiled the most championships, but those whose fervor is undiminished — indeed, is deepened — by pain and disappointment.

Passionate fandom is a spiritual exercise — one of the many roads to wisdom. It teaches you to endure suffering, to persist in the face of defeat, to hold on to hope even when your shortstop collides with your left fielder and the pop fly drops into the grass and your team blows a three-run lead in the ninth. Life brings a lot of loss; as you age, your record inevitably slips below .500. If you root for the Cubs, or the Mets, or almost any team, the insults inflicted by time come as no shock. And if every 20 or 30 years, you're lucky enough to win it all, and your avatars raise the championship trophy on high, my God, the sweetness of that redemption! You are transported into ecstatic union with others of your tribe, and even given a fleeting taste of immortality. Let's go Mets. Let's go [your team's name here]. And if the season ends in defeat, wait 'til next year.

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