After scarfing down my usual breakfast of Reese’s Puffs and an English muffin, I headed to People’s Cafe to write this column. I flew down Milvia Street on my bike toward Downtown Berkeley, weighing different column ideas in my head. I parked my bike and strolled into the Cafe. I spent $3 on a Mexican hot chocolate and walked to a table in the back. I set it down on the table, pulled my laptop out of my backpack and, in the process, knocked over the entire hot chocolate. The 10 or so patrons of the cafe managed reactions ranging from muffled laughter to quiet gasping. The liquid splashed across the floor, mostly accumulating in a muddy-looking hot chocolate pond underneath the table. Slumping my shoulders like a heartbroken George Michael Bluth, I walked over to the counter to grab some napkins.
The 2013 iteration of the Seattle Mariners should have been the surprise team of the year. Sports Illustrated said it; the stat-nerd bloggers, never without their trademark skepticism, even let on hints of believing in a Pacific Northwest Renaissance. Of course, Felix Hernandez would be his usual dominant self. The young core — Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak, Jesus Montero — all were bound for breakout seasons. Veterans Kendrys Morales and Michael Morse would provide stability in the middle of the lineup with reliable offensive production. After years and years of futility, treading water at the bottom of one of the weaker divisions in the MLB, the Mariners would finally make their run toward the playoffs. As the weather improved and Opening Day crept closer, I knew the M’s were destined to leave mediocrity in the dust. Turns out, the Mariners aren’t mediocre at all: They’re even worse than that.
Fans of sports are inextricably tied to optimism about their team’s futures, near and far, and for good reason; practicing pragmatism in the arena of sports fandom yanks the joy out of the entire enterprise. Because what good does expecting your favorite team to finish just below .500 and miss the playoffs do? You really see the effects of partisanship in the ESPN polls, where the responses for a question like “Will the Blackhawks or the Bruins win Game 6 of the Stanley Cup?” are tallied and divided by state lines. The states where each respective team plays votes overwhelmingly for their hometown team. It’s not rational; it’s fandom. It’s fun, this type of unabashed support. It allows for good-natured arguments between fans of opposing teams and solace in the long winters between seasons. But what happens when the expectations in your mind never manifest themselves fully? And what allows us, year after year, to believe that this specific team will be different, that this iteration really has what it takes?
I don’t think it’s a conscious decision, is what I’m getting at. Just like our tendency leans toward pragmatism in most facets of life, such as eating well and exercising because it is important to be healthy, or studying for a final because you don’t want to fail out of school, the opposite holds true for our support of our sports teams. If it were rational, I would temper my expectations, not get my hopes up too high, know that the M’s are probably going to miss the playoffs again. But it’s impossible. We’re sentenced to our high hopes. Disappointment is a constant until it isn’t. In life, you can try to take precautions to make sure hot chocolate doesn’t spill all over your lap. With sports, it’s impossible to prevent and almost always inevitable.
Contact Michael Rosen at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @michaelrosen3.