Win or Stay Home

I said all I wanted was more baseball.

Well, we got it. All the games our hearts could handle. Today will be the last day of the Ballers’ season, and it feels like it kind of had to be this way, doesn’t it? Nothing was going to come easy; even the best team in the league could play the scrappy underdog for a minute just to make us feel comfortably uncomfortable, and naturally Oakland and Raimondi Park were going to make the difference. Ice Cold Kenny said it first, loudest, and longest: Ballers in 5.

I am a deeply superstitious and compulsive person. Somewhere in the middle of the season, I started banging on the Big B on the warehouse on 20th for luck. The same spot, the same bolt every time. If I didn’t hit it just right, I had to try again. If I never got it quite right, the worry crept in. Your resident Ballers princess/mermaid began believing the more nervous I was the more likely it was that we’d win, so then I began hoping I’d feel worse coming to games. The spiral was on. All weekend I was looking for signs from the universe: what did it mean when a work email had “comeback” in the title? Where was Mayor Mike slinging buns when the B’s scored, and where was he when they gave up runs? (And should I say something to him about the hotdog destinies of his route?) Dan Silvert, the sane sage of our lot, said we needed to “just have a lot of fun” this weekend and have “good vibes.” Is that…something that can be done? Should I trust that the raucous Friday sellout vibes meant a surefire win or that the anxious Saturday crowd foretold a tragic loss? All of this is my own madness, of course. Maybe necessary madness. But I kept hugging everyone last night muttering, why do we do this to ourselves?

A completely normal reasonable fan on his own journey/spiral

I have on good authority that one of our fearless co-founders said after last year’s playoff loss, “that’s sports.” It’s a no-guarantee business. Most of the time, you don’t get out what you put in. A certain fan favorite, let’s call him Anson, after last night’s game said, “What else are we going to do, stay home and watch Netflix all the time?” Part of writing these dispatches in the beginning was my need, in a deeply unsettled world, to feel like I’d done all I could in this season, in this place, for this team. Secure my spot. It took me too long to realize what I should have known from the jump: nobody needs to earn their belonging here. That’s the whole point of what the team is building. What we do is keep our seat warm and hold the door for the next fan through. We all know the big score, the bargain of belief to let in hope and misery together, and in our small ways foolish and fantastic we risk the sadness to find the joy every time we show up instead of staying home.

Every fan, every team, uses the expression “there’s always next season” when they lose. And every year, all but one team in their bunch loses. It’s a saying tied to failure, and it is meant as a comfort, one taken for granted by all who don’t know what it’s like to not have another season. But I’m saying it now, cleareyed before Game 5, because the feeling I am left with most after this incredible season and dizzying run through the playoffs is the tremendous sense of gratitude that there will be a next season. Always. I want to win more than anything today…except being back here with you all at Raimondi in May and the May after that.  

From the fan leaving Game 4 saying, “Oh, there’s another game tomorrow…with the same two teams?” to the fan saying, “If they lose, I won’t go to school again until they win,” we have room for all of you, today and forever. Thank you; glad you’re here. To anyone who says the stakes are small because the championship is minor, let us change your mind. To the front office who have made an impromptu goose flyover and a meticulously orchestrated Air Force T-34 Mentor flyover bookends of the same magic monthslong block party, thank you. To the players who have somehow kept their cool and shown up every day to both grind out innings and make the spectacular seem commonplace, thank you: you should not have to carry the heavy hopes of a hungry fanbase so long and so far, but you have. The Town has waited for a professional baseball championship for 36 years. We surely can wait longer. But we don’t want to.

See you tonight.