Jeff Agase Twelve-17 isn’t that bad,
right? Help reassure Agase that winning isn’t everything by
e-mailing him at [email protected].
It’s a brutally painful ritual. Nearly every day, I
double-click my Internet browser and go to espn.com to check on
something that is so obviously inevitable that I should know
better.
It goes a little something like this: I wait for the page to
load, still moronically clinging to a miniscule glimmer of hope,
and find the link for Major League Baseball scores. As I yet again
make that fateful double-click, my confidence begins to dip as I
prepare for the worst.
And there it is: Cleveland 11, Detroit 3. The friggin’
Tigers have lost again.
I know that they’re losers. They haven’t had a
winning record since the early days of the Clinton administration,
and dropped 109 games the year the swingin’ Democrat was
re-elected.
It’s called futility, and it’s not very fun.
But every day, I check. And I’m not alone. For as long as
victory has driven fans of the New York Yankees and Green Bay
Packers to gleeful elation, defeat has driven followers of the
Milwaukee Brewers and New Orleans Saints to childish tears. But the
fans, at least those who are most loyal (or most stupid, depending
on which way you look at it) keep coming back.
These are fans like those in Houston who watched the Buffalo
Bills rally from 32 points down to win an NFL wild card game. Or
the die-hard Boston Red Sox fans who watched a harmless, trickling
ground ball off the bat of Mookie Wilson roll between Bill
Buckner’s legs to dash their World Series hopes.
And now look at these teams. The Oilers … well, the Oilers
don’t technically exist anymore, and the Red Sox … well,
they still haven’t won the Fall Classic since they traded
away an overweight booze hound by the name of Babe Ruth.
OK, bad examples. But at least those teams suffered heartbreak
in the playoffs. Most perennial losers, like the Tigers I lamented
above, appear in the playoffs as often as Steve Lavin gets a
cowlick.
Take the Chicago Cubs. A world championship has eluded them
since 1908 when they beat my sorry Tigers in five games. Yet every
game, every season, the Chicago faithful pack historic Wrigley
Field, fully aware that the sad streak may have no end in
sight.
They don’t do it because they are masochists. They do it
because they can imagine, maybe romantically, maybe foolishly, how
it will feel that one season when their team wins it all. The Cubs
are off to a blazing start, running out to a 19-11 record and first
place in the NL Central.
During the 1992 and 1993 seasons, pitcher Anthony Young wrote
his own undesirable page in the the record books when he lost 27
straight games for the New York Mets, something Pedro Martinez
couldn’t do if he tried.
But he kept pitching, and the fans kept watching, trying to hold
back their snickering when he took the mound. He kept good spirits
about his drought, even donating a piece of memorabilia to a
collector with the note, “This is my game glove that broke
the record. I hope the luck changes!” Now there’s a guy
who proudly collects his $10 for placing second in a beauty contest
in Monopoly.
Eventually, Anthony Young won. Then, the fans cheered the
loudest they had all season for arguably the biggest loser on the
field. Those who stuck it out with A.Y. felt a connection, a bond
of failure, with him. And finally breaking it felt fantastic.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t win a single NFL game for
nearly two years and were shut out an unbelievable 11 times en
route to an 0-26 record. Apparently those orange uniforms
weren’t as intimidating as originally intended. But now
they’ve got a new stadium equipped with a ridiculous pirate
ship, dapper new pewter (that’s an actual color?) uniforms, a
loud-mouth former Trojan wide receiver, and suddenly they’re
contenders.
Back in 1989, when the Cleveland Indians probably could have
been beaten by the UCLA IM softball C-league champions, some
visionary decided to depict Chief Wahoo’s hapless tribe in a
movie called “Major League” with Corbin Bernsen. As if
losing almost 100 games wasn’t humiliating enough. Sure
enough, the Indians became one of the dominant teams of the
mid-1990s, advancing to the World Series in 1995.
And what about fans of the Montreal Expos? Yes, both of them.
The one year those secessionist Quebecois got to see their team put
together the best record in baseball, the 1994 season screeched to
a halt with a strike. Now Major League Baseball’s farm team
has been split up more times than 19th-century Poland.
All of this begs a question: if you’re a fan watching your
team at a bar, is your glass of beer half-empty or half-full? If
your team is the San Diego Chargers, your glass is quickly all
empty and then likely shattered on the floor.
But you San Diegans are quick to remind detractors that just six
years ago your Chargers were in the Super Bowl. Never mind that
Stan Humphries was being peeled off of the Joe Robbie Stadium turf
with the jaws of life.
For those of you who endured a 1-15 embarrassment this past year
and still pledge yourselves as die-hard fans, I salute you.
You are the fans who understand that sports, especially in this
era of free-wheeling and fast-dealing free agency, is in constant
flux. Teams go from worst to first and back at an unprecedented
rate. Success and failure are usually not permanent.
It may be hard to believe, but there was a time not too long ago
when everyone’s favorite redundant band, Duran Duran, ruled
the airwaves, and UCLA basketball struggled just to land a spot in
the NCAA Tournament. The 1980s were an ugly time for Bruin hoops,
and that was when everyone stayed four years. They missed out on
the Big Dance for three straight years from 1984 to 1986 and
finished just a game over .500 in the 1984-85 campaign.
Were those some looosing teams? Not quite, but in the eyes of a
typical Bruin fan who expects a new banner in Pauley every season,
things were downright depressing.
They shouldn’t be. Ten years after their NIT championship
felt like a parting gift on “Press Your Luck,” our
beloved Bruins were hanging a banner. Things had come full circle
in only a decade.
So keep watching your Chargers, your Devil Rays, your Angels,
and your Bulls. I’ll keep checking on my Tigers, knowing what
doesn’t kill them can only make them stronger. It may be 100
years from now, but some wisecracking sports columnist in this very
paper may be declaring the apocalypse when the Cubs and Tigers
square off in the World Series.
I’ll be pumping my fist in satisfied delight, six feet
under.