In the middle of July – just a month ago! – I wrote how much fun it was watching baseball, and especially how much fun it was to watch the Philadelphia Phillies, the team of my youth and my heart. I talked about it with A Martinez on Morning edition I also told people to watch a lot of baseball, and if they needed a team to root for, they could root for mine, which had the best record in baseball at the time. This was during the All-Star break.
And then something strange happened: they lost 16 of their next 25 games.
They lost to good teams, to very good teams, to bad teams, to very bad teams. They got beat a little and a little bit. They got swept by the Yankees, which was a serious emotional scar for me personally. They lost one of those Yankee games in overtime, and a few days later they lost again in overtime, this time to the Seattle Mariners. Their best hitters went ice cold; their best pitchers went shaky; their bullpen went from being trustworthy to Anxiety-inducing.
However, as I write this on Friday afternoon, they have won two games in a row. Is that a lot of games? Not necessarily; at least not to the cold and objective eye. But those two games had, for lack of a better word, some pepper. Wednesday night’s game against the Marlins got off to a miserable start: The Marlins took a 3-0 lead in the first inning. The Phillies came back with two runs – but then the Marlins scored two more runs in the fourth inning to make it 5-2, a setback just when things seemed to be looking up.
But! The Phillies filled the bases in the fifth inning for their beloved bat Kyle Schwarber, who at that time 0 for his last 16. He hit the ball, announcer John Kruk (who was once their batsman) hissed “YES!” and the grand slam sailed over the wall. It was 6-5. They later added three more and won 9-5. It wasn’t just the victory; it was the Come back. Struggle and hope may be more inspiring in a crisis than an easy victory.
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But let’s be honest, easy wins are nice, too, like Thursday’s game against the Washington Nationals. The Phillies scored four runs in the first inning and kept coming back for a comfortable 13-3 win. But it wasn’t just the win: 29-year-old rookie Weston Wilson, a guy I’d practically never heard of before he was called up to the team in July, hit a cycle. That means he hit a single, a double, a triple and a home run. It was only the tenth time a Phillies player had done that, and the first time a Phillies rookie had done it.
Some people believe a true fan would watch every game from start to finish, no matter what. I don’t share that view. When games got ugly or out of control, I followed them on my phone, keeping an eye on them without torturing myself too much. (I watched the extra-innings loss to the Yankees, and that’s more than enough torment anyone could need in a season.) But I remained hopeful and ready to come back.
And when Weston Wilson – whose name I still remember – hit the cycle on Thursday night, I was almost as happy for him as if it were a guy I’d been watching for years. That’s what love for a team is, after all. You don’t curse them, you don’t abandon them, you don’t pretend to know what will help in tough times. You just keep waiting for the bright spots. where you are lucky instead of miserable, and where Batsman after Batsman contributes to this and makes it look like the sun is coming out.
You stay engaged. You get angry and desperate. You pull yourself together. You put on your team gear and hold on. That’s the life of a sports fan; that’s life in a crisis. Maybe it’s just life.
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