Losers Forever

Baseball is my favorite sport. One of the reasons is that it’s the oldest American sport. Which means a whole lot of history. For instance, you can have some pretty amazing losing streaks. I’m talking huge horrible awful soul sucking losing streaks. You can have big time losers in the other sports, but they’re only going to be like 30-50 years old on that. That’s nothing. Baseball has the Chicago Cubs who last won in 1908. That’s right. It’s been 99 years since they won the World Series.

You also have the Philadelphia Phillies who despite having the best mascot in baseball, haven’t won since 1980. And are the losingest team in all of sports. In a city that has the longest losing streak for championships for the 4 sports cities(football, baseball, basketball, and hockey). (Can we even count hockey as a sport these days?) (If a tree falls in the forest, etc…)

The Cubs are especially sad sack as they had to watch the White Sox(their cross town rivals) win who hadn’t won in 88 years. And the Red Sox of course also famously losers, who hadn’t won since 1918 won in 2004 for an 86 year wait. That’s all just complete babycakes next to the Cubbies.

But this year for the postseason? It’s been the pits. All sweeps except for the Yanks/Indians! And the Yanks barely prevented that. But how are you supposed to root for the Cubs and the Phils if they can’t even make it close in the playoffs? This is no billy goat curse. This is no Bartman phenonmeon. No, this is just losers being losers.

I can say this being an Orioles fan and Nats fan. We know about losing. For ten years, the Orioles have been losers. So I am familiar with all of the signs and earmarks, and smells(yes smells—it’s an easy smell to recognize, it stinks!) of losers. We also know what it means to have a bum for an owner. Peter Angelos is such a freaking skinflint it’s amazing. Plus he makes some classic bonehead moves. For instance, the last year we were a winning team—the last year we were in first place at the end of the season—the last year we were in the playoffs—the last year we were in the AL Championships? Peter Angelos fired our beloved Davey Johnson(who I revered from bandwagon rooting for those ’86 Mets growing up). The day after he won manager of the year.

But this year, these Cubs. They have nothing to point to—-and I know about controversial calls too because you’ll recall 1996, when the Orioles played the Yanks in the ALCS and a young kid (I wrote about him before, Jeffrey Maier) pulled a ball out of Tony Tarasco’s glove that should have been caught, but instead became a home run. Now THAT is controversy. But Sweet Lou Pinella pulling Zambrano when he had pitched 85 pitches so he could pitch another game? That’s merely off putting. It’s disappointing. Regrettable. But it’s not something crazy. It’s not fool hardy. If anything, it’s over cautious.

So I hate it. But I love it too. Because that means next year is 100 years of losing. And that is insane! Yes Dane Cook, you are right. There IS only one October.

Two sidenotes:

#1 Can we agree that the Indians’ logo is COMPLETELY RACIST? I mean, hello, this is 2007! But look at this thing…

#2 Can we also further agree that when Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore ran onto the field in St. Louis when the Sox won the World Series and kissed it was one of the weirdest and most annoying things ever? Prostituing a World Series for a movie. (And I like that movie.) But consider this Red Sox fans: Jimmy Fallon is a Yankees’ fan.