Some feel-good stories are best left untold.
The Tampa Bay Rays are inspiring. That’s precisely what makes them so dangerous. Two weeks after the World Series, America is still buzzing about The Little Team That Could—which bodes anything but well for the rest of baseball’s long-suffering cellar-dwellers.
Optimism is contagious.
Unfortunately, it also tends to be terminal.
I’m not trying to rain on Cinderella’s ball. The Rays had a remarkable run, and their fans deserve credit for several whole months of steadfast devotion. But we can’t all fit on the bandwagon. For the league’s most forlorn franchises, Tampa’s turnaround offers nothing more edifying than the empty promise of better days to come.
The good news is that the Rays have brought hope to the hopeless.
The bad news, alas, is that the Rays have brought hope to the hopeless.
The Devil may not be on the jerseys anymore, but he’s very definitely still in the details.
The sports page will play tricks on you if you aren’t careful. An upset here, a comeback there—pretty soon you get to thinking that anything really is possible. If only. Sure, even the losers get lucky sometimes, but then again sometimes the exception proves the rule, and besides that too many of Tom’s Petty platitudes are liable to land any thinking listener in an unchecked existential free fall.
Low expectations can be self-fulfilling.
High expectations can be self-destructive.
When the choice is between defeat on one hand and delusion on another, only a fan or a fool lays his money on the long shot.
“Maybe” is the mother of immaturity. To pine for improbable things is to hide from hurt, to flinch from fate. The problem with the Tampa Bay Rays is that they struck a blow against inevitability, and suckered the rest of us into taking the ride. It’s naive to believe in miracles. It’s outright neurotic to believe they might actually happen to you.
The characters may have changed, but somehow I feel like I've heard this story before:
Maddon believed in the gold ring, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, manage our pitchers more effectively....And one fine morning—
So we beat on, 'dogs against the favorite, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Or to Kansas City or Pittsburgh or Mudville or Wrigley, where next year is always next year, and even the dreamers are only just saying, is all...
comments (4) write a comment »
write a new comment
about 1 month ago
Some nice theorizing, but a lot of 'ifs'.
about 1 month ago
Pretty good, Bubba.
21 days ago
Wait, good point Tosten...Where has bubba been in some recent columns? Has Ryan Alberti moved on from the second person?
21 days ago
From the second person all the way to the third, in fact. Ryan Alberti misses Bubba, but every Hunter S. Thompson wannbe has to grow up eventually. That said, Ryan promises to resurrect the hackneyed device if the situation ever merits it.
write a new comment