It’s that depressing time of year. The Red Sox not only just got their butts whipped by our local American League team, the A’s — the Sox are also 15 games back in their division with little hope of even breaking .500 this year. To make matters worse, the SF Giants have been rocked by yet another PED scandal, so that every time I see orange and black I think it’s an ad for steroids.
The baseball season is coming to another sad, wheezing end for me. Sadly, baseball teams keep trading players so fast I can’t even keep track of who is on the team, which means I’m merely depressed by the abysmal performance of the Red Sox without the luxury of enjoying watching longtime favorites like Yaz, Jim Rice, and Tim Wakefield. And do I want to invest any time into following someone like Daisuke Matsuzaka, knowing that the Sox will probably trade him just when I’m beginning to like him?
Worst of all, football is beginning to take over the front page of the sports section. Why would I want to look at steroid-enhanced, brain-damaged football players, when I can look at a bunch of steroid-enhanced — oh, never mind.
Preach it, brother! When I grew up (in Cincinnati, where not every year was a winning year), “team spirit” meant commiserating with batters as they worked through slumps, encouraging pitchers as they desperately tried to rediscover the strike zone. If someone got a single hit in a 1-25 streak, he might well find himself in Joe Nuxhall’s post-game interview, which in those days meant a little cash or a small perk for the family. Nowadays, a player going 1-25 won’t even be in the line-up consistently.
For awhile last month, I would turn on the Sox every night, just to see who was on the roster and who was on the field. I tried to pay attention to the newcomers, but they got reshuffled too fast to really build relationship. At this point, I’m cheering the orange-and-black of the Orioles (who were the local team when I lived in DC) and waiting for next year.