Is Baseball More Fun When Your Team Is Losing?

I know, I know, there’s football stuff on today. I’m excited too but I’m a Rams fan. I don’t think we’ve had a first rounder since the 90’s, so I watched baseball all day. Something struck me by watching the Yankee game today compared to last night. I like watching baseball more when my team’s losing. 

It’s weird, I know. When the Yankees lose I refuse to watch SportsCenter because watching the highlights cooks the blood inside of me. Yankees won 7-0 last night. Which I should be excited about given the state of this team but somewhere around the 5th inning when it was 5-0 my brain went into airplane mode. I was on my phone or reading my book with the game on in the background; instinctively shifting my focus if I heard a bat crack or an announcer yell. I didn’t even get excited for Clint Frazier’s home run. In fact, I got mad at him. That’s how fucked up baseball is. Guy’s first homerun of the season and all I’m thinking is “you just couldn’t of fucking saved it for when it mattered could you?”

But when we’re losing, like today, I’m much more engaged. I’m hanging on every pitch, ready to fight an umpire if need be. If you’re team needs a hit, you convince yourself everyone is getting a hit. Players are only two things in your eyes in that situation- hot or due. Either way they’re hitting. When you see a rally forming, you start believing in magic. And if there’s a home run to take the lead, I become a man possessed. I’m yelling, speaking in tongues, my mom’s screaming at me, my dog’s shaking in the corner of the living room. But it doesn’t matter, because you’ve felt the magnitude of that moment flow through you. It’s involuntary. 

Baseball is the real beautiful game, soccer can kick rocks. 

Watching losing baseball is a win/win. Best case scenario, your team comes from behind to win. Worst case, you lose. But there’s something so beautifully American about letting a baseball game fuck up your whole day.