10/16/00: Bad Baseball Fan
I've been a Mets fan since I was a little kid and they won the World Series. As a kid -- when I was in elementary school -- I enjoyed baseball because, I think, it appealed to my sometimes methodical nature. There is also something in me that loves to like unusual things. Like when I was 3 and I realized it was a strange thing for a small child to like Brie cheese. I'd be over at someone's house and they would say, "Would you like a piece of cheese?" -- meaning, "Would you like an individually wrapped postit-note of cheese-like food substance?" -- and I would say, "Yes, do you have any Brie?" This would freak them out. I enjoyed being an oddity.
And a 8 year old girl who could tell a ball from a strike by sight was something of an oddity. Though I didn't play any sports, and wasn't really a tomboy except for my propensity to choke people, I had that one little thing in common with boys. I could talk baseball. I think I liked the status.
All this aside. Despite 14 years of practice, I'm still a bad baseball fan. By this I don't mean I'm a fan of bad baseball, or that I'm a baseball fan and a bad person. I just mean I'm not good at being a baseball fan because I always feel sorry for the team that loses. See? I can't even say the "loser."
How awful would it be to be the guy who fumbled two pretty easy grounders in one innning and basically let the other team score tons of unearned runs off of you? Or the guy who walks in winning run? Or the guy who strikes out at a crucial at-bat?
I feel the worst for poor Rick Ankiel. Not only is he kind of cute, which naturally makes me like him more since I'm a lookist when it comes to pro sports players, but he's only 21 -- a little younger than me -- and was being taunted by an entire stadium full of crazed Mets fans. Now I've been a crazed Mets fan on a few memorable occasions but we can be really mean. Poor guy threw quite a few wild pitches in the post season, when he had thrown hardly any all year. He was just nervous in the big games. He's a kid! I just really felt for him.
So my team won (go Metties!) and here I am feeling sorry for the other team. I tried to remind myself that the Cardinals are from my nemisis state, Missouri (that's another story, but trust me, Missouri is an evil state that's out to get me). But I still felt bad for them. I wish it had been the Braves. I don't know if the Mets would have been able to beat the Braves, to be honest -- it's some psychological thing about the Braves -- but it would have been shu-weet to kick the Braves' behinds. They're the only team I never feel sorry for. That, too, might just be another story.
more musings on the state of our culture
More musings that involve my childhood. I promise that none of them are particularly precious.