Welcome to Snyder's Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it's free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you'll get smarter, though. That's a money-back guarantee. Let's get to it.
Remember the song, "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed? It won't be for everyone and it's as heavy as it sounds. I have to be in the right mood, but I like it. That's beside the point here, though. The song itself has absolutely nothing to do with baseball, but I often apply the it to baseball fandom because of something my dad has been telling me for years: It's a sickness.
Baseball fandom, that is. And he's right.
Think about the commitment to being a die-hard baseball fan. You start paying attention in mid-February and are excited for Opening Day by late March. We get so amped for Opening Day and then live and die with every pitch, feeling elated with each victory or depressed with each loss. Even though we damn well know it was only 0.6% of the season.
And then we do it the next day and the day after that and the day after that.
Imagine how sick you have to be to tie your happiness to the outcome of a game 162 times in six months? No other sport provides that level of daily emotion and that's only in the regular season. In order to get the ultimate taste of happiness in this sport, our favorite team now needs to win either 11 or 13 games in the playoffs. The fans of teams that get to the World Series basically live and die with a team nearly every single day for eight months.
Even the best teams taste a ton of failure and heartache, too. The marker for elite-level teams has long been 100 wins in the regular season. That still means 62 losses. What other sport provides you with 62 defeats in a great year? That's still just so much relative depression. Compare this to the NFL where the best teams might lose as few as three games in a season.
And how times in any given season does your team give you the Godfather feeling ("just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!")?
It's happening to me right now, as a Cubs fan. They started 17-9 and it was great. I worried about the blown saves coming back to bite them. Then they were mediocre for a bit, then terrible for a bit. They were 39-48 through July 2. Whatever. Time to quit worrying about them, to spare myself, right? Then they ripped off wins in seven of their next eight. OK, now I'm back. Let's go! Then they lost four of five. Never mind, I'm out. Now they've won two straight.
And I caught myself this morning looking at the standings and the schedule and squinting every which way I could to convince myself that maybe, just maybe, this team could start to play better and more consistent moving forward.
The analyst in me, of course, knows this is nonsense and the team has already shown for 102 games what it is. The fan in me just won't quit, though, because -- as my dad would say -- this is a sickness.
Fans of every team are equally as sick.
The Yankees are 60-42 right now, a full-season pace of 95 wins. Go talk to a Yankees fan about how they feel about the team right now and see if it feels positive. The Red Sox have been playing well above what most thought they could, but have lost four straight out of the All-Star break. Go find a Red Sox fan and check in on their mental state. The Phillies have the best record in baseball and have for most of the season, but they've lost four of their last five. I don't care to hear the call-in radio shows in Philly today.
Ask a Mariners fan how they're feeling -- and that team is tied for first!
But once any of those teams gets hot again, those fan bases will be collectively ecstatic. Because the flip side of all that negativity is the pleasure of rooting for a good team when it is hot. There is just nothing better.
As a Cubs fan, I obviously default to 2016. During the 25-6 start, and we could extend that timeframe to 47-20, I felt like I had an extra spring in my step for months. Food tasted better. All my interactions with strangers were the nicest possible. You couldn't wipe that smile off my face. Nothing could bring me down! Well, the Cubs could. There was a stretch where they lost 14 of 19 through the middle of the season and it's fair to say I've never been so depressed as a fan. I thought this was finally the year and now it's all crashing down, I was lamenting to myself for weeks. But then they got hot and everything was amazing again. And I finally got the ultimate fan payoff.
In between, obviously the valleys were worth it, in hindsight, but when the negative stuff is happening, it feels so, so, so bad. You're torn up inside and keep getting reminded of this on a nightly basis.
Why are we doing this to ourselves? Why worry so much?
It's a sickness. That's why.
And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm down with the sickness and I'll never attempt to cure it.
