A Baseball Fan's Lament

The end of baseball's annual All-Star break also signifies the start of the rest of the season.  As a fan, you might be looking forward to the final stretch.  Your team is in first or maybe close to it.  Or perhaps you're in one of those wild card races.  Woo hoo!

If you're a Dodger fan, your team is ten games under the uber-average winning percentage of .500.  You're already wondering what movies and/books you will be available to sample in early October when anything else will be favorable to watching the Biblically bearded Brian Wilson of the Giants display one more time his very special brand of obnoxiousness.  You're either appalled by the empty seats around or delighted because the extra leg room in the stadium turns your seat into a Barcalounger.

On July 14, 2011, you announce that your season is a supreme disappointment and realize that the proclamation of new ownership will be only reason to celebrate anytime soon.

Except I don't really do this.

I will keep using my season tickets.  I will continue to watch on television and myabe even do so on those road games when Vin Scully's voice is replaced by the incredibly dreadful Eric Collins.  I will pay attention to players being traded or acquired around the July 31 trading deadline, knowing fully well that any Dodger player movement will be nothing more than getting a cupcake with extra icing.

Yeah, not needed.

I will soothe the notion of a losing record and an empty postseason by reveling in Matt Kemp's continued ascent to superstardom.  I will delight in a win at least on every fifth day when Clayton Kershaw is marvelously consistent in the art of pitching.  I will shake my head when the count is already 0-2 against Andre Ethier before he even pulls into the parking lot for that night's game.

I will persist because I have that dreaded disease.

I am really and truly a baseball fan.

You wonder why you are watching mediocrity when you could be wasting your time doing a myriad of other things.  Until you remember that there is no substitute for a baseball fan.  You live.  You die.  You thrill.  And, most of the time, you whine.

Looking at this year's Dodger team, I am annoyed.  But I think back to my earliest days with a baseball fan and I would land on my knees and thank God if the New York Mets had a 41-51 record on July 14.  Usually, in those years of youth, the Mets were mathematically eliminated from the pennant race on St. Patrick's Day.

When I was a kid, I didn't know any better.  I had adopted the Mets and they stunk year after year.  They'd work overtime to find new and creative ways to lose a game.  Five losses, then a win, and maybe another six losses after that.  Yet, I still watched and listened and attended.  At the age of 10, you don't know how much better Coca Cola tastes when the only soda your mom buys is Shasta.

Losing had its upside, because wins were even more exhilerating.  The highs didn't last long, but I didn't care.  Eventually, somehow and somewhere and sometime, I would be rewarded for all this torture.

Not long after that, I was.  The World Series, infinity, and beyond.  How magical!  How amazin'!  How unexpected!

I grew older and stayed with it at Shea Stadium and more ineptitude and darkness shrouded the ballpark like fog rolling in across the World's Fair Marina.  Okay, what is my reward now?  Was once truly enough for Len?

Not quite.  Youthful euphoria is eventually replaced by adulthood success in 1986.  Standing in the upper deck at Shea during the ninth inning of the seventh game of the 1986 World Series, I marvel at my good fortune one more time.  My childhood best friend, Danny, then says one of the top five wisest things I ever heard in my life.

"Let's enjoy this moment because it doesn't happen very often."

Sure doesn't.

I am waiting patiently to complete my transcontinental fandom with a moment just like that in my Loge seats, Aisle 120, Row L at Dodger Stadium.  What a place to watch the seventh game of any World Series.

This will not be the year.  But, nevertheless, I will still be going.  On gloriously sunny Sunday afternoons.  On sparkly Friday nights of pyrotechnics, some on-the-field but most of them on display in the parking lot.  To watch and enjoy the rare ups and frequent downs.  To grouse about infield errors and front office blunders.  To think romantically of days sans McCourts and bankruptcy and Bud Selig.

Yep, 41-51 and I'll still make the trip.

That's what a baseball fan does.

Hey, if the Dodgers can pull off a stretch where they win 12 out of 15...

Dinner last night:  Chinese pork and vegetables.