Bitter Taste Be Gone

For every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Some of you may be familiar with this, the ninth law of planetary motion.* Turns out this is just as true when talking about sports as with physics. A day of sport as the best we have to offer (think waffles) is IMMEDIATELY followed by a day of sport as filth (tofu). And that’s how it has to be.

One day after Landon and the Ace Makers gave us a sports high for the ages, I was harshly reminded that man is ultimately sinful, and rarely at his best. Sadly I was reminded of this when I read the recap of a baseball game. My beloved Texas Rangers, whom I have been enamored with as long as I have been able to hold a baseball, had their 10-game winning streak cracked by the Houston Astros, losing 7 to 4 at home. This is hard for me in many ways, not least of which being that a winning streak for the Rangers has always seemed to max out at about 3 games. The Rangers have a .608 winning percentage right now; for those who don’t care, that’s like being a waitress and getting tipped 40 percent on every check. It just doesn’t happen. So right now being a Rangers fan is a pretty sweet gig, even though technically the team is being run by Major League Baseball, just like the old Expos (I’m gonna name my first kid Expo, regardless of sex.)

But the losses I can handle. I have been vaccinated against it. I’m a Vandal, after all. What I have a harder time stomaching is what the Rangers, and the fans in attendance, did in the process of getting worked over. After 2^nd baseman Ian Kinsler struck out looking in the third inning, he was ejected after showing his frustration with the call by home plate umpire Eric Cooper. It may have been a marginal call, and Kinsler might not have deserved to be thrown out of the game. Umpiring is about the most subjective occupation on the planet, right after being a columnist. But baseball’s great tradition is that no matter what, the umpire is right, has to be, or the game falls apart. And I agree with this wholeheartedly, ever since I spent summers in high school working little league games in Idaho Falls, which is a great job if you like getting yelled at by angry parents for 15 bucks a night (and I do).

Regardless, players strike out, they get thrown out of games. Deal with it Ian. But the fans were what really got my ire up, when in the 9^th inning, they cheered after Cooper the Ump was hit in the face by an errant fastball. An accident, a miscommunication between pitcher and catcher, sent the ball into his facemask at close to 100 miles an hour, and while Cooper was kneeling on the ground trying to regain his composure, the fans in Texas cheered. If Lando and the Ace Makers is the chocolate, this is the pretzel underneath (because chocolate covered pretzels are gross.) Applauding a hurt man, who is not even competing, is the worst kind of ugly, made worse because everything’s bigger in Texas. And for me it almost counteracted the elation of Landon’s goal. For a moment, I wished I wasn’t a Rangers fan.

I hope today’s win was the start of a new streak. I hope that Landon Donovan isn’t old and broken down when the 2014 World Cup rolls around, and he can captain one more team. I hope that team figures out how to avoid allowing goals in the first ten minutes. I hope Ghana quits stalling and flopping. I hope the Cowboys win the NFC East. I hope Boise State loses early and often. But when it comes to sport, I hope most of all for more chocolate than pretzel.

rossnation...out

* joke