The Incredible Importance of Next Year

    The refrain of Cub’s fans everywhere has always been, “Well, there’s always next season.”  I don’t know what it is about Cub’s fans that makes them so innately optimistic and pessimistic at the same time, but whatever it is I seem to have contracted it, and it is a most displeasing feeling. 
    It’s a phrase that reeks of sadness and resignation.  There’s a comparable phrase outside of the baseball world that has the same feel to it: “Tis’ better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”  Borrowing from the great George Will, this is nonsense on stilts.  Anyone who has lost knows that ignorance would have been preferable to pain.  And it turns out, this is just as true in baseball.  I once stated that I fell in love with a team that would never be good enough to break my heart.  But then the sky fell in, and the Texas Rangers were just good enough (and just lucky enough) to get to the World Series.  All of a sudden, life isn’t so simple anymore.
    I thought I wanted the Rangers to go to the World Series.  And I knew, from my teeth to my toenails, that they were going to win.  They had won on the road in Tampa.  They’d beaten - nay, torched! - the hated Yankees.  They were as hot as a Texas PWI in August (but less humid.)  The Rangers were unstoppable, and my spirits were indomitable (forgive me if this writing is abominable.)  What could go wrong?
    Here’s what: life does what it wants.  I have no control over it, and thus no control over the happenings of baseball.  And then the Rangers lost the World Series in five games, behind mediocre pitching and truly sad hitting.  It was so one-sided, I am convinced that there was a conspiracy.  Here’s what rossnation... thinks.
    I think you can draw your own conclusion from this factoid: Giants outfielder Jose Guillen has been tied to performance enhancing drugs.  Even though he wasn’t on their postseason roster, this clearly implicates every Giant.  Plus, this is the team that tolerated Barry Bonds for all those years.  You do the algebra...
    Actually, that’s all I’ve got, and now that it’s in print it looks a little bit flimsy.  Ah, never mind.  Let’s face it, the Rangers got worked.  And I think from now I’d be just fine with going back to the old ways.  It was easier when they led the division at the all-star break and then lost 16 in a row because the bullpen had an ERA of 12.6.  When they didn’t make the playoffs, I could move on to other things in September.  It was a simpler time.  But now I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit that is the World Series, and now October won’t matter unless Texas is in the hunt.  And this makes me as bad as the Scott Mahurin’s of the world, with their Red Sox Fever and whatnot. 
    Sighhhhhhhh... I’m already tired.  But, hey, there's always next season!

rossnation... down and out.