Baseball makes you feel bad. I don’t mean that in a literate sense ripping off Bart Giamatti’s lede, the sense of dreading a sullen winter spent longing for the sensory pleasures of the game. I mean that baseball at its best, when the beats are on rhythm and when the high notes are hit, can be downright torture to watch. At the most stressful moments, the time between pitches allows you a regular moment to be alone with your agony—to bite fingernails or breathe shallowly or pace your living room. Then the pitch is delivered, and there’s just enough time to hope or fear, but, likely as not, a ball is fouled off and you get to do it all again. And again and again and again. Sometimes, several unexpected bonus innings of it. Heart disease as a hobby. Whoever invented baseball had a cruel streak. Whoever enjoys it has a touch of masochism.
If your team wins, the bad memories dissipate. This is a favor from the brain, a thank-you for the dopamine. Dodgers fans won’t long be able to truly recall how they felt in the interstices of Game 7. They’ll remember the triumphs big and small that broke the stretches of torment, and the elation that followed, but the rest of it will fade. Most teams, however, don’t get to win—not the big one, anyway. Most fans get to sit with their what-ifs for the winter and, if they’re unlucky enough to have a team good enough to raise their hopes and successful enough to reach October where true heartbreak grows, they’ll sit with it for the rest of their lives. Few fans have it worse here than Blue Jays fans.
