Skip to main content

Baseball Gods, please have mercy!

Dear Baseball Gods,
Here in the Philadelphia region, we have been very patient Phans. Since the days of Schmidt and Carlton and Matthews, we have suffered through long, torturous seasons in hard plastic seats hundreds of feet from the field in that horrible concrete toilet bowl known as Veterans Stadium. Now we have this fancy, pretty new stadium and we are so grateful. And our team has been pretty good these last few years. We appreciate that, of course.

Sure, we boo when our Phils lose games in the preseason, but that's because we expect so much from them! But we also cheer. Loudly. I could hear the celebration of the NL Championship in 1993 from central Pennsylvania, for pete's sake. We got so close that year, Baseball Gods, but you did not smile on us then. I still cringe when I think of that meatball that Mitch Williams served up in the bottom of the 9th of game 6...

So many times we've come so close, in all our sports, only to have the ultimate victory pulled away from us in the final moments. We hesitate to get too excited anymore because we know the pain that comes later is just too great. Yesterday, though, right around the third inning of Game 5, the thrill finally started to settle in...we were finally letting ourselves get excited about our team finally winning a World Series.

And then you stepped in and made bad things happen! The rain and win and tie score in the middle of the 6th inning has left us sad and confused. Why do you continue to punish us?

We ask you now, O Wise and Powerful Baseball Gods, have mercy on us. Smile on our Phillies. Bring that excitement and buzz back to this region. We really, really need it now more than ever. Did I mention there's a box of Tastykakes, a couple cheesesteaks, a dozen soft pretzels, and a case of Yuengling in it for you?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha

What all parents should do

When accepting one of her Emmy awards a couple weeks ago, Tina Fey thanked her parents for "somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities. Well done. That is what all parents should do." I couldn't agree more, Tina -- about the job of parents, not your looks or abilities. (For the record, I think Tina Fey is one of the most brilliant women out there, and lovely to boot.) I was also raised by parents who gave me confidence well beyond my looks and abilities -- even though they didn't have much confidence in their own looks or abilities -- and I am constantly grateful. In hindsight, I realize my mother struggled with terrible self-esteem, but she somehow projected all her hopes and dreams onto me. She told me every day that I was smart and beautiful and could do anything; she never missed an opportunity to tell me she was proud of me. (And the worst punishment in the world was to hear her say "I'm disappointed in you