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Cheering For A Perennial Loser

Let it be recorded for posterity that midway into the Major League baseball season of A.D. 2001, the lowly Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs stood atop their respective divisions in the National League. Let it also be recorded that at precisely the same moment, the Boston Red Sox, victims of the "Babe Ruth Curse" for the past seventy-three years, boasted the prettiest record in the American League East. The dogs were having their day.

Granted, the Phillies were engaged in a nip-and-tuck battle with the Atlanta Braves -- the relentless Microsoft of the National League East -- and most likely would succumb before the season was out. But there they were, the perennial ragamuffins who had managed to win just one World Series in the past CENTURY, tweaking the noses of the tireless warriors from Turnerville. And there were the Cubs and Red Sox, whose World Championship droughts extended back to 1908 and 1918 respectively, sitting happily in their catbird seats. It was like watching an alignment of planets that takes place once in a lifetime. It was like seeing a whooping crane at your backyard bird feeder. It was like hearing that the Swiss Army had conquered Western Europe. You have to marvel at a moment like that, because it might never happen again.

When I was growing up, back in the ancient days before the Nixon presidency, my brother and I used to follow the misfortunes of the fledgling New York Mets. In 1962, their first season, the Mets somehow managed to lose 120 games, the sorriest total in Major League history. But my brother and I loved that hapless team and its doddering manager, Casey Stengel, who, in a rare fit of desperation, once hollered at his underlings, 'Can't anybody here play this game?' 

We followed the Mets' next season with even greater gusto, as they imported my boyhood idol, the once-formidable Duke Snider, from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Surely the silver-haired Duke would regain his old luster and transform the Mets into winners. Well, Snider got off to a roaring start, on pace to sock 30-plus homers for the first time since his glory days in Brooklyn. But playing for the Mets so dampened his spirit that he sputtered out and managed only three round-trippers in the last FOUR MONTHS of the season. That year the Mets lost 111 games. Aside from Snider, the Mets' roster included Jim Hickman, Choo-Choo Coleman, Ron Hunt, Al Jackson and other amiable young players whose careers we eagerly followed the way English professors salivate over T. S. Eliot. Hickman had potential as a power hitter; Hunt was a slick fielder and a smart batsman who could hit .300 in any given year. 

But they never blossomed as stars -- NONE of those early Mets ever did -- and the team continued to compile astounding totals in the loss column. In their first six seasons the Mets came up short 648 times, an alarming average of 108 games per season. Rooting for them became such a bleak and fruitless pastime that my brother and I used to sing a variation of the Mets' theme song as we sat before the TV on those long-ago summer afternoons: 'Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, step right up and beat the Mets.' But our loyalty knew no limits; we were hooked like a couple of small-mouth bass. The Mets were our team and we'd never abandon them.

How did we survive all those lean seasons? We'd look for the little triumphs that clung to the underside of the defeats. Instead of cheering for the Mets to win the pennant, we'd merely hope they'd win half as many games as they lost. Once they accomplished that feat, we'd pull for them to break .500. It was the only way our youthful minds could cope with the losses, the dashed hopes, the perpetual FUTILITY of rooting for the old Mets. 

I've often wondered, in the many years since, whether cheering for a perennial loser harms the psyche in some irreparable way. Loss becomes the norm; we learn early and convincingly that we can't get what we want, and that we're powerless to do anything about it. No amount of cheering, after all, would turn the Mets into winners. They had to do it on their own, in that storied 1969 season when they won 100 games AND clobbered Baltimore in the World Series. But by then their fans, myself included, had already been fatally conditioned to lose. Those Mets had hobbled us for life.

A recent medical study revealed that winning raises testosterone levels, making you more likely to win again. Losing does just the opposite. So you don't simply lose; you tend to become a LOSER. According to the same study, even the fans suffer hormonally along with their chosen teams. (There must be an abundance of squeaky-voiced men in Pittsburgh these days.) I can attest to that theory: my voice didn't change until midway through my sophomore year in high school, and I can probably blame my misfortune on the Mets. 

What a downright deep tragedy, as they say in The Beggar's Opera. If my voice had changed earlier, I might have been able to succeed with some of the more sensational girls in my high school class; my self-confidence would have soared to levels known primarily by jocks and student council presidents; I might have been admitted to Princeton or at least Cornell; I could have graduated to a sparkling, highly compensated career at a vintage Wall Street law firm, married a well-coiffed and socially prominent Vassar graduate, raised handsomely thatched kids named Chip and Muffy, and basked in the slanting sunlight at my Long Island estate. The fact that I didn't is due almost entirely to my ill-advised support of the New York Mets from 1962 through 1968. 

On the other hand, maybe I'm fortunate that rooting for the Mets derailed all my more ambitious plans. If I had succeeded, I might never have ended up as your Cynical Guy. And that would have been a pity. I suppose there's something to be said for taking the side of the losers after all. But there's probably a lot more to be said for taking the side of the winners.

Cynic's Pick of the Week
In Germany, a married man who visited a house of ill-repute was startled to find his wife working there. Police had to be brought in to restore the peace. We don't know if the wife kept her job or her husband.

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," currently lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online. 

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