Supplied — Douglas MuthThe Toronto Blue Jays play their first spring training games this week. I’m ecstatic and terrified at the same time.
I’m ecstatic because baseball is my favourite sport, and also terrified because it’s my favourite sport. You could say I’m obsessed. If the Jays do poorly, then I also do poorly. If the Jays win, then I’m riding high. You take the good with the bad when you care this much.
I’ve thrown things against the wall when the Jays have lost, I’ve kicked and punched chairs, and I actually starting crying one time when their closer blew a save in the ninth inning. In May. I’ve run the gamut of emotions, and many times, I’ve questioned why I care as much as I do.
A huge part of sports is escapism. Often, athletes represent the closest thing on the planet to actual superheroes, performing hardly believable feats. Think of Stephen Curry hitting a game-winning pull up three-pointer from nearly half court. Think of Alex Ovechkin dangling past two defenders and scoring top shelf. Think of Leo Messi juking through eight or so defenders and scoring like it’s nothing. These are all things that the majority of us can’t hope to accomplish on the same stage, unless we’re playing a video game, of course.
The problem with that, however, is that you also open yourself up for the bad part of the extraordinary. You open yourself up to pain, loss, resentment, and anger.
The Jays made the playoffs for the first time in 21 seasons last year. I was at the Rogers Centre when they played their first playoff game since Joe Carter leaped around the bases in 1993. I got to see two playoff games, in a sporting atmosphere that I’d never come close to experiencing before. And because the Jays don’t love me nearly as much as I love them, they lost both games while I was there. I was crushed. This entity that I had no control over was controlling me, and I hated it.
I thought about why I bothered to even cheer for this team, I went through the same thing I’m sure many Oilers fans have gone through for the past several years. But they still stick around. What’s even the point? Why stick around if you know you’re inevitably going to get disappointed?
From personal experience, I come back, for better or for worse, for the hope. No matter how low you get, there’s always a chance that something great will happen, something that could warm the heart of even the most cynical fan.
It’s the hope that I’ll always see something I’ve never seen before, it’s the hope that no matter how low my team gets, they’ll always be able to rebound. There’s a reason why they don’t play the game on paper. You never know whats going to happen. After the Jays went down 2-0 in their best of five division series, a large part of me thought it was over, but there was still hope. A tiny part of me still thought they could pull off the comeback, a tiny part of me still believed they could become only the third team in MLB history to win a division series after losing the first two games at home.
In my darkest hour, the Jays stopped hating me, and won three straight games to win their division series. When Jose Bautista hit that go-ahead home run in the eighth inning, I will admit I had tears in my eyes. After going through all the shit I had gone through as a fan in the last few years, all the mediocre teams, all the times they were supposed to contend but didn’t, they finally triumphed. They finally won, and I experienced it, and it made the victory that much sweeter.
That’s why I’ll keep coming back. No matter how many times I get beat down, I know there’s always a chance I can experience something like Jose Bautista’s home run again, or something like the Oilers Cinderella run to the Stanley Cup in 2005.
Or even if the Jays can’t pull a repeat of last year, I can still re-watch game five on YouTube.
