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My New York Mets won last night, and all -- well, something, anyway -- is right with the world.
I'm not a sports fanatic, by any means, but I'm pretty devoted to a handful of teams. When it comes to my Oklahoma Sooners and the two primary sports of basketball and football, it's hard for me for me satisfied with anything less than national prominence. We Sooner fans expect our football team to be in the running for a national title year in and year out, and we're awfully disappointed when the hoops squad doesn't win at least a game or two in the Big Dance.
In both of those sports (but especially in college football), every single game is arguably make-or-break.
Baseball's different. It's a long, languid campaign, and even fans of the worst team in the Majors have good reason, some forty or fifty times a season, to cheer.
In contrast to my Sooner squads, I ask very little of my Mets, really -- not just this season, but on an ongoing basis. Just keep me hopeful through August, and I'm satisfied. Anything more than that -- a September division race, a playoff series or two, the rare and precious appearance in the World Series -- is just icing on the cake.
Baseball is like an amiable roommate, one who's perfectly willing to pass an evening conversing if you can use the company but doesn't resent you in the least if you opt instead for an evening on the town.
A football game is a weekly event around which one must plan one's schedule; basketball teams perform no more than two or three times a week. But baseball's there virtually every night of the week, if you want it. If you miss a game or two, no problem. It'll be there the next night. It's not going anywhere.
Now, if the Mets can just build on last night's sparkling debut, it could be a sweet summer indeed.
Just get me through August; that's all I ask. Anything more is gravy.
Posted by brett at 01:08 PM | TrackBack