Here we are in October and the baseball season is over—at least for Cubs and Giants fans. They were eliminated weeks ago, and each club played its last 2024 game on Sept. 30.
In fact, the only thing I got excited about the last week of the season was rooting for my friend Kim’s team, the Detroit Tigers, an underdog if there ever was one.
I wish the teams still in the playoffs the best of luck, but somehow I can’t get too revved up, as much as I like baseball. My Cubs are out of it—again—as are the Giants, the favorite team of many of my readers.
It could be worse. I could be an Oakland A’s fan. Not only is their season over, but so is Oakland. Not the A’s, because they’ll be playing in Sacramento next season in a minor league ballpark, but for Oakland, which has recently lost a football team, a basketball team and now a baseball team.
At least the Cubs and Giants tried to put a contending team on the field. The A’s, under their rapaciously greedy owner John Fisher, put a shell of a major league team in the Coliseum, as they have the last several years – to save money on players’ salaries and increase the owner’s profits.
While the A’s seemed to have a different line each day, primarily with players called up from the minor leagues, Cubs and Giants fans could count on seeing their favorite players each day, or almost each day.
For the Giants it was players like Chapman, Bailey and Yaz. For the Cubs it was Suzuki, Swanson and Happ. You can get attached to players that you see or hear about every day. They seem to become a part of your family, especially if you listen to games on the radio. That makes it easier to root for your team.
I can’t imagine how hard it was for A’s fans to root for a team that was essentially uniforms occupied by different players every day. Good luck, Sacramento!
Although Giants and Cubs fans had players to root for, it was once again, at the end, a disappointing season – disappointing because there were times both teams played like championship contenders. They’d win three or four in a row and we fans would think, “Yes, we’re on a roll. We’re on our way to the playoffs.”
Then our teams would lose three or four in a row, often in heartbreaking fashion as our opponents would come from behind in the last inning or two.
Both Giants and Cubs fans can remember glory days, although those days get dimmer in our memories each year. In 2015 the Giants were at the top of the world, having won their third World Series in five years.
In 2016 it was the Cubs fans turn to exult, as their team won its first World Series in 108 years. It now seems it might be another 108 before they win another.
I have on my wall a framed front page from the Nov. 3, 2016 Chicago Tribune, which has the brief headline, “At last!” and a large photo of Anthony Rizzo hugging Kris Bryant after the last out of the last game of the series, a game filled with high highs, low lows and then a very high high at the end.
Now Rizzo and Bryant are long gone, as are the hopes for a 2024 playoff team. Just like Buster Posey is long gone from the Giants of their championship years.
This winter will be one of baseball depression for Cubs and Giants fans, as the past eight winters have been.
What will be amazing, as it is every spring, is that in 2025, once spring training starts, Giants and Cubs fans will again get hopeful, thinking that maybe this will be year they win it all again.
We will not be alone. This will also be true of fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Los Angeles Angels and Colorado Rockies, all eliminated well before the last week of the season.
The one team this might not be true for is the Chicago White Sox. They had the worst season in major league history, losing more games than the 1962 Mets, which had been the bar for losing ever since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. It will be hard to be hopeful for Sox fans next year.
Oh, well, there’s always football with high hopes again for the 49ers and low hopes for the Chicago Bears. And basketball is just around the corner. Oops, once again the San Franscisco and Chicago teams are years from their last championship, a few years for the Warriors, a lot of years for the Bulls.
So why are sports fans, usually, so loyal to their sports and to their teams? That would be a question to pose to psychoanalysts.
But there is something about the magic of sports and their ability to make fans lose track of time and forget their real worries for a short time, not only in watching pro sports, but college sports and especially high school sports.
This fall, I was as transported into a different world watching my grandchildren play sports as I was when I watched my children play sports many years before.
Well, that’s my update, sports fans! And baseball fans, I’ll talk with you again next spring.
