Sometimes, for an athlete or a fan, losing is a really comfortable place. As a fan, you don’t have to get your hopes up. The word “maybe” doesn’t start creeping into your everyday speech. Your heart stays in your chest cavity, instead of creeping up your throat.
So it was with me when the Arizona Diamondbacks became sellers at the Major League baseball trading deadline.
After losing three pitchers to arm surgery early in the season and then dealing with nagging injuries to top everyday players, the team had been limping along, somehow managing to hang around the .500 mark. But in a Division with the Dodgers and the Padres (along with a suddenly not-bad Giants), .500 might as well have been .005.
Born and raised in LA, I was the typical sports fan — Rams/Lakers/Dodgers. But when I came here for college and quickly realized that Arizona would be my home for the rest of my life, I changed my allegiances. I root exclusively for the Phoenix Suns and the Arizona Diamondbacks. I’m still a Rams fan, but I hope the Cardinals do well.
Two years ago, the Diamondbacks shocked the sports world by reaching the World Series. Last year, they missed the playoffs on the day after the last day of the regular season. This season looked bright, but then fell apart. By the trading deadline, I was resigned to settling in for a half-season of loser boosting.
Wouldn’t you know it, they started (sorta) winning. They climbed above .500 for only the second time since late April. A late-season swoon by the New York Mets put the final playoff spot in play. Heading into the final week of the season, amazingly, it was right there for the Diamondbacks.
They beat the Dodgers in the first of a three-game set to move within a game of the playoff spot. The next day, both the Reds and the Mets lost, so a D-backs win would put them in a tie for the playoffs. They wasted a brilliant nine-inning, one-hit gem by pitcher Brandon Pfaadt and lost, 1-0 in extra innings. Then they ended the season with a five-game losing streak, missed the playoffs, and ended the season under .500
It would have been so much better had they just stunk in the second half of the season.
One of the reasons baseball isn’t as cool as it used to be is that players strike so much. In the first game of the Dodgers-Reds playoff series, there were 25 total strikeouts. Of course, the Dodgers did hit five home runs, so the fans got to stand up and scream a few times. But the new Feast or Famine identity of Baseball now makes it more like soccer, and soccer…well, you know, sucks.
From a decidedly historical perspective, probably the greatest Game Seven in World Series history happened in 1960 when light-hitting Bill Mazeroski hit a ninth-inning home run to give the Pittsburgh Pirates the title. In the wildly exciting 10-9 Pirates victory, there was a grand total of ZERO STRIKEOUTS for both teams combined. That’s crazy.
I don’t want to be Get-Off-My-Lawn Old Guy, but Baseball used to be more interesting. There was strategy and unique skills. There was hitting behind the runner to allow him to go from second base to third. There were double steals and suicide squeeze plays. Now, stars either hit a home run or strike out, mostly the latter. Baseball teams used to have chemistry. Now they just have biology.
The Cleveland Guardians are perhaps the worst team ever to make the playoffs in the entire history of baseball. The numbers just roar at you like the kaleidoscopic colors in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Out of the 30 Major League Baseball teams, they rank 29th in team batting average, 29th in on-base percentage and 29th in slugging percentage. (At least they’re consistent.) During the season, they actually gave up more runs than they scored. They had a 10-game losing streak during the season and, another time, they lost nine out of 10. Finally, only four teams in baseball have a lower payroll than the Guardians.
Oh, wait! There’s one more thing. Cleveland was 15½ games out of first place on July 6th. Two months later, in the first week of September, they were still 11 games back. But not only did they put on a run to reach the playoffs, they actually overtook the Detroit Tigers and won the Division. In the process, they broke a record that had stood for 111 years, when the 1914 Boston Braves erased a 15-game deficit to win the National League title.
Yet, there they were in the playoffs along with the big-city teams with the big, fat wallets and the big-name stars. It provides hope, even for Diamondback fans.