Fanfare for these uncommon men

“…Remember that if there is to be drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering. If not you—then someone else.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t like that.”
“Then be content with fewer thrills.”
—L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

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When I dared, after Game 5 of the World Series, to get excited that the Blue Jays were one win away from winning a championship, I got scolded by a boring Mariners fan online. “Don’t get complacent,” they helpfully reminded me, “the Mariners were one win away too.”

So many of us are deathly afraid of disappointment. It becomes so easy, so logical, to avoid taking a risk or getting our hopes up or enjoying the moment, because it could still go wrong; better, instead, not to to hope at all. Then you can’t be let down. If you don’t go out on that limb you can’t fall to the ground. If you don’t dare hope for something bigger than you’ve ever hoped for before, you won’t feel its absence if it doesn’t happen. Better not to try.

I’ve been like this all the time. What if I’m rejected by someone I want to hang out with? What if I look stupid trying this new thing I’m interested in? What if I just have a bad time?

These things are certainly possible, and even likely. I have been rejected, I have looked stupid, I have had hundreds of bad times. But this gives so much weight to just half of the possible questions. What if they do want to hang out with me? What if I actually discover something I love doing? What if I have the time of my life?

In the ALCS, the Mariners were one win away. So were the Blue Jays, though. Do you think I don’t remember that?

Sports drama is zero-sum. That home run, one of the biggest moments in this team’s entire history, came at the expense of someone else’s “one win away,” someone else’s “six outs away,” someone else’s “so close you can taste it”. There’s always someone on the other side of a dramatic moment, always someone else who suffers when you revel in the joy of it.

I don’t care that Game 7 of the World Series was the best game you’ve ever seen; I’m not interested in the postgame recaps crowing about the cWPA of each individual stab directly into my heart. I’m already sick of people talking about it in such terms because I can’t escape my own devastation. If the Blue Jays had quietly rolled over, we’d have had 9 innings to come to terms with it, but instead we had the audacity to imagine it really could happen. It might happen. It almost happened. It almost happened. And then we watched it dissolve into nothing. Thrilling drama for everyone else, but for the Toronto faithful, just silence and crushing defeat.

Could I have saved myself this heartache if I had refused to believe in the possibility of victory? Surely. Of course. Had I not expanded my heart to fit this joy in it, it might not feel so vast and empty now.

But for what? What a gift it is to feel this searing pain, to have loved and hoped and felt so much about a team of men I will never meet playing a “kid’s game”. What a gift it was to watch those same men quote Herb Brooks and share hotel rooms and cry openly on TV and hug each other every day. What excruciating heartbreak, being so close to the World Series trophy and never touching it. We all felt so deeply and hoped so hard precisely because this opportunity doesn’t come around here very often—these “uncommon men,” doing an uncommon thing, and bringing us along.

I have a new empathy for the teams and fans on the wrong side of “most thrilling game ever!” now. But I know I didn’t sign up for certainty. I signed up for the possibility of great joy, and on the other side of that, there’s always the possibility of … this. I won’t be content with fewer thrills. The beauty and pain of it is that this team wasn’t either.

I hope for us that this fresh new wound doesn’t fester forever - I’ve carried one with me without a win to wash it clean, and I’d really prefer not to have another. But even with some justifiable hesitation, I hope we’re still ready to open our hearts again the next time, and the next. As absurd as this is, I’m so glad I let myself get hurt. I’m so glad we felt all the highs and lows of the greatest season in decades, and got excited about being four and three and two and one win away, because the next win is never guaranteed. I’ve never been more sure of that, too.