Baseball, late commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote, was ‘designed to break your heart.’
The man who famously levied Pete Rose’s permanent ban from the game knew what he was talking about from first-hand experience. A lifelong Red Sox fan during Boston’s 86-year championship dry spell, the father of actor Paul Giamatti was keenly aware of the sport’s annual progression from hope to despair.
‘You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops,’ Giamatti, the 19th President of Yale University, wrote in ‘Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games.’
The passage is particularly relevant to Philadelphia Phillies fans after Wednesday’s gut-wrenching season-ending loss to the rival New York Mets in Game 4 of the National League Divisional Series.
As one Phillies supporter remarkably put it, Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor’s go-ahead grand slam in the sixth inning on Wednesday was somehow worse than the death of her dog.
‘So there’s a couple of low points in my life, my dog passing away and them hitting a grand slam,’ Phils fan Courtney O’Neill (pictured) told Allentown’s WFMZ-TV from a bar
Two men dressed in overalls (and not much else) described their grief to WFMZ Allentown
‘So there’s a couple of low points in my life, my dog passing away and them hitting a grand slam,’ Phils fan Courtney O’Neill told Allentown’s WFMZ-TV from a bar after the 4-1 loss. ‘The grand slam took the cake.
‘I feel like I might either check into AA, therapy, or an institute of some sort because this is crap,’ O’Neill said from a bar across the street from the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, where she watched the action on Wednesday. ‘It’s full of crap.’
The NL East champions with a record of 95-67, the Phillies were again expected to compete for a World Series title in 2024 – something they’ve won only twice in the club’s 142-year history. Philadelphia not only boasts a two-time MVP in Bryce Harper, but a strong rotation that included All-Stars Zack Wheeler and Ranger Suárez.
But Suárez all but collapsed over the second half of the season, and even with 4.1 strong innings in Wednesday’s start, the Phillies’ suddenly quiet bats couldn’t overcome Lindor’s sixth-inning bomb.
‘We’re fed up,’ one shirtless fan wearing overalls told WFMZ. ‘We had such great expectations and now we’re just done.’
His friend, also wearing nothing but overalls, said he’s reached the fifth stage of grief: ‘Acceptance.’
‘Acceptance that this team will not win for the next five years, probably,’ the man said.
