It was quite the season. For the first time since 2017, the Cubs made the playoffs. They led the National League Central division standings for 108 days, and I had so much hope in this year’s team. We had all-star players, exciting transplants from world-series-winning teams and lovable veterans all pulling for us. And yet, we fell short.
Now, I recognize I might have lost a lot of Cardinals fan readers at this point. But perhaps I can reel any non-Cubs fans back in by talking about loving sports in general. While I am a tried-and-true Cubs fan with a “there’s always next year” attitude pre-loaded every October, I can find joy in most any sporting event.
My first year at SLU, I went to nearly every sporting event that had some kind of giveaway, and eventually, even some that did not. I had not been to a soccer game since I was really little, but I went to so many that year that it is hard to count. When basketball season bounced around, I quickly learned all the band ditties and spotted basketball players around campus like they were celebrities. I have an especially deep love for our volleyball team as a volleyball player myself, and I even got a bit shy the first time I had one of them in my class because I was so in awe of her skills.
But my love and appreciation for sports as a viewer extends beyond SLU pride. When my roommate watches Dallas Cowboys games, I am on the edge of my seat, despite never caring about football, let alone the Cowboys, before meeting her. Seeing joy pouring out of her when they win inspires me to learn the rules and root right alongside her. Similarly, I never knew I could find hockey interesting, but watching Blues games with my friends gives me a fresh appreciation for a sport I would have never explored on my own. I have picked up quite a few fandoms just because they make friends happy.
That being said, I find sports so addicting because of all the possibilities that lie before you. When your team starts to do well, a new kind of hope grows. Suddenly, the world feels more exciting. Whether it is an underdog story or a slow build where all of the pieces fall into place, there is so much romance in sports. Every game is like an episode in a romance TV show, and the whole season, you are rooting for everything to come together, except instead of wedding rings, you hope that the season ends with championship rings. Watching a struggling player get a hit, make a shot, make an unexpected catch or insert your favorite sport’s feat here, inspires a kind of awe not experienced in everyday life. There is something special about seeing incredible athletes perform on the biggest stages.
Or the small stages. Having watched my friends learn how to play volleyball on my intramural team for the last three years makes every point we win feel that much more earned. Last year, I found myself awake after all my roommates had gone to sleep, watching a women’s March Madness basketball playoff game simply because it was in double overtime. I had never once watched either team, but something about the epic highs and lows of postseason sports brings the thrill level to an all-time high.
Hope, however, can be dangerous. I tend to have a heavy imagination. My ideas can get very big, but sometimes those big ideas carry too much weight. Sometimes I plan so much that I think I know how things will go. This happens with my future, but also when I watch sports. I imagine what it will feel like when this player gets that game-winning hit, when my team will make a beautiful play to outsmart our opponents and I imagine how incredible winning will feel. When faced with loss, I can be absolutely crushed.
That hope, that imagination for what things could be like, is wonderful. But the crushing feeling when things do not go as you hoped hurts more than “maybe next time” can heal.
So earlier this month, when my loveable losers, the Chicago Cubs, lost in a torturously slow-moving, yet clear-cut winner-take-all game five to my least favorite team, the Milwaukee Brewers, it is safe to say that I was pretty crushed. The future that I imagined had been killed, gruesomely, leaving me with post-game blues as I hung up my baseball hat and put away my jersey.
I felt like everything we had worked for all season was wasted. Sure, we had had a good run, but for things to end like this, just quietly accepting defeat, felt unacceptable. Completely unfair.
While that loss stung and will come back to haunt me every time I see a Brewers jersey, and while I am also aggrieved by the more recent World Series victory of another evil empire, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the ending does not negate everything that came before. When I build things up in my head and they do not go the way that I planned, I have a hard time seeing beyond the failure. It is so hard to stop the loud emotions of sadness, frustration and heartbreak from dominating your headspace. But I need to remind myself of everything that made it possible for me to care so much in the first place.
Their loss does not erase the Cubs games I went to with friends and family or the hours I spent texting my dad about great plays, baseball connecting us from afar. Their loss does not erase their other statistics (three gold gloves!), nor does it destroy the growth as a team they built for next season. And their loss does not mean I should stop loving the sport.
Sometimes it really is the hope that kills. But what is life without hope?