April Is the Cruelest Month

The beautiful thing about good poetry is that its truth and meaning transcends the poet's original meaning.

It is safe to assume that, when T.S. Eliot wrote the words about April that I've used in the headline, he wasn't thinking of sport. But when sports fans read the line, the meaning for us is apparent.    

As the month that follows March Madness, April begins the final playoff push for the NBA and NHL, and simultaneously opens Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, Women's Professional Soccer, and begins the build-up to the WNBA season. And lest we forget, the NFL Draft will also play out at the end of the year's fourth month, too.

It is a month of grieving, dreaming, false starts, and let downs. It is a month that reminds us how long a year can be, how quickly a dream can die, how easily an early-season run can inflate our hopes or how an early-season bomb can dash them.

April is a month of broad swings in weather, in moods, in fortunes and perceived fortunes.

I found it not be a coincidence that the month begins with a day for fools, continues with tax day and most years, somewhere in the mix comes Easter and Passover.

And in this manic depressive mix of pranks, weather, red and black ink, religious holidays, frost on the flowers, poetry and prose, comes wisdom for living life until the next April. 

The April Fool's joke for sports fans is that, "this is the year." This is the one day of the year that almost every sports fan can feel optimistic. The "next year" we are all waiting for has either just begun, is about to begin, or is in the process of being set up for when it does begin.

In April, there are headlines about virtually every pro sport played in America, with the exception of the small percentage of hockey and basketball franchises already eliminated from the playoffs by April.

So, most every sports fan has something to look forward to—some fool thing to believe in—for a few more days, or a few more months, depending on which sport we're talking about. 

Tax Day for sports fans comes when the final playoff spots are clinched in winter sports, when baseball and soccer teams have played enough games to show what they're made of, when the WNBA rosters are set, and the NFL Draft is beyond speculation.

It is the day we look at the balance sheet to see whether we owe, or a check is in the mail, and how much to expect either way.

Easter and Passover for sports fans comes in obvious ways. Some teams rise from dead, while other teams celebrate the death angel passing them by.

Some are just huddled by the grave, waiting for resurrection. 

April is the month of the Cleveland Indians, the Red Sox, the Cubs, the Buffalo Bills, the Rays and the Marlins. These are the teams have gone from worst to first in a single season, and teams that keep promising success, yet continue to disappoint.

And there is a sense in which sports is religion and religion is competition, and both are the enterprise of fools, and all are what keep us going another day.