To A Diehard Sports Fan, Every Big Loss Feels Like a Knife in the Back

I hate playing the fool. The gullible one. The sucker. 

Yet every time my favorite team loses, that is exactly how I feel.  

Every time your favorite team loses? 

Okay, not every time. But when they lose the games that matter. The games that would get them into playoff contention, or into the playoffs themselves, or into the next round of the playoffs. 

Wow. A betrayal. That seems extreme. After all, it's just a game. 

Come on now. You know it's not "just a game." It's much more than that.

Sports is an obsession. A religion. A way of life.

And to support this obsession, this religion, this way of life, it takes time, energy and devotion. It requires a single-mindedness in which the thinking about, preparing for and watching of sporting events is the primary purpose of one's existence. Anything lost in the process must not have been that important to begin with. 

Dude, you got problems. 

Clearly. I'm talking to an imaginary person while trying to write this column. 

Touche. 

In any event, I do not see my devotion to sports as a problem. Not in the least. 

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. 

Funny. 

I try. 

Look. My love of sports comes naturally to me. Like breathing. 

Explain. 

As a toddler, I played with my Transformers and G.I. Joes while sitting in front of the TV and watching the Washington Redskins games before I even knew what I was looking at. 

For my first communion, I took my family and about 20 of our closest family friends to what I just assumed was the most obvious place to celebrate such an occasion: the ballpark, of course.

Seriously? You went to a baseball game to celebrate your first communion?

Well, I said earlier that sports is a religion. We were simply making a pilgrimage to Memorial Stadium, just like any devout Baltimore Orioles fan would have done. 

I see what you did there. But what about other celebrations? Birthdays? Christmas? They were "normal," right? 

Sports is "normal" to me.

So, to answer your question about birthdays: 

• For my 21st, my younger brother took us both to the Redskins-Bears game at FedExField. 
• At 29, I took my dad, sister and younger brother to the Verizon Center to see the Washington Capitals play. 
• Last year, my wife and I took an overnight trip to Pennsylvania to watch the Hershey Bears play because the Capitals and the rest of the NHL were locked out. 

That's dedication. What about Christmas? 

Consistently, Christmas gifts have included sports paraphernalia, sports literature and sports media. 

But it's just you, right? Please tell me you're the only one in your family that's obsessed with sports. 

No way, man. It's in our blood. I'm just carrying on the family tradition. 

Go figure. 

My paternal grandfather was a semi-pro baseball player. He taught my father everything he knew about baseball. My father then passed that knowledge on to me and my siblings. 

My mother also came from a sports-crazed family. My maternal grandmother told us how her brothers listened to Notre Dame football games on the radio and how she went to Wrigley Field and watched Hank Greenberg and the Detroit Tigers beat her Chicago Cubs in the 1945 World Series. 

Interesting. But how have you and your siblings carried on the tradition? 

Well, perhaps the best example was when we all went to visit my sister in Spain during Christmas break of my senior year of high school while she was studying abroad for a year. One night in Madrid, my sister wanted to take her three brothers out on the town to experience the city. Naturally, we went to an exhibition soccer game between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, one of the cathedrals of the sport. That night is still one of the coolest experiences of my life.  

And you find this life fulfilling? It has meaning to you? 

What are you, a psychiatrist? Yes, I find this life fulfilling and meaningful. 

Except when your team loses a big game. 

Exactly. 

So why are these big games so important? Why do they mean so much? 

Because the season is on the line. 

Hence, "big." Got it. 

Right. So when my favorite team loses a big game, with the season on the line, then that's it. Done. Finished. Their season is over, either officially or for all intents and purposes. 

Yeah, I bet that sucks. But a betrayal? 

YES!!!

All that time, energy and devotion, and my team came up short! AGAIN!!!

Another season down the drain...

Why did I even WASTE my time?! 

Why was I such a FOOL for believing they would actually win?! 

Why do I keep subjecting myself to this TORTURE?!

I feel like such an idiot... 

I was so tempted by the thrill of victory that I was willing to go all in on my favorite team, just one more time. But when they drew a bad card, I lost the hand and went emotionally bankrupt, with nothing to show for it but the agony of defeat and an empty feeling inside. 

I should have invested my time and energy into something else. Something more important. Something that was not going to let me down in the end. 

Okay, I'm starting to understand. Now, how do you normally respond to a betrayal? 

I cut the source of that betrayal out of my life. Write it off. Turn the page. Without a second thought. 

And yet you continue to watch sports, following the same teams, year after year. 

Call me a glutton for punishment. 

I was going to call you a "fool" or "gullible." Perhaps even a "sucker."

Just call me a diehard fan.