Faith and shame
As the San Diego Padres take a 2-1 lead into an elimination home game tonight, it's proving to be as hard to let go of fear as it is to embrace faith.
It should’ve been utter jubilance. For brief moments, it was. But, as the Padres walked off the field at Petco Park last night the victors over the Los Angeles Dodgers, I couldn’t escape my own fears.
“Keep the faith,” I hear the little voice in my head say. And I wanted to. I wanted to be like every other Padres fan last night, cheering and talking about what Joe Musgrove was going to do tonight and how amazing it was going to be after the Padres pull off the upset over the Dodgers in the NLCS.
I just….couldn’t.
While most Padres fans were dreaming about things going according to plan, I was thinking about the opposite. I was thinking about a game 5 in Los Angeles, the Dodgers offense having opened the floodgates and going up against the worst the Padres have to offer in starting pitching (Clevinger or Manaea or bullpen day).
I was thinking about how many times the Dodgers have won two games in a row during the regular season. It’s a difficult number to quantify, but because I’m a crazy person, I counted.
The Dodgers have won 77 games this season that were a part of a winning streak of two-or-more games. 77 times this season, when they won, their players and manager and fans could say “That’s two!” or some even higher number to signify a winning streak.
So, suffice to say, the Dodgers winning two games against the Padres is very much a possibility. And, as a result, I am trying really hard to not get my hopes up in a way that they could then be dashed. Maybe I’m a chickenshit or a coward for not embracing the fun parts of this series and spending them worrying, waiting for a final score that tells me it’s over…the dragon has been slayed…and now I can celebrate without fear.
I have some real shame about it. Partly because it goes against what I often tell other fans. Sports are supposed to be fun and they’re also supposed to occasionally be heartbreaking. One can’t really exist without the other. Sports is a way for you to tap into some of the biggest emotions you can possibly have in a safe environment, surrounded by thousands of other people that are doing the exact same thing.
That being said, I just can’t get past it no matter how hard I try.
I am going to the game tonight, and I hope my new puppy behaves herself for my wife while I’m gone, and I will be literally counting down the outs until the end (assuming the Padres have a lead at some point). I’ll probably have a hard time staying seated, so apologies to whomever has the seat behind me.
I will try, really hard, to enjoy these moments just as much as I am afraid of them.
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