Baseball, Man, Sometimes it Sucks…And That’s Pretty Okay

Baseball is stupid.

Three pitches into the game, the Cubs held a 59% win expectancy. Three hours and 46 minutes later, right around 2:35 am ET, that expectation had been ratcheted up to 75.4% as Aroldis Chapman readied to face Ryan Raburn with one out and one on. Then the possibilities dropped to nil and I sank mercifully into my GhostBed.

You’re not supposed to lose when you hit a leadoff home run, so I felt pretty good when Dexter Fowler took Tyler Anderson deep to put the Cubs up early. Then the Rockies’ David Dahl hit a routine fly to short that carried out and over the fence in left center and I had to revise my optimism. The Cubs tacked on a few more, Addison Russell mashed a homer, and Kyle Hendricks was cruising yet again.

What’s more, I had a couple Gumballheads floating on a sea of Permanent Funeral (those are beers) and had successfully negotiated a challenge between MyPillow and GhostPillow. Everything, as they say, were A-OK. And then dumb baseball things happened and I realized that it was past 2 o’clock in the morning and I couldn’t believe I was still awake.

After trailing for most of the game, the Rockies pulled ahead like Usain Bolt and ran off with the unlikely W. You could blame Joe Maddon or Travis Wood or Carl Edwards Jr or Aroldis Chapman or Javy Baez or Anthony Rizzo or the rain (Milli Vanilli would) or the huge division lead that allowed the Cubs to pull back on the throttle. I’m not mad about the game and the way it ended, though I’m a little cranky because I logged less sleep than I’d have liked.

But you know what? Sometimes baseball is pretty cool in spite of the suck.

I’m kind of encouraged by what went on in the wee hours of Friday night/Saturday morning. Even in the face of the rain-delayed start and the (presumably) meaningless outcome, I wanted to stay up to finish watching. And the interaction on social media remained strong as play dragged on. There have been times when I’ve hated loving this Cubs team so much that I forced myself to endure their games.

Now, however, it’s like a meal you just can’t get enough of. And since I was brought up to believe that only members of the Clean Plate Club get dessert, I’m going to make sure I shovel in every bite.