Base Ball (an unedited reflection)

Just before the 2012 baseball season began I declared, "I'm going to follow baseball again." I hadn't really followed-followed baseball for years prior to 2012. So I did and I chose the local national league team, the Washington Nationals, as the team I was going to follow. I could call them "my team" like people say about such things (even though I'm from LA and the Dodgers will always be my real team).

The Nationals 2012 wild ride was insane and the playoff loss to the Cardinals was brutal. I swore that I would never invest that much psychic energy into anything as basic as a baseball team (millionaires playing for billionaires and such). Same thing goes for politics. Not my ride or die, bruh. I'm not like most people, I know when to go too deep and when to not.

I continued to follow baseball pretty closely for all the years since 2012; watching the Nationals and the Dodgers and some other teams pretty closely but staying only generally aware of happenings from around the leagues. It's fun for me. I've been to a whole bunch of games, mostly with Makfu who is the absolutely perfect person to live sport with. I even went to a spring training a few years back.

But, things run their respective courses. I decided to pull back a little more from so closely monitoring baseball. I chose to pay attention but not to the same extent as before. I publicly disowned the Nationals as being "my team" (but continued to speak highly of the players and manager). I rooted against them early in the season. I wanted to see if they could play in the division which turned out to be a runaway for a deeply flawed Braves squad (and the tomahawk chop has got to go). But I have nothing against The Washington Nationals, I just gave them up as being "my team." I rooted for them to lose during the LA-DC divisionals. They beat my real team.

But I rooted for the Nats to beat the Cardinals and the NLCS sweep was hysterically fitting. I got people out of a talk I was giving early enough that they could watch the local team on the TeeVee.

So the Nationals are going to the Series? How do you like that? Good on them, they have a lot of delightful personalities. I may know this the team better than any. They are on an epic run, playing loose and having fun. That matters. Rendon, Soto, Howie and the rest. The playoff rotation? KuSuZu? Davie’s heart situation? They have nothing to lose. Baby Shark and dugout dancing? All expectations for this season were realized in July. And congratulations to the fans of the DC team. Good on you. Feels good, don't it? I hope you win it all. It’s good to see people have fun.