The Long, Hot Summer

The grave yawns, the economy is in the tubes, the world generally is in peril, yet, upon realizing that there is a game tonight, my heart takes a small but genuine jump.

I expected this long, hot summer also to be a depressing summer—depressing, that is, to the aging, cynical, yet withal still half-ardent baseball fan that I remain. As an American, Chicago-born, I go at things in my own way, which turns out to be a way I am not supposed to go. By this I mean that I cheer on the two baseball teams in my city. In jagged point of fact, Chicago White Sox fans hate Chicago Cubs fans, and Chicago Cubs fans, being somewhat more upwardly mobile, are merely contemptuous of Chicago White Sox fans.
Even though the Cubs are under new management, no one expected much of the team this season as it went into, as the local joke has it, the 106th year of its rebuilding program. Thus far, they have for the most part lived up to these low expectations. Not much more was expected of the White Sox, who traded away two key players—their top- of-the-rotation pitcher Mark Buehrle and a natural hitter named Carlos Quentin—without adding anyone substantial to replace them. Three marquee players—the home-run hitter Adam Dunn, the Cy Young-winning pitcher Jake Peavy, and the brilliant outfielder named Alex Rios—all had a wretched 2011 season, and with none of them young, there was no reason to believe that they would get much better this year. Doldrums is what the 2012 baseball season bode; doldrums unrelieved looked to be my lot.
Yet here we are in early August and the White Sox are leading the Central Division, and looking strong. This surprising fact is a reminder that baseball is the least predictable of American sports. In what other sport can an obviously weak team smash an obviously superior team—at least, as the cliché has it, on any given day? All other sports come down to particular games—big games, pivotal games, crucial games—while for baseball the significant unit of measurement is the season. Every baseball season seems to have its own rhythm, and because a baseball season is longer than any other sports season, one must learn to manage one’s depression and excitement about a team’s fortune over the six- or seven-month haul.

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/august/the-long-hot-summer