True devotion

I am doing my best not to overreact to the past three games. After being one of the thousand or so eyewitnesses to The Big Choke, I had a rare Tuesday night gig with my band this week, so I was fortunate enough to miss The Worst Baseball Game Ever Played--at least the most painful parts of it.

I wasn't so fortunate last night. Had I written something after the game, it might have looked something like this. Pat is younger and, presumably, has a stronger heart than I do; I'm just glad that someone wrote it.

The definition of a fan is "an enthusiastic devotee (as of a sport or a performing art) usually as a spectator." When applied to a sport, this implies that, in almost all cases, the fan of any particular sporting contest wants his team to win. I call myself a Pirates fan, but now, today, I want the Pirates to lose. I want them to be swept by the team that people used to think was the worst team in baseball. Then I want their blowhard of a new manager to be humiliated and embarrassed in his former place of employment by the team he used to manage. Then I want the Pirates to be swept by the White Sox (can't wait to see those games), Tigers, Mets, and Phillies, so that they host the All-Star Break as the owners of a 24-game losing streak. I want that losing streak to be the focus of stories by every good baseball writer in the country, so that they all can investigate and describe in depth to the rest of the country the mendacity and ineptitude of those responsible for this mess.

Change at the top is all we can reasonably hope for. Anything that hastens that change is good.

(It's a good thing you're not overreacting. - ed.)