The Joys of Losing: My Life as a Baseball Fan

The English won all the battles but the Irish went home with all the songs.-- Wilfred Sheed

Books such as Wilfred Sheed's baseball-laden 1993 memoir, My Life as a Fan eloquently rekindles one of sports' ongoing debates, “Is there happiness rooting for a perpetual loser?” As a Cubs fan, who has allowed his daughter (shown here with her fiance) to go down this mine-filled base path, this is a topic I'm always interested in.

With prose that rivals John Updike's short account of Ted Williams' last game for the Boston Red Sox, Sheed addresses this question. As a nine-year old, Sheed arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1940 in the wake of a possible German invasion and found that baseball was a way to assimilate into his new country. Sheed's first allegiances were with Connie Mack's hapless Philadelphia Athletics. Slowly, Sheed switched leagues to become a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, expecting the glory to begin immediately.” Little did the young Sheed know that there would be a delay in gratification.

Sheed's years of disappointment began when Dodger catcher Mickey Owens dropped a third strike leading to a loss in Game Four of the 1941 World Series. Sheed writes, “Anyone can root for a winner, but it takes a stab of pain to initiate you all the way."(My daughter's initiation was the Bartman game during the Cubs loss to the Marlins in the 2005 NLCS. Young Atlanta Braves fan were baptized last year during their September collapse.)

However the book is much more than a fan's love of baseball, which is a subject that often borders on the cliché. Sheed illuminates the often forgotten baseball played during the World War II. 1941 was a memorable season with Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak, and Ted Williams hitting over .400 for the season. Though Sheed maintains that Williams was willing to put his .400 batting average in jeopardy on the last day of the season, because he was facing the miserable Athletics. In general, the quality of play suffered during the war. Sheed writes, “the shortage of baseball talent was critical, and even more painfully noticeable than the substitution of phony meat in the frankfurters—a a hot dog still looked like a hot dog and you could paint your margarine yellow, but there was no hiding that chunk of Spam you had playing shortstop or a pitching staff made of powdered eggs.”

 

No doubt that Sheed is certainly qualified to weigh in on whether it is better to love a perpetual loser or to win once, taste it and never taste victory again (citing how miserable the 1987 Met fans were after winning it all in 1986). In contrast, the Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Yankees in the World Series five times in fifteen years before defeating them in the 1955 Series. But in 1958, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, an unparalleled heartbreak for loyal Brooklyn fans. Still, I think Sheed answers the question of whether it is easier to root for a team that wins and loses, than for a team that hasn't won in over a century by capturing the moment that Gil Hodges snapped his mitt shut sealing the 1955 Dodger World Series win. “Victory has,” writes Sheed, “a way of letting you down, of not tasting quite as good as it looked on the menu. But not this one—this one tastes sweet even today, despite the bitter aftertaste that comes a second later.”

Ahhhh! To think of that day ahead, Cub fan. But probably not this year.