Livin' and Dyin'

"See ya, Dutch."

Yeah, I know it's a serious question that's engaged the philosophers, theologians, and other serious thinkers for as long as people have been able to think about the subject. And I hasten to assure you that I'm not about to delve into that subject right now, although I will admit to some fascination with the discussion. No, I'm going to talk about something only slightly less portentous as real life and death, and that's living and dying with a baseball team. It's next to impossible to explain this phenomenon to anybody who isn't a hard core fan of some baseball team. Forget football, basketball, hockey, and all those other sports that intrude on baseball season and claim to be of equal stature. That's another argument, and I'm not gonna talk about it either.

What I'm talking about is having the pace and general tenor of your life being shaped and influenced by the fortunes of your baseball team, whichever one it is. Unless of course you love the Yankees, in which case you deserve the sufferings of hell for loving the spawn of the Devil. A win for the day defines a good day, a loss, a really not so good day. If it's All-Star break or your team's got a day off or it's a travel day, everything is OK . . . unless there's been some intervening disaster. Like a major guy going on the disabled list (DL) or several major guys being on it at one time, or getting hammered by somebody, or losing to the Yankees. Or a losing streak. Which is what I'm talking about here.

All of my ten or dozen regular readers know that I live or die with the Texas Rangers, and tonight they lost their sixth game in a row, all of them in their home park. The gory details are not important. Suffice it to say that all of a sudden the bats have gone on vacation and the pitching is stinking up the place. The picture above is of Ranger manager Ron Washington taking the ball from leftie Derrek Holland, usually a reliable starter, who's on his way out of the game. Like other Rangers in the four-game series with the Toronto Blue Jays, he got lit up, but the guy after him, Kyle McClellan, was worse and let the game get totally away.

Six games lost in a row is like having a really rotten cold that will not go away . . . and you have no hope that it will any time soon. Know how I found that picture? I googled "baseball losing streak." A whole bunch of Ranger pix came up. That, my friends, is no bueno.