Running on empty

One day you’re making plans to watch what you hope will be a deep run into the post-season.  The next – you’re sitting in your living room feeling a little numb, trying to put a positive spin on what was a great regular season and a horrific post-season. 

Your eyes glaze over as you watch the opposing team pour champagne over one another.  You try to muster a smile, but it just doesn’t happen.  You want to be happy for a franchise that has had a 29 year drought from the post-season and although you might feel a little smidge of happiness for them – you feel a little sick to your stomach at the same time.

One minute you can’t sleep because you’re excited about the upcoming games and the next – you can’t sleep because you can’t believe it’s over.  You can’t prepare for the moment because you never want to acknowledge the possibility.

Any season that falls short of a World Series Championship is somewhat of a disappointment.  You try to reconcile how hard it is to win it all, but at the end of the day – it’s still a letdown.  You spend so much time, emotion and energy (not to mention money) invested and engaged in a long 162 game season and when it ends, you’re left feeling a little empty.

You start to think about how long the off-season will be and how much time must pass and how many games have to be played before you have a chance to be back in the play-offs again.  That day seems a million miles away and the thought of all the time and energy that will be spent yet again just leaves you cold.

These feelings are not unique to Angel fans by any means, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

 As the days pass and the post-season rolls on, you try to watch the games and choose sides.  Picking a team to “root” for doesn’t feel right.  It’s just not the same.  It’s easier to decide which teams you want to fail; i.e. the Dodgers because they’re the Dodgers or the Cardinals because of John “He’s dead to me” Lackey or A.J. Pierzynski because… well, he’s just a jerk.

You watch in disbelieve as Mike Moustakes looks like a Greek Baseball God homering again and again.  You mutter to yourself… “I thought the Royals didn’t hit homeruns…”  You say things like “Eric Hosmer picked a great time to finally live up to his potential” and you just mumble a lot about this, that and some other things. 

So you tune in here and there.  You don’t make a point to schedule your life around the games, but you watch if you’re home and it’s convenient.  

You get to the point where you just want the season to end.  You grow tired of the talking heads on television because you've come to realize that at the end of the day – your guess as to who’s going to win it all is as good as theirs.  Sure, your interest might pique here and there, but deep down – you just want it to be over. 

It’s then and only then that you don’t feel like you’re not being reminded constantly that your team has to wait till next year yet again.

Life goes on.  The days will continue to get shorter and the nights will get longer and soon the 2014 baseball season will be a distant memory. 

Approximately 121 days till Spring Training.  *Gulp*