Can I Borrow A Feeling?

I have not been a regular baseball watching dude for most of my 30 years of existence on this planet, so suffice to say I do not have the same history of baseball feelings as a lot of my cohorts in this endeavor, but while I do not have sepia-toned memories of actually watching Dock Ellis pitching no-hitters on acid or trying and failing to get my first moustache to sprout into a Rollie Fingers esque-megastache, I do have some baseball feelingz 4 u.  Here they are:

I am going to be turning 31 in February and have never really had a team to call my own.  Growing up I was forced into a cursory Cubs fandom by militant Mexicans who, by virtue of having family in Chicago harbored a fiery passion for all teams from the Windy City.  I mean, these dudes were fucking Blackhawks fans, ya dig?  How many Mexicans do you know that are even dimly aware that hockey is a sport, let alone watch games and root for the fucking Blackhawks?  These dudes were hardcore about Chicago teams, and they were die-hard Cubs fans even though their family actually all lived in White Sox territory.  Perhaps Abuelo Marcos way back in the day just never forgave Shoeless Joe, or maybe they thought Mark Grace resembled the Virgin Mary, truth is I never really asked, I just shut up and watched the games and bought a Cubs hat, lest they beat me up slightly more than the already twice weekly random beatings I endured as part of my friendship with them.

But I digress, point is I never really had a team to call my own.  Years passed and I largely ignored the beisbol, except for the occasions when teams I knew to be perennial losers actually came close to grasping the brass ring, at which point I would half-assedly root for them until they lost, or in the case of the Red Sox, mercifully finally won so I could never have any reason to care about them again.  But my years of nominally supporting hapless bums and my beginning to read the baseball feelings of my comrades here led me to a realization about being a baseball fan and why I had not embraced it previously:  I had not yet grasped that the point of being a baseball fan is to embrace misery wholeheartedly.

Armed with this flash of insight, I began a search for my team, the team that would suck my soul dry of any hope, happiness or joy like a succubus made of jock straps, bloated contracts and the dried pineal glands of orangutans.  I considered several factors in my search for a team:  geography (I live in Vegas and was born and raised in Nebraska), the rank stupidity of the management of the team, and finally, how likely they were to make me wish that Alexander Cartwright had been aborted.  Based on these criteria (well, not really, but play along) I narrowed my choices down to a field of five: Mets, Blue Jays, Tigers, A’s or Royals.

The Mets have a certain allure for any potential baseball fan who wishes to embrace the howling void of their own empty and desolate humanity; their management is monumentally stupid, to be sure, but every baseball fan likes to think that their team’s management is somehow especially pig-shit ignorant and that somehow this makes their suffering special and unique, and Mets fans are especially guilty of this brand of cock-eyed pessimism.  Plus Mets fans have to carry on that tradition of hatred of and inferiority complex to the Yankees that the fans of the Red Sox once honed into an art form (a stupid, putrid art form, mind you), and I’ve already got successful friends to envy irl, so I don’t need that in my baseball, thank you very much.  I prefer my agony to be undiluted by hatred of other teams or petty, outdated or manufactured rivalries, it’s far too distracting to the main point of baseball fandom as I have observed in it’s purest form: vainly hoping that your team will not disappoint you, then allowing that hope to curdle and fester into a dark, pus-filled boil of hatred for your team and wishing syphilis on their children.

The Blue Jays were considered, in all frankness, simply because of my intense and no doubt embarrassing hero-worship of one KS.  Much as I wish I could join him in the erudite and genteel realm of Jays fandom, I know in my heart that the Blue Jays are not my team, no matter how much I love the idea of Toronto, the Kids In the Hall, or poutine.   I am far too American to root for a Canadian team.  Mind you, I don’t say that out of any ignorant, knee-jerk patriotism, I hate America more than the most cartoonish Frenchman or Ayatollah, I simply know that the kind of baseball fan I will no doubt be is the kind of fan who has no home in the land of Blue Jays fandom.  I am far too crass and squalid a soul for such a team.  Kendall actually has genuine affection for his team, and I know that whatever team I end up swearing my fealty to will never inspire such sincere feelings of love in me, only forlorn hope followed by irrational, petty loathing.

The A’s were similarly considered because of their being loved by several of my e-bros, but a desire to ingratiate oneself with one’s e-bros is no basis to bury oneself in the Old Spice and moustache-wax scented bosom of the Oakland Athletics.  Plus I’m afraid of elephants and I was once beat up by a kid in middle school who resembled a young Dennis Eckersley.

So we’re left with two choices, and dear God, what a choice of miseries it is:  The Tigers or the Royals.  My father in-law is a Tigers fan, and my wife is a Royals fan, but luckily my father-in-law also reads books and watches films, so I don’t need to go into my bathroom, turn off all the lights and summon Mike Ilitch just yet merely to have something to talk to him about, so let’s leave the Tigers option open for the moment and move on to the Royals.

Growing up in western Nebraska in the 80s meant you really had three choices in baseball teams going simply by geography:  The Cardinals, the Royals and the Cubs.  When I was a lad, the Rockies were not yet a glimmer in Larry Varnell’s eye, and fuck expansion teams anyway.  My philosophy has always been that if a team didn’t exist when I was 10, it can eat shit and die as far as I’m concerned.  Anyway, the Cardinals have always been too frequently competent for me to really get behind, and the Cubs have more than enough overweight, corn-fed white dipshits supporting them, so they don’t need me, so we’re left with the Royals.

The Royals existence in Major League Baseball in 2011 seems to be predicated on serving as a place where the Yankees can acquire talent, never use them, and then shunt them down to the minor leagues, never to be heard from again.  Being on the Royals is basically like being in purgatory’s waiting room.

There are attractive opportunities for wallowing in despair with both the Royals and the Tigers, and each team has their own unique flavor of hopelessness, but to be honest, I fear that becoming a Tigers fan would serve as a gateway to Lions fandom, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to embrace that level of spiritual torture, so congratulations, Kansas City Royals, you are now and forever my team.  I make a solemn promise to you that I will always allow myself to be deluded into the notion that This Year’s The Year~!, and I will always spew the most vile, black invective at your players, your management and even anything that passes into my consciousness that is remotely related to Kansas City when you inevitably fail to deliver on transforming that delusion into even the hint of a reality.

So join me in my maiden voyage into the Heart Of Darkness that is watching the Kansas City Royals play baseball. We can bond while suffering from the malaria that is Trey Hillman's management together!


- Dukes