Baseball, the late Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote, was “designed to break your heart.”
The man who famously handed down Pete Rose’s permanent suspension from playing knew what he was talking about from firsthand experience. A lifelong Red Sox fan during Boston’s 86-year championship drought, the father of actor Paul Giamatti was well aware of the sport’s annual progression from hope to despair.
“You count on it, you trust it to cushion the passage of time, to keep alive the memory of the sun and high skies, and then, just when the days are twilight, when you need it most, it stops,” Giamatti, the The 19th president of Yale University, wrote in ‘Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games.’
The passage is particularly relevant for Philadelphia Phillies fans after Wednesday’s heartbreaking, season-ending loss to the rival New York Mets in Game 4 of the National League Division Series.
As one Phillies fan notably put it, Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor’s go-ahead grand slam in the sixth inning on Wednesday was somehow worse than the death of his dog.
A drunk Phillies fan made an outrageous claim after their playoff loss to the Mets.
“So there are a couple of low points in my life, my dog passed away and they won a Grand Slam,” Phils fan Courtney O’Neill said. Allentown’s WFMZ-TV in a television collapse after the 4-1 defeat. ‘The Grand Slam took the cake.
“I feel like I could sign up for AA or therapy or some kind of institute because this sucks,” O’Neill said from a bar across from the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, where he watched the action Wednesday. . “It’s full of garbage.”
The Phillies, NL East champions with a 95-67 record, were again expected to compete for a World Series title in 2024, something they have won only twice in the club’s 142-year history.
Philadelphia not only boasts a two-time MVP in Bryce Harper, but also a strong rotation that included All-Stars Zack Wheeler and Ranger Suarez.
But Suarez nearly collapsed during the second half of the season, and even with 4.1 strong innings in Wednesday’s start, the Phillies’ suddenly calm bats couldn’t overcome Lindor’s sixth-inning bomb.
The Phillies suffered a heartbreaking, season-ending loss to their rival New York Mets.
Two men dressed in overalls (and not much else) described their pain to WFMZ Allentown
“We’re fed up,” one shirtless, jumpsuit-clad fan told WFMZ. “We had high expectations and now we just finished.”
His friend, also wearing nothing but a jumpsuit, said he had reached the fifth stage of grief: “Acceptance.”
“The acceptance that this team is not going to win in the next five years, probably,” the man said.