I’ve never been a big fan of Mike Francesa’s work. I understand why he has been so successful, but his schtick isn’t my cup of tea.
In spite of that, he has one of my favorite baseball quotes I’ve ever heard. These words are from an Opening Day segment he did on MLB Network in 2018, and I haven’t forgotten them since the moment I heard them:
“Baseball is your companion. It’s in the car with you; it’s in the backyard with you; it’s there every night. You don’t have to watch every minute of every game, but it’s there every night. How good is it to know when you go home you have a baseball game?”
Of course the main focus is on the loss of the National League pennant and a trip to the World Series. But that’s only part of what tonight’s 4-3 loss in game seven confirmed.
The loss of the companion is what became official tonight. And that’s the worst day to be a baseball fan every year.
The Braves were really close to winning the National League pennant. They were 10 clean outs away on Friday, three runs away on Saturday and blew two separate leads on Sunday. Three days, three missed opportunities.
Going, going, and now gone.
The last three days are going to stick with you for a while. This wasn’t like the last series loss to the Dodgers where the Braves were completely overmatched, or even the one before that where it still would’ve required another series win to get to the World Series. This team was good enough to get it done, got within one win of getting all the way to the pinnacle, and didn’t finish the job.
Get comfortable with that pit in your stomach when you think about baseball; it’s going to be a regular acquaintance for at least the winter.
The Braves assembled a roster good enough to win the World Series for a second consecutive season, and for they came up short in a winner-take-all game against a usual playoff foe for the second consecutive season.
I would love to tell you that this is all a part of one big narrative arc; to tell you that these last two Octobers have just been one part of the grandeur at play here.
Losing usually proceeds winning. The 2015 Cubs lost in the NLCS before winning the World Series the next year; the Nationals had every playoff failure imaginable from 2012 on before finally going all the way last season.
Heck, the 2020 World Series champs will be a team coming off a loss in the 2019 division series no matter who ends up winning it all. The Braves came within five wins of a championship this season despite losing MIke Soroka for the year after 10 days.
The Braves figure to get a healthy Soroka back next season on top of a full season of Ian Anderson in the starting rotation, and Cristian Pache should soak up Ender Inciarte’s spot as the everyday centerfielder. This team is good now and projects to be even better next year.
You have every right to believe next year could be the year.
But you know why you have to believe next year is going to be the year? Because we learned tonight that this year isn’t.
And that day — whether it’s an inevitable mathematical elimination in early September or game seven of the NLCS — is the worst day as a fan every year.
Even when your team is 30 games out of first place and has been basically playing out the string since April, the day the elimination becomes official is always a little bit of a bummer. For everything you gain with Francesca’s quote about Opening Day, this is the day you lose it again.
There was an opportunity to spend another week or so with that companion. To come home four to seven times next week knowing you had a baseball game to watch. To listen to the game or a talk show about it while you’re in the car for a few more days, just to immerse yourself in everything a baseball season entails for as long as possible.
Literally as long as possible, because a win tonight would have meant the Braves would be playing in the last baseball game of the year. The annual sabbatical from your companion starts tomorrow and doesn’t stop until April, and you didn’t even get the opportunity for some positive closure before it started.
That’s what makes this the worst day of the year as a baseball fan. Every sports team has a day where the season ends at some point, and it hurts when any team you care about reaches the end of its line.
Baseball has a cadence that makes it the hardest one to say goodbye to. The daily rhythm of the season creates a gaping hole.when it evaporates, like a drummer having the drumsticks snatched away in the middle of a solo. It goes from everything to nothing in an instant. After hearing nothing but sounds for the entire concert, the only thing you can notice is the lack of noise.
And man, the silence is deafening right now. All elimination days hurt, but there is an extra sting attached to this one.
Because this loss doesn’t just signify losing the companion. It has the additional layer of how close the Braves were to a championship, and that grim reminder presents its own set of additional unfortunate realities.
You don’t get to put away your anxiety about the Dodgers in October. The Braves might have to run into them again at some point in October to get to the summit. They usually do. Whenever the next big Braves-Dodgers series is, the Braves will go into it on a three-series losing streak. 2013, 2018, 2020. When is it going to turn? All you can do is wonder.
Yes, you are going to have to keep living in the past. At least another 365 days or so, perhaps more if the universe demands it. Depending on your age and length of fandom you are either going to have to keep telling younger folks stories from a World Series win, or keep listening to the same stories from older heads wondering if you’ll ever see it with your own eyes.
Yes, your World Series memories are going to continue to exist in the format of standard definition YouTube videos of David Justice homering off Jim Poole and Marquis Grissom gliding over to catch the final out. I don’t know when or if you’re ever getting a fresh one.
Your World Series celebrations are just going to live in your mind. Whichever Brave you pictured catching the final out of a clincher, whatever relative you were going to call first after the final out, whatever deceased family member’s grave you were planning on taking a newspaper clipping to, however you were planning on basking in the moment, it’s all going to have to wait. Those things could have existed in reality, but they’re still figments of your imagination for a future date.
Your wallet is going to be a little heavier than it otherwise might have been this November, but that’s only because you learned today you won’t be able to buy any championship gear or memorabilia. You probably really wanted to get a family member or a friend a nice gift of a World Series T-shirt or a commemorative poster for the holidays come December, but you’ll have to go back to the drawing board and re-work your shopping list.
Put your Braves windbreaker away. There was a point where it looked like you were going to need it for a chilly parade on Peachtree Street in about 10 day. But like this season, all that’s left of that dream is the thought of what could have been.
That’s 25 consecutive years the Braves have failed to win the World Series now. It doesn’t seem like a lot, until you remember that the Braves have been in the postseason in 16 of those 25 years and fallen short.
It also means you’ve had this worst day 25 times in a row. That day where all of those realizations I laid out come into your head at once and where the long road of the offseason gets laid out in front of you.
Who knows how high that number will get. The Cubs made it to 108, the Indians are at 72 and counting. The Rays are at 22 and the Dodgers 32, so something has to give there.
It’s impossible to know. But all I know for sure is that it sucks today. It’s going to for a while. That was almost something really, really special. It could have been the greatest day for the franchise in over two decades.
Instead it was just that familiar worst day.
