Be Ready for a Life of Agony

Did you ever find yourself standing, looking at a horrifying tragedy in the making--like a baby carriage rolling down the hill into the water--and you could do nothing to stop it?

Well, something of the sort occurred when I had lunch with Gay Harwin.

Gay Harwin is a practicing attorney with a flourishing entrepreneurial career. She is happy, successful, pretty, more or less fulfilled.

And she wants to jeopardize all this. She wants to become--of all things!--a practicing baseball fan!

It’s depressing. It’s like someone booking passage on the Titanic. Asking Custer if you can ride along. Entering Dracula’s castle.

You want to say, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Sports fans are like the legion of the damned. It’s an addiction. Like compulsive gambling. It’s a legal drug.

“Why do you want to become a baseball fan? Why not knitting? Stamp collecting, crossword puzzles?” I asked, in a last desperate attempt to head off her heartaches.

“I not only want to become a fan, I want to become the fan,” she said eagerly.

I tried not to sob.

“How do I do it?” she asked.

“Well, first of all, do you have an optimistic outlook on life?” I asked.

“Oh, yes!” she eagerly replied.

“Forget it!” I warned her. “You are about to embark on a life of unrelieved misery. Go see a funny movie tonight. It may be the last time you ever laugh out loud.

“Now what you do is pick a team. Choose carefully because that team is henceforth going to become like a member of your family.”

“Oh, I’ve got the Dodgers!” she said.

I wanted to bury my head in my arms and weep.

“OK, the Dodgers it is,” I sighed.

“Now, just remember that, from now on, 50 to 60% of the time they are going to make you miserable. You may not go home and kick the cat or criticize the meatloaf--but you’ll feel like it. And given enough time, you will.

“They will break your heart in ways no lover ever could. There’ll be times it’ll be like having custody of a cluster of idiots. They will do things you think no professional will ever do.

“Dodger Stadium will be a hall of horrors for you some nights. You will go home looking as if you have just seen a ghost, and you won’t be able to sleep, replaying errors in your mind. Over and over again, you will be tormented by what-ifs--what if he had thrown that ball safely and saved the game?

“You have to get an idol, one player in whom you invest almost all of your emotional capital. He will be your guy. Your property, almost. Bear in mind, this guy is going to fail at the plate seven out of 10 times. You have to make do with a procession of popups, strikeouts, double plays.

“One tip: Pick a guy who won’t throw explosives at kids. He doesn’t have to be Little Lord Fauntleroy, but it would be nice if he doesn’t have too many assault raps on his record.

“You live and die with this guy. He’s your surrogate up there at the plate. In your mind, when he succeeds, you exult. (‘I hit a home run!’) Better pick a .300 hitter. Get somebody down in the .198s or so and you’ll start to lose weight. You’ll get this nervous tic and your hair may begin to fall out. Just remember your self-esteem is at stake, too.

“Don’t ever go near a locker room. You may find your idol telling Mother Teresa to get out of his face, or telling a kid if he wants his autograph to come to the card show with 20 bucks.

“You have to be loyal to your team. No transfer of affections for you. Ballplayers will move out at the drop of a million dollars, but you are enlisted for life. Be prepared to be abandoned by your idol from time to time.

“Ballplayers’ allegiances are to themselves and their agents. Some of them have to look down at their shirt fronts from time to time to see what town they’re playing for. Actually, there should just be a dollar sign there. They go. You stay. You can’t jump the club, ever. There are no signing bonuses for fans. You never get to be a free agent. The reserve clause is still in effect for fans.

“Don’t worry about the intricacies of the game. All you really have to remember is, the team that scores the most runs wins. The infield-fly rule hardly ever comes up in general conversation.

“But, you will, of course, want to know enough to second-guess the manager. There will come a time when you will want to feel as if you know more about the game than he does--and maybe you will, come to think of it.

“An important aspect of belonging is to be able to stand up in the seats occasionally and not only jeer the manager but hurl insults at your own team. This requires only a limited vocabulary, hardly a summation to the jury. ‘Call yourself a pitcher, Ramon? Ray Charles could hit that stuff!’ is a much favored insult, but feel free to innovate. This not only alleviates aggravation but serves notice on the surrounding fans that you are a person of some substance, the all-purpose grandstand heckler, as highly necessary to the game as a clack at the opera.

“You have to stuff your face at games, eat your fool head off. Peanuts and Cracker Jack, to be sure, but a beer and a hot dog every two innings is recommended. A ballgame without beer and a hot dog is un-American.

“You also have to pick a team to hate. My personal preference was the Yankees. They used to win World Series games, 18-4. They not only should have been hated, they should have been prosecuted. The league slogan was, ‘Break up the Yankees!’

“But you can hate a team that’s not successful. The present Mets come to mind. They can’t even catch the expansion team. But failure hasn’t gone to their heads. They’re still as big a bunch of jerks as they were when they were winning. Like the old Yankees, they’re easy to hate.

“Subscribe to the Sporting News. Become addicted to box scores. They hold the key to your day. If your idol went three for four, you go to work singing and smiling. If he went 0 for 5, you may go in and start snarling at judges. It’s very important you make excuses for your idol, though. The pitcher was using Vaseline; the ump was getting him out, not the pitches, the grass was too high or too short. Whatever.

“Believe every bit of gossip you hear. Being gullible is a must for the dedicated fan. Always believe the worst. The accused are guilty until proven innocent.

“You have to see this game through a child’s eyes. Forget that what you are looking at is a complicated business transaction between competing groups of millionaires. Cynicism has no place in fandom.

“Be prepared to have trouble getting World Series tickets if your team is lucky enough to make one. World Series tickets are for season ticket-holders and corporate entities who need the tickets for promotional entertaining. No true baseball fan is ever a season ticket-holder. He is, like a sore-armed pitcher, day to day. What they call ‘walk-up’ trade. For World Series tickets, you don’t walk up, you camp out for a week.

“This is only a partial list of the calamities that can befall the true fan. If you are not prepared to put up with any or all of the foregoing, get out now. Once you get hooked, it is like heroin. Seconds of ecstasy succeeded by seasons of suffering.

“You have to buy every bobble-head doll, warm-up jacket, cap, bat and ring they put on sale. You are the mainstay of the licensee industry.

“You are on probation until your team blows a six-run lead in a playoff. Or a six-game lead in the final week and a half of the season. Only then can you call yourself a full-fledged fan.

“Always remember, Dodger fans didn’t make their bones until the team went into the ninth inning of the pennant playoff decider leading, 4-2, and, a half-inning later, their pitcher walked home the National League pennant.

“You cannot become a fan overnight. You have to suffer like a Rangoon beggar. Remember this: Job would have been a Dodger fan.”