Pedley’s Ponderings

Just my losing luck

     Autumn often provides fans of professional sports a revived sense of optimism. A new football season is just around the corner, the playoff race for baseball is heating up and other sports are starting to get some buzz.

     People get caught up in spectulation in August and September. It’s a fun time of the year where pre-season projections and player analysis runs rampant throughout the media. Things like “World Series contender” and “Super Bowl hopeful” get tossed around loosely, all adding to the fall sports madness.

     However, this hearsay and hoopla means nothing if you’re a fan of crummy teams like me.

     By some cruel joke of the universe, I became a fan of the Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners and Detroit Lions when I was an ignorant young boy. I really don’t know how this smorgasbord of misery came about, but it’s been a head-pounding journey of futility and heartbreak ever since.

     I guess there were certain things that drew me to these frustrating franchises during my youth. The Lions had Barry Sanders, Ken Griffey Jr. was blasting home runs in Seattle and the Cubs actually made the playoffs a few times back then. All of this was good enough for a naive child like myself, and I was content.

     However, it’s been nothing but the toilet ever since.

     One of my teams hasn’t even won a playoff game since 2003 when the Cubs almost made it to the World Series. The key word there was “almost.” They’ve made it back to the playoffs twice since then, and they’ve gotten swept twice.

     The Mariners haven’t been to the playoffs since 2001 and have been reliably awful for the past decade.

     The Lions, well, the Lions are in their own world of awful. I’ve endured an 0-16 season and I haven’t even witnessed them win a playoff game in my 22 years of existence.

     I’m not sure why I keep holding out hope for my ill-begotten teams. Some folks would classify them as loveable losers, but after years and years of back-breaking defeat, that affectionate term is starting to wear thin. You can only take so much, and they’re quickly turning into loathable losers in my eyes.

     I’ve resorted to picking up “satellite” teams to cope with such rampant failure. These teams are more successful and much easier to watch. Over the past few years, I’ve started to root for the Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays and San Francisco Giants. Some people may call me a bandwagon fan or a traitor, but occasionally enjoying the success of these teams is the only way I can keep relative sanity in the face of so much losing.

     As you can tell, I’m rather jaded for my age. Making my bitterness worse is the success my friends’ teams have had in recent years – most noteably the St. Louis Cardinals. I have too many friends that like the Cards, and that poses significant problems for a Cubs fan like me. I can’t even defend myself when they poke fun at me. After all, they’ve won two World Series in last decade and the Cubs haven’t won one in last century.

     This time of the year is always a reminder of what my teams are not. They aren’t even close to a winning record, they aren’t in playoff contention but most of all, they just aren’t good. The Mariners’ and Cubs’ seasons are all but written off, and Detroit’s might as well be. They haven’t played a down of real football in 2013 but one can only imagine it’s going to be just as ugly as every other year.

     I’m already looking towards next year, but I’m not sure I’m looking forward to next year. My spirits are quite obviously shattered and hope is fleeting. It’s even becoming difficult to utter the age old Cubs fan motto, “Maybe next year...”

     I may be over exaggerating a bit, but my frustration is nearing a breaking point. Seeing other folks get excited about the upcoming season while my teams sit in the cellar is just the worst. However, I should probably keep some of my griping in the gas tank. I have to sit through 12 games of Iowa Hawkeye football yet this season, which is another column in and of itself.

     Nick Pedley is the regional news editor of the Hampton Chronicle, The Sheffield Press and Pioneer Enterprise.