{"id":91519,"date":"2015-11-02T11:45:40","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T16:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=91519"},"modified":"2015-11-02T11:45:40","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T16:45:40","slug":"mudville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/02\/mudville\/","title":{"rendered":"Mudville"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have friends who rhapsodize about their new relationships with unabashed stars in their eyes. \u201cHow\u2019s it going?\u201d you ask a few weeks later, only to be told, \u201cOh\u2014he was a sociopath!\u201d Then you listen as your friend eviscerates this former paragon with the same enthusiasm she once brought to his glorification. I always marvel, half horrified, half admiring, at the full commitment to poor judgment, the anger unmitigated by any self-reproach or, indeed, self-consciousness. To be so free! To think not \u201cit\u2019s amazing that we came this far\u201d but merely \u201cthey have let us down.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never really understood the rage that comes after a tough sports loss. Frustration, sure. Disappointment, of course. Even some heartbreak. But if sports are like war\u2014and we\u2019re constantly told they are\u2014it\u2019s an odd thing to turn on our proxies with such venom. It\u2019s as though they go off to fight in World War II and return in the Vietnam era, heroism transformed into cynicism. AMAZIN\u2019 DISGRACE!<\/small> shrieked the\u00a0New York Post<\/em>. \u201cOf course it will be hard to feel anything but anger and fury and devastation for now, and for a good long while<\/a>,\u201d wrote that paper\u2019s Mike Vaccaro.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what had we expected? The Mets are notorious for creative, inventive, gut-wrenching losses that reinforce an essential fatalism. Bad calls, bad plays, extra innings. Any win, for a Mets fan, feels like a reprieve from the inevitable. Joy is mixed with incredulity. You live in the moment, and that moment is never purely blissful\u2014because you\u2019re outsourcing your fate. Maybe it\u2019s easier if you\u2019re religious.<\/p>\n

Can\u2019t we remember the good times? Can we not feel a reluctant pleasure that Volquez has won a series for his father? At the very least, can we maintain our pride? To revisit my dating metaphor: you have to remember that, as a matter of statistical probability, there just aren\u2019t that many sociopaths in the world.<\/p>\n

Or, we can just watch \u201cCasey at the Bat<\/a>\u201d and remember that this particular variety of heartbreak is a feeling as old as the game.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have friends who rhapsodize about their new relationships with unabashed stars in their eyes. \u201cHow\u2019s it going?\u201d you ask a few weeks later, only to be told, \u201cOh\u2014he was a sociopath!\u201d Then you listen as your friend eviscerates this former paragon with the same enthusiasm she once brought to his glorification. I always marvel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[13861,375,20053,329,2185,16968,13028,85,183,1116],"class_list":["post-91519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-anger","tag-baseball","tag-edinson-volquez","tag-losing","tag-loss","tag-mets","tag-new-york-mets","tag-sports","tag-war","tag-world-series"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCoping with the Mets\u2019 World Series Loss: Don\u2019t Get Angry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"November 2, 2015 \u2013 I have friends who rhapsodize about their new relationships with unabashed stars in their eyes. \u201cHow\u2019s it going?\u201d you ask a few weeks later, only to be\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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