The Mayor Will See You Now

los·er

lü-zer
Noun
1 : a person or thing that loses, especially consistently

2 : a person who is incompetent or unable to succeed; something doomed to fail or disappoint


A wise man once said, it's tough to soar with the eagles when you're surrounded by turkeys; and that is an apt description of where we find ourselves when reviewing the Minneaspolis-St. Paul sports scene. As we lift the lid on a fresh decade and close in on two decades of futility, there are many moments when it seems like we will never again celebrate a winner on either bank of the Mississippi. That is to say, we are surrounded by losers, drowning in a sea of them so deep that we'll never get another breath of air. But still we hope; without hope there would be no reason to pick up the pieces after yet another crushing loss, dust ourselves off and square our jaws to the horizon...and the next inevitable failure.

So you probably want to ask the question, "If you're so certain of failure, why bother caring at all? Why follow sports in the first place if you're just going to piss and moan about how lousy the teams are?" The short answer to this would be whatever this as-yet undiagnosed mental illness common among all huge sports fans turns out to be. But if pressed for detail, I would say the expectation of failure is a safeguard against the true agony of defeat; when your heart has been broken this many times, it's hard to keep putting yourself out there.

Many fans use the term "bandwagon" to describe people who run hot and cold on their teams, depending on their recent success, or lack thereof. I've always tended to look at this a bit differently, I see bandwagon fans as those who don't pay any attention for months on end, then use the success of one of "their" teams as an opportunity to crow as if they were there all along. I will never forget a particular baseball conversation I had a few years ago, in which a guy who purported to be a "huge Cubs fan" asked me how the team was faring that season...while they were playing an NLCS game on a TV ten feet behind him. This is the most extreme example that I have, but a good rule of thumb is if you consider yourself a "huge fan" of any team, but haven't check up on them in the past month, chances are you aren't. I may expect the worst, I may go Chicken Little on things far too often, but I can assure you that I'm definitely here for the long haul.

At the end of the day, I know I shouldn't care so much, but I do, hence the name of this blog. If I call the team losers and bemoan their failure at every turn, yet can't just walk away, instead choosing to follow their ups and downs on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis who is the true loser in that equation? That's right, it's me. But I can handle what I am, even embrace it wholeheartedly; if you're going to be a loser, I say own your loserdom, and that's what this is really all about.

My town and my teams are a perfect match, hanging around in the lower third of the upper third of things, not making too many waves, just plucky upstarts grinding it out from day to day. Sure there are days when it seems like it would be easier to just throw up your hands and move on to more fruitful endeavors, but unfortunately it's gone waaaay past that point. No turning back, no jumping ship and certainly no giving up until we reach that mountaintop.

One of these days, Loserville is coming up big.