I'm pissed. 24 hours ago I would have told you that there was just no way that the Tampa Bay Rays were going to lose that do or die Game 5 in the ALDS. I felt an energy from the team that...well, shit, I haven't felt unless I built it up myself as their biggest cheerleader.
In case you can't tell from the title, they did in fact, lose. And it sucks, and I hate that it's so quickly deflating after such a looooong, looooong season, but that's baseball, kids.
I can take solace in knowing that my ragtag team of misfits and throwaways, that collectively make less money than the top three earning Yankees, gave the best team in baseball absolutely all they could handle. It took their freak of a pitcher, Gerrit Cole, who will win the Cy Young this year, to beat us twice in a best of five series. Without him, we would have done it. We beat Greinke, we beat Verlander when the iron was to our face, and dammit, if only it's not Cole's year!
Cole...Cole...
Weird. That name resonates with me for some reason.
Anyways, I mentioned the energy from the team, but I also meant the energy from the Trop and the fans that actually came out to support the Rays. That was incredible. I honestly didn't think that would ever happen.
I wrote back in June, when the whole weird Montreal thing was happening, that the team should just kamikaze themselves into a championship, and yet somehow those two playoff games at the Trop make me...siggggggghhhhhhh...have hope.
Look, if this is your first trip down to the Studly Pastures and you've never seen a unicorn crap a cupcake before, let me give you some advice: hope, in all it's forms, is the worst feeling you can have when it comes to sports. Also, never eat the cupcakes. It is NOT my first trip to the stables, in fact, I've run this joint for longer than I care to remember, and I threw up a little bit in my mouth when I said that part about having hope.
Hope is for the dumb dumbs. Hope is for the people that refuse to believe in facts. Hope is for those people that know the inevitable outcome, yet despite that, believe it could work out in their favor.
It is a bad, bad thing.
Hope leads to heartbreak.
And yet, after all this time, and after all the Lucy's pulling the football from me right before I kicked it...I have hope.
I believe, whole-heartedly, that I will one day write a Studly talking about the Rays as champions. I really do. And I really hope it's next year because I'm getting tired of how much crap these unicorns produce.
Cole...dammit, I just can't shake it.
Wait a minute! It's like the SAT's...Gerrit Cole is to Cole Hamels as to harbingers of the Rays doom and the newest member on my list to hopefully get penis rot and get shanked by three midgets in a trench coat.
Damn you, Twilight Zone.
