What I want to say is that It’s Only One Game, that You Can’t Evaluate a Team on One Game (or three games, or twenty games, or fifty games), that You’re Never as Good as You Think You Are on Your Best Day and You’re Never as Bad as You Think You Are on Your Worst Day, that They’re a Young Team and There Will Always Be Road Bumps, that We’re Trying to Evaluate These Guys and Even When We’re Losing We’re Learning. I want to say these things because they’re all true.
What I will say, instead, is this: When people find out I’m a Pirate fan, they usually act in disbelief and almost expect me to be apologetic for following such a long-running joke of a franchise. I never am. They expect me to be embarrassed for sticking with a team that they would’ve left for dead long ago, for having the proverbial football pulled out from underneath me every year. I never am. Today, I’m sorry other people had to watch that. Today, I’m embarrassed. There will come a day when days like this don’t happen anymore for this franchise. I still firmly believe that. But when something like this happens, I can’t help but wonder if it’s all really worth it.
