How Baseball is Sucking the Life Out of Me

We didn’t intend to turn our children into sports, particularly baseball, and more particularly Washington Nationals fanatics, but we did. As many of you know, this year the Nats have been on TV at our house and on the radio in our car a lot. As I've mentioned numerous times, Brian and I love baseball, but we’ve never had cable or a good team to cheer for. The Nats have had such an amazing season and have been so fun to watch, that we’ve become hooked. The boys know the names of most of the players, they understand how the game works, they love the Nationals presidents that race in the middle of the fourth innings, and they love to be the presidents and race around the house. Clark can imitate the batting stances of many of the starting players. Calvin randomly brings up the names of some of their obscure pitchers. Most of the time Clark thinks he is Bryce Harper and Cal thinks he is Jayson Werth.

They’ve always had this obsessive bent in their characters. When it was ceiling fans it was obnoxious, but not painful. Suddenly, with the Nats poor performance in the playoffs so far, the boys and their incessant talk about the Nationals and the presidents just makes me mad. I don’t want them to be constantly talking about Bryce Harper hitting home runs when he has gotten something like one hit in his last twenty-five at bats. For the love.

Don’t pretend to be Stephen Strasburg pitching! He was shut down by the general manager and can’t even pitch in the postseason. They are so into pretending that it is impossible to go for an hour without one of them asking me to watch him be Jayson Werth hitting an imaginary home run and running around the “bases” in our living room. You’re killing me here! Werth has had so many chances to hit with runners in scoring position but does he even have a single RBI in the postseason? I actually don’t know or want to look it up, but it doesn’t feel like it.

I love these guys and this team but the last few games have been humiliating blowouts. I’ve been in a constant cringe while watching the games. I haven’t even been able to watch the last innings of the past two games. And I hate that it has been affecting me so much. I didn’t know it would. I haven’t been so attached to a baseball team since I was fifteen and had my heart broken by the Seattle Mariners. Or maybe since I helped my dad coach tee-ball. Those kids had talent.

I know the Nats can play so much better than they are—and even against the same team that they’re getting pounded by. I really need perspective on this whole postseason but having mini Nationals running around makes it even harder. I hope that today isn’t their last game—that they can beat the Cardinals and take the series to a game five. Not only because I want them to win, but because we have tickets to game five if it happens, and I’d love to be at a playoff game for the first time.

I rigged the laundry today so that the boys’ Zimmerman and Harper shirts are all four dirty. I don’t need to see the curly W all day. I slept in my Jayson Werth shirt so that I won’t be tempted to wear it today. I’m going to pretend to not watch the clock and think about game time. Who am I? Why do I care so much?

It’s such a weird feeling and hard to shake. And impossible to shake with my pretenders who make every surface a baseball field and make themselves the Nationals players hitting amazing home runs in slow motion. Why must you stab my heart?

My advice to parents of sports fans? Exercise caution when teaching your kids about a team. IT WILL SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF YOU to have them talking about the team when they lose.

The dumbest thing of all of this is that if the Nats play a good game today and win and play a good fifth game of the series, I will love the boys running around talking about the Nats. What is wrong with me!? Go Nats? 

Crazy person out.

I just needed to see them in uniforms that aren't Nationals' uniforms.