Okay, the calendar has turned another page—the month that Weaver warned about. It’s time for the managers of the New York baseball teams, Carlos Mendoza of the Mets (who have lost 12 games of their last 20) and Aaron Boone of the Yankees (12-13 in their last 25 games) to invest in earplugs, the better to tune out any booing from their home crowds.
(The source of this image,
cropped from a baseball card of Earl Weaver from the 1976 Baltimore Orioles
Photocards set, is Trading Card Database.)
“A Cubs fan is unique and even necessary, a symbol
of defeat in a fallen world, a world where everyone will eventually perish. If
my team wins, they will become ordinary. If my team wins, they will later lose.
Then they will have become just another team that has won, not very long ago,
but is not winning anymore. In winning, the Cubs will make a lot of people
happy, but the happiness will fade, and, once it’s faded, what will we have
given up? The certainty and distinction and grandeur of epic failure. The
humility and holy rags of degradation, the very quality that sets a Cubs fan
apart and above. Gone will be the chance to prove the purity of our love for
the game. Anyone can look good while winning. Only an aristocrat can be
graceful in defeat.”—Rich Cohen, “A Cub Fan’s Fear of Winning,” The Wall
Street Journal, July 17, 2015
“I never did say that you can't be a nice guy and
win. I said that if I was playing third base and my mother rounded third with
the winning run, I'd trip her up.”—Longtime baseball manager Leo Durocher (1905-1991), disputing his
widely quoted statement that “Nice guys finish last,” quoted in Robert Cantwell,
“Leo: Under the Sunset Gun,” Sports
Illustrated, February 18, 1963
