The Failed Season - Ruminations of a Baseball Fan

“It’s a failure. In spring training, we talked about winning the division and putting ourselves in a good
spot in the post season to win a World Series. We came up short. No matter how many games we
won in the regular season…this season is a failure.” - Aaron Judge, 10/19/2019, after the Yankees were
eliminated from the 2019 American League Champion Series

“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” - Vince Lombardi, 1959

“I love baseball.” – Tom Kerns, often

It is apparent to me that many of us have lost our appreciation for the poetry and elegance of the art of performance. We focus on the result and discount the effort. As a baseball fan, specifically a New York baseball fan and even more specifically a NY Yankee fan I have often heard fans and sports radio talking heads declare the recent Yankee seasons as failures because they didn’t “win it all”. I have even heard about a younger “fan” dropping his subscription to the YES Network (the network that broadcasts most of the Yankee games and partly owned by the NY Yankees organization). His rationale was that he didn’t want to support the Yankees anymore because of the way the “team was run.” In other words, they haven’t won a World Series since 2009. Don’t get me wrong, at the beginning of every season and throughout each summer I hope the Yankees do win another World Series and I am disappointed when they fall short of that result, but to stop supporting the team because they haven’t done that in a while is not being a true fan of the team or of the game of baseball. This is only a fan of winning, the team and the game are secondary.

I understand that players and organizations feel like they have failed when they do not achieve their stated goals, but even at that level every effort provides an opportunity to learn and grow. That’s the case for anyone who is remotely passionate about their job, and baseball players are employees hired to do a job. I get that. However, for a fan to consider an entire season a failure because the team didn’t win the championship is troublesome to me.

The 2023 baseball season has not lived up to expectations for either of the NY teams. From a fan’s perspective does that make it a failed season? For me the answer is an emphatic NO! I’m not going to lie; it has been frustrating to watch some of the games this year. This does not take away from the great moments I have experienced. I love going to the games with family and friends and enjoying a beer and the wonderful Lobel’s Steak Sandwich. Watching Gerrit Cole pitch a gem or watching Aaron Judge hit three home runs in a game or exchange high-fives as Gleybor Torres hits another walk-off hit or Harrison Bader making another amazing catch in centerfield. I love watching the rookies get their first major league hit or home run. These are all individual events for which I cheered, and they made me happy in the moment, but it is more than these individual moments, more than one play or one game or one season or even one championship. I love baseball for the game as a whole. I do get disappointed when my team loses, but I do not love the game or my team any less when they do. I certainly would not drop my subscription to the YES network. No, it is not a failed season. How can something that brings so much joy, so many moments to cheer, be a failure?

The Lombardi doctrine is not only a lie, it is dangerous. It creates resentment and anger. The “booing” trend of the NY sports fan is one of the ugly results of that mentality. There are some that defend this unsportsmanlike and bullying behavior by using the “I have a right to act like this because I paid the price of admission” argument. Of course, anyone has a “right” to boo and yell at the players and the team, but this brings to mind the adage; “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”!

I might be in the minority with my views but I’m certainly not alone. Noted author and psychologist Lisa Kentgen Ph.D. writes about this “winning is the only thing” mentality in her article “Our Culture is Obsessed with Winning”. (https://www.lisakentgen.com/single-post/2017/04/20/our-culture-is-obsessed-with-winning). One of the many salient points included in this article is “The hunger for the win itself leads to an inability to see the forest through the trees; and the big picture is lost…a win/lose paradigm simply cannot promote a champion culture.” To put this in perspective of being a baseball fan, to focus only on winning a championship negates the many joyous aspects of this majestic game.

To conclude; the fact that the NY baseball teams will not win the World Series this year simply means they failed to achieve that one goal AND the effort, the lessons learned, the positive as well as negative moments we enjoyed as fans of this beautiful game cannot, if you are a true lover of the game, be considered, even remotely, as a failure.

I love baseball!

“I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of
being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.” -
“A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti”, ©
1998 by A. Bartlett Giamatti.