On Broken Hearts and Addiction:
Scoop: Stay strong, KOIE. As an Indians fan, I understand completely. These are the times that try fans’ souls. …
hawaii: A computer friend of mine said recently about the Padres – “Being a Padre fan is like having a heart attack year after year. A very slow heart attack”. Right now that goes for being a Met fan too.It may go for much of baseball’s fans (except maybe Yankee fans). It certainly applies to a large portion of the NL this year. …
Judie: For the Mets fans it’s been more like a heart attack every inning and especially when a relief pitcher comes in.
We either get loads of hitting and no pitching or good pitching and no hitting, like last night.
We have tickets for Sunday and it’s going to be the most tense game of the season (if we havne’t clinched by then, and I’m not taking anything for granted.)
KOIE, this is EXACTLY like a relationship that is ending but you don’t want it to end. Have faith. Believe.
A central tenet in Buddhism is that life is suffering, which I bought into even before I was a Mets fan.
Another key concept is that of attachment, i.e. one’s attachment to earthly (and thus transient) things and ideas lead to suffering. I believe this, too.
So how the heck did I let myself become so damned attached to the Mets?
I can’t believe how wound up I’ve been all month, especially during the big slide we’ve been on the past two weeks. Every game has felt like a playoff game. Every pitch and every at-bat has been a heart attack.
In working on my daily game recaps (what shows up in the right margin under the picture of Mr. Met) I’ve been reading more Buddhist scripture, looking for pithy ways to describe each game. But it has lead me to try to understand Buddhism better. I wasn’t exactly expecting the Mets to make me a more religious person, but there you have it. The season has been an interesting test of my faith, both in the Mets and in my Buddhist beliefs.
OK, so it’s not normal to read the Dhammapada, the Heart Sutra, and the Tao Te Ching (not Buddhist, per se, but conceptually similar) looking for ways to understand the 2007 Mets. Would Buddha be a baseball fan? As regards suffering, he’d love the Mets. And he’d really love the Cubs.
No one knows how the season will end. All I know is that I don’t want it to end this weekend. I want it to end in October. Deep in October.
Let’s go Mets.
