With no games on last night I spent most of the evening screwin’ around on the Internet, trying to start fights on message boards and that sort of thing. In the course of my virtual travels, I spoke (more or less) with fans of every playoff team. Based on these conversations, I’ve figured something out:
Fans of every playoff team think that their team sucks. Except for the Phillies, whose fans think they’ve already won the World Series.
It’s pretty uniform, actually. Even Yankees fans, who don’t lack for confidence, are hyper-aware of their team’s flaws at the moment, so much so that they’re bordering on pessimism. Well, that may be putting it too strongly, but the bravado you’ve heard for years from these guys has been infused with an unusually clear-eyed assessment of their team’s strengths and weaknesses.
Same goes for every team, really. For a rare year in which every playoff team is above 90 wins, there just seems to be a lot more pessimism — or is it just realism? — than we’re used to seeing as the playoffs get going.
Except, like I said, for the Phillies crowd. They seem to spending most of their time wondering why everyone isn’t congratulating them for their awesomeness yet.
We’ll be previewing the playoffs later today and into tomorrow. We’ll likely end up agreeing that the Phillies are awesome, but really, this year has more uncertainty to it than any year in recent memory. And that’s a wonderful thing, no?
