Home
---
Awards
Divisions
Gripes
History
Leagues
Players
Playoffs
Right Now's Game
Roster Moves
Site News
Stats
Teams
Yesterday's Game
---
Win Expectancy Finder
---
Email
Christopher Shea
Dan Lewis
The Fan Finishes Off the Analyst
Dan Lewis · 21 October 06
This was another year of truly, truly lousy predictions for yours truly. I chose correctly in only one matchup, the Mets over the Dodgers in the NLDS, but of course none of that matters now.
Because the Tigers are in the World Series.
What? The who is in the World Series? Come again? I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you just now – it sounded like you said the Tigers are going to play in the World Series.
Why wasn’t I notified?!
How dare they? I came to Detroit to attend the last few games of the season, and they punished me for my hubris. I flew too close to the sun.
They dangled the carrot all year long, and I refused to accept that they were going to win the division until the last week of the season. When I finally acquiesced, they blew three straight games against the royally sucky Kansas City Royals. It turns out I was right all along, and they did blow it. I told myself I had to stop caring, that I needed to detach in order to save the last vestiges of my sanity.
Then they made the Yankees and the A’s, two very good ballclubs, look like garbage. They mauled them.
Man, I am done trying to predict anything. Taxes? We’ll see. Death? Just wait.
I tried to gird up my loins for a World Series pre-pick-tion, but as Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) uttered for the final line of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, “Ahh, what’s the difference?”
I’m well beyond the point of analyzing baseball this season. I can do a snippet of critical thinking here and there, as I watch these games, but for the first time in what seems to be my entire life, I can’t extricate the mad, rooting fanatic from the baseball know-it-all.
This make sense. When you’re looking at having to stand up and shout “c’mon NEIFI!” during a key moment in a goddamn World Series game, it’s important to have disentangled the fan from the analyst.
The Tigers are American League Champions, and honestly, I thought that the next time I wrote those words I’d be in a cryogenic chamber, using a mind-controlled word processor.
So they are dangling yet another carrot. This one is the ripest, the most delicious, and I’ve lost the sense not to reach for it. We’re going all the way. This is not a prediction. This is a wish.
GO TIGERS.
* * *