Everybody Loves a Winner

When I was a kid my dad, my brother and I watched a lot of sporting events together, mostly baseball, but also football, tennis and the olympics. After every big game as the TV cameras predictably panned to illuminate the radiant faces of the victors and the jubilant hysterical crowd cheering them on, my dad always said the same thing: "Everybody loves a winner." At first I equated this phrase as kin to a coping mechanism as we were fans of some awful home teams in San Diego in the eighties. But when we moved to San Francisco and became Giants and 49ers fans, teams that actually won big games, I was shocked and somewhat disheartened to hear my dad say the same thing after they won a big game. It immediately took the wind out of my sails, the emotion produced by the win trivialized as pedestrian and unremarkable.

I was unable to watch last night's baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Los Angeles Dodgers in which the Dodgers suffered a crushing, convincing defeat at the hands of the Phillies at Citizen's Bank Park in Philadelphia. I Tivo-ed the damn thing, but before I could watch it my ignorance was spoiled by a careless mistake on-line in which I saw a picture of the entire Phillies team hugging and celebrating on the mound. In one moment I experienced the physical reaction of a ten year old whose team has just lost a little league game; my heart sank and the world seemed like a cruel hopeless place.

But interestingly enough what I didn't think was "Everybody loves a winner." Instead I reflected on the one hundred and thirty some odd games I watched this year and how many great moments there were to be witnessed: comeback wins of every glorious type, nail-biting ninth inning saves, mind boggling defensive plays, and of course the melodious voice of the Dodgers color man, Vin Scully, calling every play and scrutinizing every player . This year was a fantastic year for baseball in Los Angeles and I am proud of our team. Not everyone loves a winner, I discovered, because I love the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I'm not sure how this is next bit is relevant, but it popped in my head the moment I watched the ending of the game in real time. There's a scene in the movie Life Aquatic near the conclusion of the film in which Bill Murray sits alone on the curbside outside of a giant auditorium. Inside his contemporaries are viewing his latest deep sea documentary. When the film is finished the audience erupts into uproarious applause. The applause is so deafening that we hear it very clearly as the camera slowly pans in on Bill Murray's sad, sardonic face. And then it hits us, that instead of being inside to accept this glorious appraisal of his work, he is more alone than ever, ostracized from his accomplishments by their thunderous approval. And I wept for him and for myself, knowing how difficult even the most joyous of times can be and our eternal inability to properly honor them.