Waning Baseball Season Creates a Behavioral Werewolf

I feel it coming.

The sweaty palms. The tightened jaws. The irritability. The need to finger paint at 3 in the morning.

September approaches, and the Pirates are in another pennant race.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: under normal conditions, I’m just about the sweetest guy you’d ever want to know. But in the midst of a pennant race in September, I become a behavioral werewolf.

Some would say there are more important things going on in the world, but you know what: I don’t care. If the Soviet Union collapses, fine. If the KGB wants to set up shop in the White House, be my guest.

What I do care about are the Pittsburgh Pirates, currently in first place in the National League’s Eastern Division and, at the moment of this writing, 4 1/2 games in front of the St. Louis Cardinals. (A woman I’ll refer to only as God’s Perfect Creature used to ask me how a team could be a half-game ahead of another. It was my inability to adequately explain that to her, the experts said, that eventually forced us to go our separate ways.)

My obsession might be more understandable if I had any connection at all to Pittsburgh. It’s not my hometown, I don’t know anyone who lives there and, until 1983, had never even been to the city.

But I’ve been a Pirates fan since 1958, adopting them as a tyke would a ragged pup found in an alleyway. At the time, the Pirates were forlorn, one of the worst teams in the National League.

Under my nurturing they began to improve. They’ve won three World Series, including the seventh game of the 1960 World Series on my birthday. They’ve also been very bad--they lost the 1972 National League pennant on a wild pitch, as close to a near-death experience as I ever want to have.

Growing up in the Midwest, I spent countless hours late at night in our driveway trying to to pick up the broadcasts on the car radio from KDKA, the Pittsburgh station. With precision tuning and an ear trained to listen through the static, I could usually catch the later stages of a game played in the East or Midwest. The West Coast road trips were great because the later starts made it easy to tune in.

Now in the full throes of adulthood, my passion for the Pirates hasn’t diminished. A therapist probably would say that I’m holding onto a childhood friend and seeking a sense of belonging in a world of alienation.

Maybe so. All I know is that when the Pirates lose, I want to hit somebody.

That’s how it’s shaping up again this year. I never really know when the first telltale sign will appear, but this year it was Monday night. The Pirates blew a game in the ninth and pretty soon that old familiar rumbling started somewhere down in the gastric area and was soon gurgling to overflowing.

At 10 p.m., I had to phone a trusted friend, long-distance at that, just to let off the steam and complain about the Pirates’ inept bullpen. He said he had been talking to his 7-year-old son when I called but that he’d be happy to hear me out. I went on and on for about five minutes without shutting up and then asked him what he thought. He said he’d been fixing a sandwich while I was talking and wasn’t really paying that much attention.

Good friend that he is, he’s been down this road before. He knows it’s a little too early to start listening to me.

I know that, too. September isn’t even here yet. But turn that calendar page over and, just like that, everything feels different. Weird things start happening; rallies you can’t believe, losses you can’t accept.

For me, there’s an added twist to the drama this year. My sister, who’s 45 and up to now wouldn’t know a fielder’s choice from a fluegelhorn, moved to St. Louis a couple years ago. With the Cardinals doing much better this year than anyone thought, she called to say that the entire city is energized, including, wonder of wonders, herself.

She wanted to talk about the Cardinals’ sweep last weekend of the Dodgers and how they’re closing in on the Pirates. We’ve talked about many things over the years but never the pennant race.

We got in some good sibling bonding, though, and she probably thinks I’ll be a good sport if the Cards overtake the Pirates.

Yeah, right.

I was appropriately gracious on the phone, commending those plucky Cardinals for a job well done but all the while malevolently licking my chops in anticipation of the day that unsuspecting Big Sister gets her first taste of the bitter poison of mathematical elimination.