Season’s Grievings: The Agony of Playoffs

Ihave two terrific friends, one a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan and the other a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan. Neither is feeling particularly well this week. Yes, life goes on, but ....

No one actually forced them to become baseball fans, so you could argue that each is responsible for their own discomfort. But that’s not fair, either. When you grow up in such culturally rich and tightly knit cities as Boston and Chicago, you either support the Sox and Cubs or you live apart from local society.

But because misery loves company, Chicagoans and Beantowners cling to a covenant that -- if the last century is any guide -- consigns them to a lifetime of varying degrees of baseball agony. And, as true baseball fans know, that is an agony meticulously crafted.

As Cubbie and Bosox fans commiserate, Orange County fans at long last can sympathize with the true nature of their pain. That’s because those who rooted for the Angels last year and were rewarded with a World Series victory parade finally could measure the gap between baseball heartbreak and baseball exultation.

Quite a large gap, isn’t it?

When grown men and women cry (in victory) and weep (in defeat), you know the range of emotions behind this indefinably beautiful game are real, indeed. People who were lucky enough to be at Game 7 last year at Edison Field will tell you it’s a memory they’ll take to their graves. And if the Angels never make it to the Series again, every person over the age of 10 in Orange County today will at least have celebrated a World Series championship in their lifetime.

Until a year ago, Angel fans felt cursed for having to wait 40 years for a World Series championship.

To Chicago and Boston fans, 40 years must sound like a nanosecond.

The Cubs last won the Series a few years after the war ended -- the Boer War. The Red Sox claimed theirs as another war wound down -- World War I. The Cubs haven’t even played in the World Series since the year World War II ended.

If there are residents of the two cities who remember the Series celebrations, it’s not a big mailing list.

Force a city to wait that long to let the joy out, and it does something to its psyche. I e-mailed condolences to my Chicago friend after the Cubs let their best chance in years slip away in two wrenching losses on their home field. “I would love to respond to your thoughtful e-mail,” she replied, “but am unable to think clearly as I writhe in pain. This plague seems almost biblical in its enormity.” She said she was exaggerating. I didn’t think so.

She’s a step ahead of my Boston buddy. As I’m typing this, the Red Sox are an hour away from playing Game 7 against the Yankees to see who goes to the Series. I don’t need to know the outcome. The Sox will either lose tonight’s game or, if the fates feel like messing with them, win tonight and lose the World Series to the Marlins.

I spoke to my Boston friend a few hours before the Yankee game. He wouldn’t allow himself to consider the possibility the Sox might win it all. Why entertain thoughts of euphoria, he said, at the expense of losing valuable time needed to gird for disappointment?

I suggested he go for broke and assume the Sox would win their first World Series since 1918. I might just as well have recommended he pour his life savings into his Uncle Sid’s mink farm.

That’s what a century of broken dreams does to a person.

So, Angel fans, revel in your World Series memories. Hang on to them.

And knowing what they’re missing ... the next time you meet someone from Boston or Chicago, how about giving them a hug?

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.