Taking the Angst Train
Coaches have said it for as long as we’ve followed sports. They remember, and agonize over, the tough losses far more than they celebrate the wins. It would seem extremely accurate that for the most part fans have always followed their lead.
The past few days in the local sports scene and in my little world have provided an incredible microcosm of just that. On Thursday night, every Chiefs fan’s worst nightmare seemed to be occurring, a catastrophic injury to their generational quarterback Pat Mahomes. Mahomes has proved to be more than just a great player, he has become the heartbeat of the city, and hearts skipped a beat as he was helped off the field after we saw his kneecap being snapped into place. It appears now that the worst has been avoided, and that Mahomes will miss only a handful of games.
But for those moments, the narrative seemed to be so much in keeping with the arc of a franchise that has not won a title in half a century. Chiefs fans remember more vividly Lin Elliot’s nightmarish playoff game more than the Monday Night miracle in Denver, the no-punt game more than mauling the Patriots on a Monday night, and does anything fit more into the tales of woe than Derrick Thomas’s seven sack game, ending with a last second loss when Dave Krieg escaped Thomas’s grasp.
But, indeed, it is suffering through the misery that makes the mountaintop even sweeter. If the Royals had won their World series in 2015 after a lengthy run of sustained excellence, say like the Cardinals, I dare say there would not have been nearly 800,000 fans at a parade. Many of those fans had suffered through relentless drumbeats of embarrassing baseball. Perhaps nothing illuminates that more than the fact that the man who guided them to that title, Ned Yost, lost a hundred more games than he won as their manager.
Saturday brought another Missouri moment that their fans have so long come to almost embrace as part of their fandom. Riding high in first place in the SEC East, and into the polls after winning five straight games, the Tigers suffered an almost impossible to achieve loss at Vanderbilt, a team with one win that had just gotten run off their home field by UNLV the previous week. Vanderbilt has no history, no fans, and in this game had turned to their third string quarterback, not due to injury, but because of miserable performance by a player they actually had to turn to again when their new starter was knocked out of the game.
When these moments occur, Tiger fans have to these days suffer from phrases on Twitter, many from their own cohorts like, “that’s so Missouri”, “Missouri being Missouri”, or some derivation. It’s all in keeping with the dark cloud of five downs against Colorado, the Buttkicker, Tyus Edny, and no Final Four appearances. These are far more entrenched than back to back SEC East titles upon entering the league, or treasured upsets of highly-ranked Kansas hoops teams. Hell, the miserable moments seem like a badge of honor for Tiger fans.
Kansas and Kansas State’s Saturday reflect different versions of their own stories. Kansas almost pulled off an upset of Texas, a game that likely about 90 percent of their fan base didn’t see because it was played out in the obscurity of the Longhorn Network. But, in the end, it was a loss, but likely is considered the equivalent of a victory by the standards of their almost always downtrodden football program. The Jayhawks football miseries are more shrug of the shoulder stuff, with the knowledge that basketball will soon salve their wounds. But even when you are a blueblood hoops program, the highest of heights is seldom achieved. On a first world level, hundreds of easy Allen Field House wins, three national titles and many Final Four appearances are adored, but first-round NCAA exits, Elite Eight heartbreaks, and court-storming upsets leave a mark.
Kansas State won a gutty game against TCU, making a couple of gigantic plays to seal a victory over the Horned Frogs. It was a game that down-to-down seemed like TCU’s all day long, but in the end went to the Wildcats. It was just the kind of win that has come to define the incredible pride that their fans have in their football program. Seldom bigger, stronger, faster, or more highly touted, their Little Engine That Could narrative is deliciously embraced.
I was at a winery with my wife on Saturday afternoon. I had watched the first half of the game and DVR’d the rest. I was pretty certain that I would later watch TCU take over the game. A large, and happy gathering of people were sipping wine and cider on a lovely fall day, carving pumpkins, tossing bean bags, munching donuts, or just chatting and laughing. Except for a very serious couple clad in purple from head to toe, huddled around a tablet, and watching the ‘Cats. The game was tight, and so were they. Their day was really going to rise or fall not on the sunshine, or the beverages, but the result.
They were fans of the age to know of the bad times, the fact that football in many ways rescued the school, and that respect as they became relevant was extremely hard to come by. K-State fans have a wonderful chip on their shoulder, a great underdog mentality. They have had to play second fiddle, or more, to the basketball titans down the road, but they have been able to play the football card for quite a while now.
Many of you know I am an Astros fan. Saturday night they punched their ticket to the World Series for the second time in three years. You can search out another blog on this site called “Why We Love Sports”. It’s more of an ode to the bright side of fandom. But it’s the darker side that really steels you as a fan. The Astros have sucked, a lot, during my years as a fan, and when they were good, they had post season heartaches that Chiefs, Tigers, Royals and other fans could easily identify with, until they finally won their first World Series two years ago
The trials by fan fire make the good times even more sweet. Living, and, far more often dying, with your team was personified in about ten minutes in the game Saturday night. A tidy 4-2 win over the Yankees seemed the ticket, before Roberto Osuna served a up game-tying homer in the ninth to provide a kick to the groin. But it merely set up the drama of tiny Jose Altuve crushing a walk off homer in the bottom of the frame off of gigantic Aroldis Chapman.
It was one of the moments that provide the reward for all of the angst, all of the handwringing, all of the misery that is really far more a part of a true fan’s existence. Sometimes, it’s a long time coming. In some cases maybe it never will, but the blood, sweat and tears equity we put in is what it’s all about.
Although on some Thursdays, and Saturdays, and Sundays it might not at all seem so.