Problem World

As someone who can enjoy and casually write about sports but feels out of place actually considering himself a “sportswriter,” I am deeply honored/humbled/etc. for The Classical giving me the opportunity to elaborate on what it is like to be the fan of an underachieving-to-terrible baseball team, the twenty-years-disappointing Minnesota Twins, that is not particularly recognized as such outside (and sometimes inside) the confines of its fanbase. I went on a bit — it’s a two-parter, here and here — and though I took pains to recognize that there are easily at least a dozen teams in the majors that have it worse, I think it needed to be stated that it is possible for a certain specific “we’re doomed” mindset to befall a team’s fans after a mere two decades of disappointment. Or at least I needed to get some stuff off my chest in an overwrought manner, anyways. I know some folks in Cleveland or Baltimore or Pittsburgh* would be happy to trade places, both team-wise and hometown-wise. But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse than your team’s futility being talked about is your team’s futility not being talked about.

*I will go on the record now as predicting that one of these teams will win the World Series before the Twins does. I think this says more about my pessimism than my baseball acumen, but we’ll see.