the .500 season

Ed Eagle's new mailbag leads with a great question about the importance of a .500 season.

We don't have to be so fatalistic or melodramatic. A .500 team is a reasonable expectation, payroll be damned, and one all fans should have for next year. It's one I had for last year. I honestly don't think that all of the Bucs' recent losing can be pinned on the payroll. There was certainly a great deal of misfortune and a lot of incompetence or plain ol' short-sightedness with the selection and retention of particular veteran players.

But so what about the .500 season? The final record doesn't really matter at all, as far as I'm concerned. Baseball is an everyday sport. It's de rigeur for coaches, GMs, athletes, etc., to say that winning the World Series is the only acceptable goal. Fine, let them say that. But me, as a fan, I think that's bullshit. The only acceptable goal is winning today. The Pirates could be a .550 ballclub and if they got swept by the Cardinals, I'd be just as pissed or disappointed as I am when they lose a third game in a row as a .450 ballclub. There's no fun in losing and, regardless of the team's overall record, every win is pretty much equally good.

Too many baseball fans today hang back and blow off the middle of the season. They pay attention in March and April and then hang back until the autumn, when they cast an eye at the standings and decide if it's time to buy a new jersey or make plans to have a party and watch a game with friends. The crime there is that they miss a lot of good baseball. For every house party thrown to watch a playoff game, there should be one or two thrown to watch a regular-season game. The average fan misses so many opportunities to really enjoy the season. The best games are not the playoff games but the unexpectedly good ones on random Sunday afternoons or Tuesday nights. If that sounds like sour grapes, so what of that?

Let the GM and the players and the coaches talk about winning a World Series. I'll hope for that when they get into the playoffs because, duh, then they will be playing a game today and I'll want them to win today. My gripe about 2004 is not so much that the Pirates finished with a lousy record or failed to make the playoffs. My gripe is that they subjected me to too many long periods when I felt I was better off listening to Ray Charles than listening to another game with the possibly vain hope that they would snap an outrageous losing streak. The final record is not much of a disappointment by itself. I rarely sit around and think about it. In fact, now that I'm doing just that, I don't like it, which should be no surprise. I don't know how many games they won or lost in 2004. And I don't care. When the games begin again, I'll tune in. If they play on Tuesday, winning on Tuesday is what I hope for. Ditto for Wednesday. Any other way of evaluating a season fails to seize all the opportunities a fan has to enjoy the season. I can't relate to the mindset that says "I can't enjoy baseball today if my team isn't projected to be in the playoffs." If you find the prospect of another losing season so depressing, give up baseball for Ray Charles. Or pour your heart into the Steelers. No hobby should be such a burden.