Baseball Heaven (not in Iowa)
Just saw the highlight of Brewers fans chanting "Let's go, C.C.!" as the big man took the mound in his first start as a Brewer.
Those fans are in the heaven zone.
That's when it's the first time in a long time (or ever) where you're inspired by your team and you LOVE those players and you feel it when they lose and it's innocent, not encumbered by perpetual suspicion (Sox) or crusted with the arrogance of perpetual winning (Yanks).
Most teams' fans have this anytime their team makes an unexpected playoff run. Sox fans were only able to have this (in my life as a fan) in '86, '88 and after Johnny Damon's grand slam finally clinched the 2004 ALCS.
Yankees fans may never have had this.
The thing is, Sox fans have now lost this even with the continued winning. We lost this some time in the last two years. The fans are as passionate and present as ever but the result now is an unpracticed over-confidence that just comes across as belligerence. We're never happy and we take a loss or a bad decision or play as an actionable injury to our person. We can't have the heaven again until the Sox lose for an extended period of years.
... but ...
Yanks fans can have this as soon as THIS YEAR. They aren't the best team, they are VERY mediocre and the fans act like they've actually lost hope. Because of the Yanks annoying history of always winning, the stasis of unrequited playoff appearances, most of them exhaustingly average, makes them feel like Pirates fans. A team of broken players past their prime playing with passion led by a sensational and dominant everyman (Joba) would ignite Yankee fans and probably the city. It should. If it doesn't, then maybe I don't know Yankees fans as well as I thought I did.
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