Even Losers Can Win

Just a word of advice – if you’re an old, horrible racist, you probably shouldn’t get your 30 year old mixed-race girlfriend to record all of your conversations and then let your wife sue her. Actually, try just not being a horrible racist.
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This will be a very abbreviated version of the Filaments today, but first I have to get some things off of my chest – call it a mea culpa.  I started this blog with the intent of providing some chuckles and occasional commentary on my favorite teams, with the goal of providing a more optimistic outlook than you usually find online. To that end, I think I’ve done alright. However, I have realized that negativity has pervaded my mission here in a different way. I have turned on many of my fellow fans in a way that is, for me, quite embarrassing. I’ve found myself attacking those who put much more time and effort than I do into covering and commenting on their favorite teams, the very people who’s dedication to their craft requires them to write with a much more world-weary point of view.

I’ve never claimed that my attempt at optimism makes me better or somehow more “enlightened” than anyone else. In fact, for most of my 30+ years as a fan of some pretty miserable teams, I was as angry as anyone about it. I know well the feeling of having an entire day, week or month(s) practically ruined because a group of grown men playing a child’s game lacked success. I’ve screamed at the TV, I’ve thrown newspapers across the room, and I’ve cursed those I claimed to root for. Somewhere along the way it became too much and I chose a different path. During games I still root as hard and as obnoxiously as anyone else, but, outside of that window, I decided that I don’t care if my teams are winners or losers – they are my teams, regardless. Unconditional love, if you will. I am a Cubs fan and I will be until the day I die, even if I never see that World Series. I will call myself a Who Dat if one Superbowl is all I ever see. And, though I came upon the Wizards later in life, I will count them as my team no matter what. That is my choice, but it isn’t a choice I can expect anyone else to make. Some people need to feed off of that passion, or perhaps they simply need to vent the negativity so it doesn’t consume them. It isn’t my place to judge or condemn. Yet that is exactly what I’ve found myself doing.

I am particularly embarrassed by cheap shots I’ve lobbed towards Kyle Weidie and the Truth About It blog, because it is their writing that inspired me to pick up the keyboard in the first place. Their site is such a resource of knowledge and information about the Wizards and, in my opinion, one of the finest blogs you will find on ESPN.com, but because of the in depth perspective they offer they must, by necessity, confront the negative, as well as the positive. Now, this is not to say that I agree, or will agree with, everything written there, but it is certainly not my place to expect them to write for my perspective. Yet, I’ve found myself doing just that. Well, no more. If I can be positive about my teams, I can be positive about those who inform me about my teams.

So, I hope this begins a new day for Even Losers Can Win. I will still comment and I may still disagree, but I will do so constructively and respectfully. If I feel others need to be lead from the overtly negative, I will lead by example (for as much as I can lead at all). And along the way, I hope I can still provide some chuckles.

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