It's Time to Start Fooling Ourselves

You know what I hate? Opening paragraphs.

The Pirates have really stunk in the last month. I'm not going to sit here and type out all of their recent records to prove that fact to you. What I am going to do is play the role of psychiatrist here and I am going to tell you how you should handle this mentally.

Happiness is one of the most valuable things to attain in this life. If you ever have the chance to get happiness, you have no excuse not to take that chance. The fact is that American's put far too much of their happiness stake in sports; we let a meaningless thing impact an extremely meaningful thing. It doesn't make sense, but that's how it is. If you struggle with such thing, there's probably nothing I can say to help you with such a problem, so let's just skip over it.

The Pirates have to finish the year at least 10-13 to have their first winning season since 1992. Let's assume they do so.

Let's go back to April when all our expectations were tempered a .500 season looked like a huge win. Find those feelings and try to remember them. Let's forget the huge slide the Pirates would have gone in August and September to finish with a record just above .500. Throw perspective out the window and think of this in the large scale. The Pirates would have won 82 of their last 162 games. That's more wins than losses. And you, as a Pirate fan, think that it's okay for you to not be okay with a winning season? No matter where we are, where we came from, or where we started, you're a Pirate fan - so a record that has a bigger number in that W column than the L column is a success.

1992 was a long, long time ago. I was turning two when the Pirates were knocked out of the playoffs that year, so this year is going to be the best season I've seen by my favorite baseball team regardless of what happens in these next few weeks. Join me in being okay with that.

The human mind is persuadable, so let's start persuading ourselves that this has been a positive season for the Pirates. If you think differently and expect a team to play good baseball for six whole months, you just may be rooting for the wrong team.

Sports aren't important. They are for entertainment only, so don't let them have any kind of serious affect the rest of your life - unless the Pirates start surging and make the playoffs, then feel free to go absolutely nuts with no regard for anything else.