The San Francisco Giants were the feel-good champions of the World Series this season, winning it “the right way,” according to all the experts.
And the people of San Francisco were right to celebrate their rag-tag bunch’s win in the World Series with dominant pitching, timely hitting and a dash of luck along the way.
What often doesn’t get publicized is how those on the other side of a championship series feel. Everyone just shares a laugh about how all the pre-made championship T-shirts created for the losing team will be sent to a less fortunate nation, and that’s that.
I was part of that latter group this season. I witnessed what had been a fantastic playoff run by the Detroit Tigers go down in flame, as the team’s offense became as cold as the brisk winter air moving into the Motor City.
As a fan, I was incredibly proud of what the team had accomplished by advancing to a point at which 28 other teams wish they could have been. But to come that close, just four wins away from the team’s first World Series since 1984, is almost more painful than never getting there at all.
Even before Miguel Cabrera watched strike three sail over the heart of the plate, I had an idea of how it would end. But seeing the Giants’ dugout empty out onto a field, which had almost become my second home for the summer, was simply a reminder of how painful it is to get this far and suddenly have almost nothing to show for it.
It’s nice to think that there’s always next year, but there are very few teams in any sport who can play at a championship level year after year.
As painful it was for me as a fan, I couldn’t imagine how hard the finality of the season was for those who put their bodies on the line to put a team in a position to win a championship.
This past Friday, Ohio’s field hockey team entered the season as the favorite to make a repeated run for the conference title and was defeated by Miami 3–2 in overtime during the semifinals of the Mid-American Conference. It was a fitting ending for a season full of close misses for the Bobcats.
For four seniors, it was their last game of collegiate field hockey, and maybe the last organized field hockey they’ll ever play, seeing as opportunities to play professionally are few and far between. There’s not much more finality in sports than that.
Coach Neil Macmillan is forced to go back to the drawing board after a long season of getting his team into the best mental and physical shape possible with nothing much to show for it. But with that struggle, Macmillan said there are some who suffer from the final whistle of a season a great deal more than he does.
“For me, I can come back another year and try some more,” Macmillan said. “For the seniors, this is where their career ends. There is only a select group of seniors who get to finish with a win in their last game. …The finality of it is sad.”
And for senior Marissa Higgins, the idea that it was all over took a little while to sink in.
“At first, it didn’t hit me that it was my last game,” Higgins said. “I was just really disappointed for our team to not reach our potential this year. But as soon as I saw my dad and all the parents, that’s when it kind of affected me that this was the last game that all of us were going to be together for. I got upset.”
The broader moral of the story is to enjoy every last moment of joy and success you find in your life. You never know when it may slip away, because unlike sports, there’s no final whistle to tell you when it’s over.
Christian Hoppens is a sophomore studying journalism and a sports reporter for The Post. Send him your bittersweet sports memories at ch203310@ohiou.
