Let the Games Begin  By Bob Bryant - April 3 , 2006

Here we go again.

Another season upon us, another day to rejoice, another day of hope.

It's not looking too good for the home nine, of course. (I love blanket statements. This works whether you like the Nats, or the O's, or both.)

But it's baseball. It's our game.

Wins, losses, surprises, disappointments, callow youth, jaded veterans, the blossom of young talent, the inevitability of decay...all on display for us over the next seven months.

O's fans are so hungry for something on which they can hang their hat, that we're already proclaiming a rookie who projects not as a star, but a solid major league player, as someone special.

But that's what happens when you're beaten down by all the losing. You take little victories, you take a life-size hero and blow him out of proportion.

Still, that's not all bad.

Everybody loves a winner. Winning tends to wash away whatever sins or reservations one had concerning the winner. Too often, we go with 'what works', rather with what's right.

I'm not saying that the O's are morally superior because they are losers. Far from it. Signing Albert Belle, for example, was nothing more than a Deal With the Devil, and we all knew it.

But, as fans, there is something to be said for sticking with a club through a long losing skein. It can bind us closer together, harden us in the refiner's fire, save us from the hubris of excessive pride.

Still, we feel we've learned our lesson. We'd love for our team to be the one on top, stomping on the hapless opposition, our heads thrown back in the triumphant howl of the unrepentant 'winner.'

Even though that primitive joy is currently denied us, at least we are not marred by the insidiousness of pride. We know vulnerability. We know fallibility. Yet, we still know the joy of fandom, that special roiling of the spirit, the ecstatic, even demonic binding of like souls that mirrors nothing more closely than a tent revival. We believe, and are transformed in our belief. (Or, as W. P. Kinsella put it, 'dipped in magic waters.')

Belfry fans, for the most part, have a different 'take' on this immersion, a perspective. We've maintained our zealotry, but grown more philosophical about our team's losing. Through their losing.

It's thought and espoused by many that winning builds character. In reality, it's the losing in games, and in life, that is the better teacher. At least losing teaches us how to lose (not how to be a loser...there's a big difference), and since losing is eventually inevitable in one realm or another - like, say, death - this can be instructive, if not particularly pleasant.

I'm not advocating another losing O's season (or two or three), or assuming we don a mantle of moral superiority through the losses our team of choice suffers through the years. But there is something to be learned, something to be gained, something to be cherished, about the strength and bittersweet joy of the communal baseball experience - win or lose.

So I am looking forward to the opening of the doors today of my 'second church'...the place where I can whoop, holler, cry, and commiserate. With a lot of great friends along for the ride.

For what more can anyone ask?