- Ian Ransley
For die-hard baseball fans, life has but two seasons. There’s the one that starts with pitchers and catchers reporting in February for merry prenatal spring training, culminating in the glorious birth of opening day, followed by the bright, hopeful childhood of April, the adolescent turmoils of May, the young adulthood of June, the labored middle years of July and August, the infirmities of September, and ending, inevitably, with the final World Series out in October. The other season is the cold, gray, dreary, miserable off-season, which, not to belabor the point, is dreary and miserable.
It was the great baseball psychiatrist Elmer Kubek-Rose who traced the stages of a baseball fan’s grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Most die-hard baseball fans can navigate the first four stages without incident. But the final October out is always a fastball to the face. We know it will come. But why not put off the inevitable?