When my wife Judy Birdsong received her death-sentence diagnosis of Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma, I swore to myself that I’d never again let the outcome of a sporting event darken an otherwise sunny day. After all, just a few months before, I had allowed the season-ending injury to Gamecock running back Marcus Lattimore ruin an otherwise glorious afternoon in the mountain town of Saluda, North Carolina. Judy was healthy, bees were flitting among the flowers outside the loft we had rented, and the trees were, as Yeats put it, “in their autumn beauty,” a canopy of orange and gold beneath a deep blue cloudless sky. But there I was sullenly obsessing about a mere athletic event, a tribal association I have with a perpetually underperforming football team, peace and joy squandered, preempted by my agonizing over a goddamned sporting event.[1]
So I more or less gave up following sports, which given the cursed programs I pull for, including not only the hapless Gamecocks, but also the Atlanta sports franchises, was an act of wisdom. For me, “the thrill of victory” doesn’t compensate for the agony of defeat.”
I followed the Atlanta Braves so religiously in the 90s that I would score the games at home as I watched them on TBS, my boys sitting watching with me as Judy puttered around peeking in every now and then. Eventually, it occurred to me that watching them wasn’t bringing me happiness but instigating anxiety. So I quit cold turkey.
Alas and alack! I’ve fallen off the wagon, have started following the Braves again! And the Gamecocks!
Friday night, instead of going to the Moonlight Drive-In with my wife Caroline and stepdaughter Brooks, I opted to stay at Folly to have my hopes dashed as the Braves squandered a two-run lead with poor base-running and relief pitching in a game had they won would have landed them in the World Series. They had triumphed the night before, which felt pretty good, but didn’t have me awakening in the middle of the night with a warm glow of serenity.
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, however, my inner superintendent switched on the lights of my consciousness, and the first thing I thought of was the Braves’ defeat. There next to me lay Caroline, fast asleep, looking angelic with her glorious hair cascading from her pillow, and there I was dyspeptic, again allowing what should be a happy moment shadowed by the missteps of multimillionaires playing a game.
I say Fie on it! Fie I say!
[1] By the way, the Gamecocks play Auburn Saturday, a team they haven’t beaten since 1933.
You Do Hoodoo 
There is no pain greater for a Braves fan than watching Kirby Pucket’s home run over that stupid plexiglass wall in the Metrodome. Then, in game 7, both teams went scoreless until the bottom of the tenth, when the Twins managed a single run that won them the championship.
Steve Avery actually pitched two 1-0 shutouts against the Pirates in the playoffs that year, allowing the Braves to go on to the series. In his last 12 starts from August 30th through the entire postseason, he went 7-0 with a 1.94 ERA. I’d say he was the MVP that year — Sid Bream being the least. His strikeout with the bases loaded in game 7 was difficult to process.
In that Game 7, remember when Lonnie Smith was stealing second and Pendleton hit a double that would have scored Lonnie if he hadn’t been deked by the shortstop. He ended up at third. The Braves loaded there bases with no outs but couldn’t score. Alas!
He thought he was in a double play, so he didn’t round second fast enough to get home. Very theatric…