Phlayed by the Phillie Phanatic: “Censored Content,” “U Mad Musgrove?”

[Disclaimer: None of this really happened. Well, some of it did.]

My forebear H.L. was no great fan of religion. He famously said that “faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable,” and that “A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.” But even if that’s true, it’s also true that man has a religious bone: he just can’t help but believe in something, no matter how crazy. For Padres fans, that something is winning. And last Sunday, I stopped into the San Diego Mission to hear their pastor, The Swinging Friar, deliver his year-in-review homily. I wasn’t disappointed. How could I be? I rated a mention!

— Walter Mencken, chief correspondent, SD on the QT: Almost Factual News

THE SWINGING FRIAR’S HOMILY

Dear brothers and sisters, thank you for coming today to join me in reflecting on our walk with the Lord through 2022. What a year. What. A. Year. Do you remember August? Of course you remember August. We gained Soto and Bell, but the Dodgers swept us even in the midst of our joy, even as King Seidler named them for what they were: ‘the dragon up the freeway that we’re trying to slay.’ The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Phlayed by the Phillie Phanatic: “Ta-ta, Tatis,” “Adios, Machados!”

Of course, we all know who said that: Job, a man whose long-suffering is his chief claim to fame. Well, no, that’s not exactly right. What really makes Job famous is that he suffered mightily and still kept the faith. It’s not always an easy thing to do, even for a true believer. Just two years ago, as Revelations foretold, the great dragon up the freeway spewed water from his mouth like a river, and swept us away in the playoffs. In my sorrow on that dark day, I was heard to cry out, like Our Lord from the cross.

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I am not proud of that moment. Maybe it might have helped to recall that in the end, all Job had lost was restored to him, all he had lost and more. It’s tempting to pray: “May it be so for us, dear Padres faithful. May it be so for us. All this and more. Not just Tatis, but [ex-Yankee Matt] Carpenter as well. Not just the National League West, but the pennant, and even the Series.” Who’s with me? [Pause for cheers.]

And yet. I was watching the World Cup final the other day — as you know, soccer is what a baseball fan watches when his chosen sport gets a little too exciting and he needs to slow things down a bit. [Pause for laughter.] And a few hours after Argentina beat France, I got a text from a friend of mine, a fellow of Argentinian descent. Just five words: “What do I do now?” He was just a kid when they won in ’86, and he had been waiting ever since for another championship. Twice, his team had come heartbreakingly close: they suffered losses in the final in both 1990 and 2014. Now the wait was finally over; all those four-year treks in the wasteland had brought him to this. His dream had come true. And there he was, not four hours after the game had ended. texting me: “What do I do now?”

It put me in mind of a wonderful line from the poet Robert Service: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” As we look back on the raised hopes and dashed dreams of our postseason, it may help to recall a bit of history. In 2015, The New York Times compiled a list of The Most Cursed Sports Cities in America, a list which included this telling declaration regarding San Diego: “The Chargers, the Padres and a handful of mostly forgotten basketball and hockey teams have combined for 112 championshipless seasons over the past half-century. Only Cleveland has played more seasons in that span without winning.” But of course, the very next year, Cleveland broke its so-called curse and left San Diego in happy possession of the title “losingest city in America,” because basketball star LeBron James failed to understand what longtime Cleveland Browns quarterback (and perpetual runner-up to Denver’s John Elway) Bernie Kosar knew in his bones: winning isn’t everything. In fact, it’s nothing at all.

Mighty 1090 sports radio commentator Ron Sadsack said it best the morning after Cleveland prevailed: “Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympic Games, taught us that ‘the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.’ Deep down, every athlete, indeed, every competitor in every field, knows this. Remember the immortal line spoken by evil mastermind Hans Gruber in Die Hard, ‘And when Alexander [the Great] saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.’ The same emptiness awaits at the top of every mountain; all that matters is the climb.

I will never forget the tears that LeBron shed after winning, tears that many people associated with joy and relief. But I don’t think so. I think King James was looking into the future and seeing nothing except the terrifying prospect of repetition, with ever-diminishing returns. Michael Jordan won six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls, and is widely considered to be the greatest basketball player of all time. Did any of that bring him happiness? Of course not. ESPN’s profile of Jordan at 50 revealed him to be frustrated bordering on bitter, a fierce competitor wracked by his inability to compete. His bizarre, sour speech at his induction into the NBA Hall of Fame transformed him from giant to joke: today’s young people use Crying Jordan to signify athletic failure, not success.

San Diego is a truly special city, a chosen city: we San Diegans know — as no others do, as no others can — that all earthly victories are hollow. How do we know this? Because we’ve never experienced that blinding flash of winners’ ecstasy, a pleasure so pure that it blinds fans to the awful truth, even though it lasts but a moment.

What are the Red Sox without the Curse of the Bambino? All those years of exquisite striving and frustration, doomed because of that legendarily stupid trade that sent Babe Ruth to the Yankees. World Series wins come and go — can anyone here tell me who won in 2008? But everyone here knows about the ‘86 series, when the Red Sox were just one out from victory and Bill Buckner let a weak dribbler roll between his legs to keep the Mets alive. The Curse! But now? Now the Sox are just a knockoff version of the Yankees, with even worse manners.

And has anyone outside of Chicago even thought of the Cubs since they finally won in 2016, famously ending the longest championship drought in North American pro sports history? And it’s not like Cleveland is content to have had its fling with the King and then bid him farewell. There is no romance in winning, no story — even, dare I say it, no meaning. And deep down, we know this.

How do I know we know this? Because our city has had a great sports franchise: the San Diego Gulls of the late ‘90s and early aughts. Five — count ‘em, five, back to back championships — and how did we reward them? By staying away in droves, so much so that they shut down due to lack of business. We wanted no part of that pyrrhic victory, because we were the faithful. And faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

But of course, we are only human. Even God’s chosen can forget. The Israelites, God’s original chosen people, forgot him over and over. When they suffered, they cried out against him. When they prospered, they imagined it was because of their own greatness, forgetting what we read in Ecclesiastes: “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, but time and chance happen to them all.” Or again in Deuteronomy: “You might say in your heart, ‘The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me.’ But remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to gain wealth.” Or in the Psalms: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who built it labor in vain.”

It’s a lesson we’ve had to learn time and time again. Remember August, when people said we were trying to buy a World Series run, as if it were some bold new strategy? Seven years ago, we spent untold millions to put together what looked like it would be an all-star outfield: Matt Kemp, Wil Myers, and Justin Upton. Everyone thought we were finally wising up and spending what it took to succeed. And what came of all our spending? We said goodbye to Myers last week after a traveling long and rocky road together. Upton lasted just one season. And Kemp — oh, Kemp.

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Looking back, the fate of the what was then the biggest deal in team history should have been clear from the outset, when the x-rays came back and showed arthritis in both of Kemp’s hips. We dealt for Kemp because of the speed and power of his bat, and as every hitter since Ted Williams has known, batspeed and power come from the hips. But we ignored the signs and pressed on, spending all the way. Buying Kemp was an attempt to build our own golden calf, with that deal, we became men striving with God, who alone giveth the victory. And when man wrestles with God, where does he get injured, according to Genesis account of Jacob and the angel? That’s right, the hip. We were warned. But did we learn? We did not.

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We went right out and spent again, this time on Fernando Tatis, Jr. We made ourself another golden calf. And we wound up with another wounded joint. Of course, that injury wasn’t Tatis’ fault. It was ours. He didn’t anoint himself our savior. We did that to him. But he suffered for it, and we suffered because of his suffering.

When he came to us, Tatis was wise beyond his years, a man after God’s own heart, who wanted nothing more than to do the work given to him and so earn his daily bread. Recall his interview with Walter Mencken of the Reader’s Almost Factual News:

“Recently, Padres superstar Fernando Tatis, Jr. signed a 14-year, $340 million contract with the San Diego Padres. It was the longest contract ever signed, as well as the third-richest, and the most certain to keep him from ever winning the World Series. ‘I mean, I’m 22 now,’ said Tatis, Jr. after the signing, ‘so that means I’ll be 36 when I’ve finished serving my time here. If I stay healthy, then technically, I guess it’s possible that some World Series contender will pick me up for use in certain situations, or as a backup for regulars when go on the DL. So who knows? I might still win the Big One some day. But it’s unlikely — though still not as unlikely as winning it here in San Diego. I admit it’s a little dispiriting to think of — I didn’t start playing baseball just to get rich, you know? I always wanted to win. But as I often do in difficult times, I turned to my bible, and found a comforting passage in Paul. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.” It’s like it says in that song “Puff the Magic Dragon” – “Painted wings and Series rings make way for other toys.” Toys like the custom Padres Lambo I’m having built to celebrate the signing of this contract.’”

But alas. Soon he was breaking the unwritten rules, hitting a grand slam when the Pads were already up seven, flipping double birds in the dugout, taking ill-advised bike rides... Of course the Lord smote him. Then the suspension — as I said, who can forget last August? And now trade rumors and a flight to New York. It’s enough to break your heart. Pride goeth before the fall — a lesson we failed to learn ourselves. A lesson the Phillie Phanatic was only to happy to teach us after Ground Floor murals raised up that mural of the San Diego Chicken giving him a swift kick to the head. Our Lord warns about graven images at the very beginning of the Ten Commandments. And yet.

Dear brothers and sisters, it is winter now, a season of darkness. But darkness must always give way to light, and soon it will be spring again, and we will once again feel the rush of hope as we survey our beloved Padres’ prospects. Once again, we will wonder if this will be the year when it all comes together, when defeating the dragon to the north is but a skirmish on our way to whatever Big Boss the American League throws at us in October. But even as we hold our hopes aloft, let us not forget the Biggest Boss of all, the God who promises eternal victory to those who keep faith. And when the fall comes, and with it, the fall of those hopes, let us not forget those lovely words from the poet Service: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”