At one point during the 2017 season, I showed up for a game after an appallingly bad month and told Christine that I kind of hoped the Giants would just go ahead and lose every game from then on. I would rather, I said, watch the Titanic sink than watch a holed crab boat paddle around trying to stay afloat. We have a chance, I said, to witness history – this could be the worst Giants team in the modern era. (It was not, although it was the worst one since the schedule went to 162 games. The 1943 New York team managed a lower winning percentage, but only because they lost the same number while playing fewer games.)
That was the first time Christine bestowed her disapproval on me. It wasn’t so much disapproval as disappointment, I guess – she couldn’t abide defeatism, even as a commentary on defeat. That was when I realized that what I wanted out of my days was a good story. What Christine wanted was faith. I guess what she had was faith, but what she wanted was for her faith to be rewarded, and for the object of her faith to benefit from it.
I didn’t quite get my good story, but I did have a great time sitting with Christine eighty times. I had hoped, when I bought the tickets, that I was going to have a Cheers-ish experience, where I’d show up fifteen minutes before the game and be joyously greeted (NORM!!!) by all my season ticket section mates, but after the first week, it was just me and Christine and the ushers. Great company, to be sure, but not quite the crowd I had been hoping for.
The Giants lost 98 games. Well, at least it isn’t going to get worse.
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