Preview, #141: 9/7 vs. Braves

As announced, I’m still not watching the Diamondbacks this week. There’s part of me which feels bad about it. I tend to the view that tough times test true fan loyalty [if you’re posting pictures of dumpster fires or “This is fine” memes... F grade to me]. But I’m also of the mind that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, and there has not been much nice to say about the team’s performance of late. Last night’s was a perfect poster-child for why not watching has been better for my mental health. I skipped the disappointment of falling 4-0 down, the tension of the slow crawl back into a contest, the false hope of Paul Goldschmidt’s ninth-inning homer, and the misery of a wild pitch scoring the losing run.

Instead, we watched episodes of Castle Rock, Wentworth and a documentary series, Nuestra Lucha Libre. They were all enjoyable. I then checked the score, saw we had lost 7-6 in 10 innings, sighed slightly and went to bed. This evening? The probable schedule involves Queen of the South, Battlebots, Ultimate Beast Master, and if time permits, Fallet. As explained earlier, this will persist until the team wins consecutive games. Harsh though it may be, I don’t see any need to treat D-backs games as must-see television, until the team starts playing them like it matters. Indeed, I may well be more interested in tonight’s key Dodgers/Rockies game, hoping that Colorado can beat Clayton Kershaw.

Of course, there is always the risk that I’m going to miss out on a Patrick Corbin no-hitter or whatever. Every baseball game is a unique snowflake, and there’s really no such thing as a boring or uninteresting one. But it’s a percentage game. The odds are that if you are watching tonight in the expectation of a remarkable individual performance by a D-back, you are likely to be disappointed. And sadly. the odds are, I’ll get more pleasure from my selection of pre-recorded televisual treats than the uncertainty of this live sporting event. I’d be delighted to be proved wrong, for the team to win out the series, and go on a roaring rampage of contention thereafter. But until that happens, I’ve funner things to do.