Halo Fans Need Help in Sharing the Pain

It's the day after the Angels' crushing, season-ending loss to the Red Sox and, once again, all of my hopes and dreams and reasons for living have been snuffed out.

Oh, I'll get over it.

The weird thing is, I'm not even a die-hard Angels fan. At least, that's what I keep telling myself. So why was Friday's 10-inning heartbreaker so hard to take? Why did I basically quit working and stay glued to the set throughout the final, agonizing innings?

As if I didn't know the answer. I've written about it before, and thousands have written about it before me. We sports fans get ourselves all twisted up in a team's exploits, invest our emotional selves in them, overlay our psyches on those of the players and, voila, we're hooked.

No small part of my investment in the Angels is that I picked the bums in April to win the World Series.

But beyond that, I got attached to that darn team. How could anyone resist after the way they played the final week of the season? Gimme a V-L-A-D! What does that spell?

Gritty, determined, lots of character -- that's the Angels. Coincidentally, that's exactly how I see myself, so it's not surprising I'd relate to the team and feel conjoined to it, body and soul. That's how fans think.

The team wins, we exult. When the team loses in a most dispiriting way, as our Halos did Friday, we despair.

On talk radio after the game, a 12-year-old said he was bummed. He wanted to know why Jarrod Washburn was brought in to pitch in the 10th and why Chone Figgins quit running in the ninth. His mother said her son cried after the game. The host said he understood and probably would have done the same if he were 12.

I got to thinking, would it be asking too much for the players to acknowledge our suffering?

Washburn gave up the season-ending homer on his first pitch, and afterward took the media's questions like a champ. But, like most athletes, he didn't acknowledge the fans' pain.

I wonder if these guys really understand what fans go through. "I hung a slider," was the essence of Washburn's remarks.

Excuse me, sir. I need more. This is real blood I'm bleeding here.

Perhaps it's time for offending ballplayers to see themselves just like any other public figure who violates the public trust and respond accordingly.

Wouldn't you, as an Angel fan, feel better today if Washburn had issued this statement: