Shit sucks. The U.S. government continues to expand the boundaries of its fascist power. The ostensible opposition party lacks the strength or willingness to do anything. Society continues to buckle under the weight of a preventable pandemic. The only “hope” the U.S. has is a doddering politician who promises to change nothing if he becomes president. But hey, at least my favourite Blaseball team is doing really well.
Blaseball is a fictional online splort that arrived at just the right time to find success. A series of potential end times-level events have coincided perfectly with humanity’s desperate attachment to detached irony. We are desperate for connection while also wanting something nonsensical that will make us laugh and forget about the garbage outside our doors for just a few miserable minutes. Why not devote your attention to a fake baseball league with players like Jessica Telephone and Kennedy Meh that can be incinerated by rogue umpires at a moment’s notice?
The fifth season of Blaseball competition kicked off yesterday, giving everyone a chance to shake off the previous week’s triumphs (or, in most cases, disappointments) and start anew. My favourite team, the San Francisco Lovers, has taken that opportunity and run with it. They currently have the best record in the league at 24-5, making them the only team still with single-digit losses and also the only team to have broken 20 wins. I got into Blaseball later than most, but this is the best performance I’ve seen out of the Lovers across multiple seasons.
I have no real connection to the Lovers. I chose them because San Francisco is the closest major city to me — well, unless you count Hellmouth or Hades, but that’s more of a metaphor for my constant state of mind these days. I don’t even know enough about real baseball to begin to figure out why they’re performing so well in the first place. By all accounts, their stats are pretty middling apart from team captain Knight Urlacher and star pitcher Parker Meng. All I know is that the number in the wins column keeps going up, and that makes me happy.
We all want to feel like winners, even if it means living vicariously through sports teams, both real and fictional. In the rare event that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win a football game, I say “we” won a football game, as if I was there on the sidelines contributing just as much as the big burly men who have made athletics their career. I tried to break myself of this habit but eventually gave up. Life is so good at handing out losses, what’s the harm in celebrating positivity, even through osmosis?
I don’t know where the San Francisco Lovers will end up as the season continues — Blaseball is notoriously fickle — but for now, they’re a constant source of happiness. Let’s go all the way.
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