Andrew Stetka: Baseball fandom is difficult

Being a baseball fan is very hard. If you are devoted to a specific team in the way many readers of this website are devoted to the Orioles, it can be even harder. This is something I've written about in length over the years, but it deserves to be repeated. Especially after what we just saw. You live and die with every game and react to every play. That couldn't have been more on display this weekend in New York City, as the O's battled the Yankees.

Over the past three days, the Orioles experienced just about every emotion possible over the course of a hard-fought series with a division rival. Fans felt a lot of that, too. As some schmoe who simply sits on his couch and watches the games while following social media, I've seen this up close. There's no question that as the Birds were suffering a gut-punching loss on Friday night, fans were feeling that pain. Blowing leads of 9-1 and 11-4 exposed an Orioles bullpen that many fans came into the season feeling pretty strong about. That, coupled with Saturday's debacle of epic proportions from starting pitcher Ubaldo Jiménez, didn't have O's fans feeling great. The Birds had just suffered their first series loss of the season and were on the verge of being swept by a red-hot Yankees team that looks like a potential contender in the division. Then came yesterday's wild affair, a back-and-forth victory that packed just about everything into 11 innings of fun. It showed off the O's own Houdini of a starting pitcher in Wade Miley, who somehow managed to allow just two runs despite giving up 13 baserunners in five innings. Miley has managed to churn out a 2.32 ERA this season despite 19 free passes in 30 innings. That's walking a tightrope. Then there's the tightrope Logan Verrett walked during the 10th inning, getting out of a bases-loaded one-out jam to preserve the tie. Emotions ran high throughout, but at that point, O's fans had given in and just wanted to live with the sweep and move on to Boston. The ups and downs were enough at that point for many. Yet, after a victory, all was once again right with the world. Things were how they should be in the eyes of many.

This back-and-forth nature of fandom is so interesting to me. It's fascinating because baseball is such a unique sport with such unique circumstances. After a loss in football, it's easy for a player to say it's "just one game" or that it's "a long season." But the truth is that it's not. In the NFL, teams only play 16 games and back-to-back losses can be devastating to a team's playoff chances. Even in the NHL and NBA, teams play about half the number of games as in baseball.

For fans, each game is do or die. There's no in between. I'm guilty of it, you're guilty of it. It's hard to turn that "fan gene" off. The reason it's so fascinating for me is that I still don't know how players do it. Athletes are captivating for their physical skills and mental prowess. But it's even more mesmerizing to me how they bounce back after devastation. For the Orioles, Friday must've seemed like a funeral. Having two large leads and letting them fade away had to be tough. On Saturday, it looked like that was the case. The O's had their brains beat in and there was every single reason to roll over and die again on Sunday. But that didn't happen, even after blowing the lead in the ninth inning. The mental fortitude was somehow there to battle back and win that game, avoiding a completely lost weekend in the Bronx. The mental side of baseball can be grueling and brutal at times. It's a game that can kick you while you're down.

I do my best to figure out how the players deal with this roller coaster ride on a day-to-day basis, and mock that. Rather than living with so many ups and downs, personally I like to look ahead to the next day. I'm not just talking about being a fan, either. It's something I try to let encompass my life. Take the good as it comes and get rid of the bad by moving on to the next day. It's something baseball players have to do each day. It's something the Orioles made a heck of a display of doing this weekend.

Andrew Stetka blogs about the Orioles for Eutaw Street Report. Follow him on Twitter: @AStetka. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.