Right now, I feel like this guy. The Liberal Democrat party are surely the Chicago Cubs of the UK political system: always there or thereabouts, always promising, never quite making it. Right now they are on the up in a way that they haven’t been since I started paying attention to politics. They have a strong platform of progressive policies, and more importantly their leader kicked some establishment ass in the debate last week.
So the poll numbers are looking good, and the momentum is building, and lefties across the land are looking at each other and winking and daring to whisper “it’s gonna happen!” I’m not new to this game, but although I’ve voted for congressmen, senators, a president and a Scottish First Minister, this will be my first UK General Election as an eligible voter, so I’m getting caught up in the hype pretty easily.
Look to the old fans, though. The ones sitting silently in the same seat they have occupied in the bleachers for years, quietly chewing on some sunflower seeds with perhaps a rueful smile playing across their features. They’ve seen this before. They too once believed that it was gonna happen. They’ve been burned, some more than once, and vowed never to get overly optimistic again. They’ll come to every game, sure, they’ll cheer the wins and despair at the losses, they’ll heckle the umpires and debate the trades, like any other fan. When the team gets on a good streak and the young fans start talking about magic numbers, and even pennants and titles, the old fans will sit down and keep quiet. They thought it was gonna happen for them, and it didn’t, and the flame of hope has gone out.
We can respond to this in one of two ways. We can say that because it didn’t happen for them, it probably won’t happen for us, and we’d be right to say that. We can also say that because the old fans don’t want to get burned again it’s up to us to put ourselves out there, to put our hearts on the line, to live and die with every pitch and every swing of the bat, and scream our support all the while. If it doesn’t happen, we’ll be heartbroken, just like the old fans were, but the world will keep spinning, and we’ll keep coming to the games. Maybe we’ll sit next to them, share some sunflower seeds, and swap stories of hope and disappointment. Maybe in a few years we too will smile ruefully at the kids two rows in front who are waving an all-too-familiar banner. There are worse fates than this.
But if it does happen, friends. Oh, if it does…
