Litany of sorrowful miseries

I’D like to say, “well, there’s always next year” but I don’t think I can.

Yes, the New York Islanders had a good season and only lost, 1-0, in Game Seven, of the Eastern Conference Finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning who are moving on to the Stanley Cup Finals where they get to defend their title.

I guess it isn’t so bad when you lose to the defending champions or is that me trying to project an image a façade of cool in the face of another teeth gnashing?

It has been a long drought for long-suffering Islanders fans like me who have last tasted victory in 1984 with the team not going to the Stanley Cup since 1984 when the Drive for Five was stopped by the Edmonton Oilers.

That isn’t all. When the Chicago Bulls jettisoned Jimmy Butler, I gave up my allegiances to the Chicago Bulls; a team I have supported since 1988. I have since went back to the original NBA club I supported the Philadelphia 76ers.

Now you know it’s Philly, then you know that I too am once more grieving after a Game 7 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference semi-finals of the National Basketball Association.

I have no time to point to Joel Embiid or Ben Simmons. All I know is the season is over for my team although I am still following with great interest this crazy season for the NBA where more and more it is looking like a Milwaukee Bucks-phoenix Suns finals that sounds tantalizing.

My favorite football club, Liverpool, was tapped by many a pundit to defend their English Premier League title but they faltered owing to so many injuries and off-field controversies. It’s a wonder they still booked a Champions League slot in the final month of the season.

In this annus horribilis, they

have not only failed to defend the title, but they have seen their invincibility in Anfield breached and broken multiple times. Whatever harmony there was in the locker room is gone. And the fans have feuded with team ownership over the botched European Super League.

Whatever optimism I had built up due to the team’s success in the previous years…well…it’s still there except I’m not so high at the moment. Call it a result of being pragmatic or having guarded optimism. I’d love to see them first. But let me say that this terrible season has seen me upset in a way I have not felt since Steven Gerrard’s slip cost the team…ah, enough.

Is my litany of sorrowful miseries over?

Apparently not.

I wonder if this edition of my New York Yankees’ window is

gone. They should have won the World Series sometime in the last two years but no.

And this season, they aren’t exactly blowing people away and have a rather mediocre 40-36 record as we write this.

This year, they can’t seem to get past the Tampa Bay (well, there’s another team from Tampa bringing on the heartache) and ugh...the Boston Red Sox.

Are we going to waste the best of Aaron Judge’s years? The same when we have a top second baseman in DJ Lemahieu and an ace in Gerrit Cole.

Even with my Ateneo Blue Eagles, I feel this uncertainty. I am afraid that the Covid-19 pandemic will do us in more than UP, La Salle, or UST. All this inactivity…whatever edge they had built up through the years as a unit…is it still there? Had there been no Covid, I think the Ateneo faithful would have celebrated a fourth straight title once more (albeit in a more challenged manner because UP and La Salle have really recruited well).

But we still do not know when the UAAP games will begin.

So right now, my favorite sports teams aren’t doing well. They go into the new pre-season or off-season with things to think about and ponder.

Yes, I know you can’t win all the time. But for Heaven’s sake, the Sixers and the Islanders have not won since 1983. The Yankees have not won in over 10 years.

Okay, Liverpool has ended a 30-year drought. But still…

I don’t want to think about this past season and what could have and should have happened because I might get an ulcer.

I’ll just think about it...next year.