The Toughest Breakup

Recently, I went through a pretty tough breakup. I’ve been reluctant to discuss it for the past few days, keeping uncharacteristically quiet while around others, trying to avoid the elephant in the room. I’m just now reaching the point where I’m able to talk about it: to share my feelings and to try to find a way to describe the empty feeling in my heart.

I was broken up with in a crowded, noisy bar. It was a tasteless, hasty breakup, lacking thought and heart. That, I think, was what made it hurt the most. It’s not like it came out of nowhere, completely unexpected. The possibility had been hanging in the back of my mind for weeks. It was the careless nature of the way things ended that really stung: lofty, nonchalant. Like they didn’t even care.

Yes, I said “they.” I, alongside every other Philadelphian, got dumped by the Phillies on Friday night.

It may sound overly dramatic, but if you’ve ever felt an unfaltering devotion to any sports team—not just the Phillies—you know my words speak true. I had a relationship with the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies, and all too soon, long before I was ready, they ended it.

From the very beginning, the Phillies made their intentions clear. I was promised, by them and by others who knew them well, that they were in this for the long haul. They wanted to go all the way. And I believed them. After all, they were everything a girl could ever ask for in a team: they had looks, they had charisma, and of course they had skills. Oh, did they ever have skills. They knew how to play the game, and everything they had to offer told me that they were in this to win it. They were nothing short of my dream guy—I mean, my dream team.

I saw them almost every day, and we grew close in no time at all. They were around so often, and for so long. The baseball season is just long enough that sometimes it feels like it will be around forever. The Phillies’ actions added nothing but support to that belief. Consistently, unfailingly, they showed their intelligence and maturity by bringing together the skills necessary to win game after game. I mean, they weren’t perfect, of course. All teams lose now and then. But I grew to love them in spite of, and eventually because of, their flaws. Everything they did, good and bad, was a part of what made them, them.

As their numbers kept rising, so did my faith in them. First to 40 wins. First to 50. First to 60. First to secure a playoff spot. First to win their division title. By this point we had grown so close, and I had fallen so deeply in love, that I began to feel like I was a part of them. Instead of referring to “them” and “I” like we were two separate entities, I began to say “we.” “We got a hundred wins.” “We made the playoffs.” “We need to get to the grocery store to buy some ground beef for tacos tonight.” It was me and the Phillies, in it together. Even when I was alone, I knew that they were right there with me anywhere I went.

Looking back from where I’m at now, I can see where things started to go wrong. I had fallen so deeply for this picture-perfect team that when the warning signs began to show, I was too far gone to truly take note of them. I mean, I noticed them, sure. But I didn’t really let my mind elaborate on what these signs might mean. I certainly noticed their eight game losing streak after they won the division. I heard the analysts when they pointed out that it was the longest losing streak all season. But I didn’t stop to think; I didn’t stop to listen. I didn’t stop to process that information and to realize it might mean that they were running out of steam a little early. No, instead I took it all in stride. I overlooked it and set my sights on the next big accomplishment, sure that it would come, because that was how I’d come to regard this team over their immensely successful season. And their last beautiful, incredible success only fed into my ill-fated beliefs. Their franchise-high one hundred and second win of the season, though it would be their last real accomplishment of the season, was nothing but a sign to me of the success to come in the postseason. They had my heart, my mind, my faith. They had my soul.

And down to the last out of the last game of the division series, I remained faithfully at their side. I really believed, till the very end, that they’d be able to turn things around and stay in the game. Or maybe it was more just that I couldn’t bring myself to believe that they weren’t going to turn things around. They weren’t going to go the distance. They were going to break things off like snapping a bat over their knee, and leave me with nothing but the jagged, painful pieces of what could have been the most remarkable relationship—I mean, season—in the history of the franchise. They were going to leave me.

The days leading up to the end were generally not pretty. We had some painful disagreements, the Phillies and I. I couldn’t help but think, from time to time, that maybe they weren’t trying their best. They weren’t putting forth the effort, and certainly not the skill, required to maintain the complex and sometimes difficult machine that is a relationship—I mean, a World Champion team. But they would always manage to come back, insisting they didn’t mean it, whether it was by pitching a nearly perfect game or by slamming a home run into the upper deck. They brought me back every time, because I’d never really wanted to be mad at them in the first place.

I maintained good spirits throughout most of what would come to be our last night together. Facing only a one run deficit throughout the entire game, I knew that we were playing pretty well overall. In the end, that was what broke my heart the most. As I watched Ryan Howard jog to first at a last-ditch attempt to get on base after a dropped third strike, I couldn’t help but wonder how nine players, in nine innings, could only manage three hits and not a single run. With a team as good as us, it just didn’t add up. It was like they had run out of stamina. They no longer wanted to remain in the relationship—I mean, the season—as long as I—I mean, their fans—wanted them to. They were done. They wanted out.

But I wasn’t done yet. I wanted to go the distance. And so, as Ryan Howard crumpled to the ground on the way out of the batter’s box, suffering what everyone would come to realize was a fairly substantial injury, my heart crumpled with him, unable to support the amount of love it held inside it with no one with whom to share it. I couldn’t give it to my team anymore; we were over. So that love seeped out of me as I sat on my bar stool, my glasses off so I didn’t have to watch the Cardinals’ celebration, slumping further and slowly further down toward the counter like I was a deflating balloon. I deflated until I was empty, devoid of the love I’d once shared in abundance with the team of my dreams just a few moments ago, and I felt nothing.

I put my glasses back on then, because I didn’t care whether or not I could see the TV anymore. I was devoid of emotion. I turned to Brad, who’d just suffered the same devastating blow the night before with his own true love: the Yankees. We quickly paid our tab and left. We walked home hand in hand, allowing ourselves to take comfort in the fact that we were alone together, and we dreamt the same dream that night: that it was May of 2012, and that we got to start our respective relationships all over again.