Losing hurts, but our hopes and dreams sustain us

Moments after the Yankees' season expired late Monday night, senior Christine O'Neill could barely speak.

"I don't know," she kept muttering, slowly gathering her belongings and turning away from the big-screen TV in Frist Campus Center where a few dozen diehard Yankees fans had watched their team's season come to a most inglorious end. "I don't know."

She nodded toward a friend who stood a few feet away, still silently staring at the screen.

"I'm worried about him — he might get violent," she said, before returning to her own situation. "This isn't how I grew up. This isn't what's supposed to happen."

Yes, losing hurts — even for Yankees fans. It hurts for Red Sox fans and for Braves fans, too. And it even hurts for Cubs fans, though our pain generally comes in August, not October.

The truth is, for all the joy sports can bring to fans, they can inflict just as much pain. Even for a dynasty like the Yankees, over the course of a few decades winning a championship is the exception, not the rule. And most years, for most teams, losing is nearly inevitable.

The good news, perhaps, is that all that losing gives us plenty of practice with coping.

Fatalism is always a popular option — and not just among Cubs fans.

"I assumed the Braves would lose this year," my best friend from home, a diehard Braves fan, instant messaged me Monday morning. "Not yesterday, maybe, but eventually. And the Cardinals would have swept them anyway."

A bit of denial works, too.

"At least we didn't lose to the Yankees this year," Monica Wojcik, a junior from Boston, declared over lunch Monday. "Everyone knows we're a better team."

And then there's George Steinbrenner's method: fire the first employee you see, then throw money at every player in sight.

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No matter how you cope, though, losing still hurts. Watching Yankees and Red Sox and Braves fans mope after their respective eliminations over the past few days got me thinking: Why we do put ourselves through it? Why do we keep coming back for more when we know we will likely be disappointed again? Are sports fans masochistic?

Professor Michael Litchman is as qualified as anyone at Princeton to answer such questions, and not just because he teaches Abnormal Psychology. More importantly, Litchman is a Boston native and lifelong Red Sox fan: he keeps a miniature plastic batting helmet atop his computer monitor and displays on his shelf a decades-old button that he wore to games as a child.

So, earlier this week, I stopped by Professor Litchman's office to talk about the psychology of losing.

We began by trading our respective sob stories: he told me about his "horrible memories" of watching the ball dribble through Bill Buckner's legs in Game Six of the 1986 World Series and complained about George Steinbrenner; I told him about my sleepless night after the Cubs' infamous collapse in Game Six of the 2003 NLCS and complained about Steve Bartman.

With our much-needed catharsis out of the way, he assured me that it's not illogical for fans to attach themselves to a team, even at the risk of disappointment. After all, being a fan is fun.

But losing does take a toll. Litchman explained that fans exhibit a wide range of responses: there's nothing abnormal, so to speak, about feeling a bit of depression, anger or bitterness, but it is unhealthy to become physically violent or to lose the ability to function.

He also explained why some losses tend to hurt more than others: choking in Game Seven of the World Series is far more psychologically jarring than falling out of the pennant race in May.

"When there's a sudden change, you're not prepared," he said, "so it deepens the anger and frustration."

Then again, some fans prevent such mood swings through fatalism. Litchman admitted to being a bit of a fatalist himself, especially when it comes to the Red Sox's "David and Goliath" rivalry with the Yankees.

"We do the best we can," he said. "But they have the money and the power. They have Steinbrenner."

Which brought us to the question I really wanted answered: Isn't it a contradiction for a fan to be full of hope that his team can win, yet simultaneously almost certain that they'll find a way not to?

Absolutely not, Litchman responded.

"When we examine our team closely, reality sets in," he said. "But we hope, and we dream."

I nodded. There we were, a Red Sox fan and a Cubs fan, bonding over our parallel hopes. Forget about the pain of losing: the chance of winning, no matter how slim, makes it all worthwhile.

"Next year," Litchman told me as I closed my notebook, satisfied I'd found my answer, "we'll be a contender."