The New York Yankees just won the World Series.

This isn’t exactly a new phrase I’m uttering. It’s been uttered twenty-six times before. Well, it’s been uttered a lot more than that. Let’s be honest, there’s been a lot of utterin’ in New York.

I’m a huge fan of baseball. I’m an Atlanta Braves fan specifically, but I love the game most. I like its simplicity. I like its excruciatingly slow pace and it’s interminable season. I like that it marks the summers and I like that both fit and unfit players play together on the same team. I like that they play organs at the games and I like that the umpires wear blazers. I like that there is a point in every game where the fans stand up, stretch, and sing. I like all the hand gestures, special slides, spitting, crotch grabbing, player nicknames, and funny-looking helmets. I like that if you don’t like the feel of the game ball, you can throw it back and get a new one. I like that we shoot off fireworks when someone hits a home run. I like that when the season’s over, it’s almost time for Thanksgiving.

When I was a boy, I would lay in my bed at night, listening to the games on my radio, against parental consent. I tried to hide it from my mother by laying on my side, turning the volume down to a whisper and using only one of my earbuds. I’d pretend to be sleeping soundly as she’d come in to kiss me goodnight. The worst nights were when something good happened right when she walked in the room. It’s hard not to cheer for your ball team when they’re playing well. I’m sure I wriggled my toes pretty good, though.

Tonight, I watched the Philadelphia Phillies watch the Yankees celebrating. Completely gutted, completely exhausted, the Philadelphia players watched in silence as the Yankees dogpiled in that happy land between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. They looked like little boys, watching with equal parts devastation and curiosity. They couldn’t take their eyes off it.

Tomorrow they’ll wake up and wonder why. They may wake up and be inspired. Or maybe they’ll question everything. Maybe they’ll be galvanized. I’m sure it’ll be a lot of both, and a lot of neither. The truth is, second place stinks. It’s the closest you can come to winning and still fail completely. It’s the loser with the most invested. It’s the highest point from which you can fall. It’s a tarnished, super-special brand of devastated.

I was thinking about how many losers there are in the world. Gobs and gobs and gobs. The streets are littered with second, third, and fourth place finishers, and surrounded by many more who feel they never even got a chance to take a chance. Winners are rare, and that’s why we love to watch them. And we want to taste it, too. Maybe that’s why sports is so mesmerizing. I’m no jock, that’s for sure, but I love watching athletes. I love that they go to all that trouble to take one, big, giant, low-odds chance at a moment of glory. It’s sort of crazy, if you think about it. I like that kind of crazy.

Have you ever finished second? What happened after you lost? Do you still feel like a loser?