On rooting for a losing team

As the Twins went about the process of losing yet another game to Baltimore on Wednesday night, I pulled out my copy of Jimmy Breslin's 1963 book about the infant New York Mets and ran across a passage that rings true still almost a half century later:

"I've been a Mets fan all my life." 

Nearly everybody was saying it by mid-June. And nearly everybody had a good reason for saying it. You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is the team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn't maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner In a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller?

Thank you, Mr. Breslin.