It’s sad, almost disgraceful. The Philadelphia Phillies are a massive commercial product carefully constructed by a collective of cheerless millionaires. They are sanded and polished to appeal to sheepish consumers like me who will pay top dollar to feel a part of something. Everything from of the shape of the P on their hats to the volume with which the neon Liberty Bell sitting atop their home park rings out after a homerun disappears into the mash of elated loyalists has been researched and focused-grouped to align with my economic predispositions. But as Chase Utley walks to the plate — his smooth strut stiffened by a hip injury he refuses to acknowledge — my position is not that of the consumer but of an active participant. There exists a part of me whose being is dependent on this at bat. This is completely irrational.

In between pitches Utley, bony and emotionless, stares out into the field curiously, seemingly an eyelash away from setting down his helmet and wandering away from the batter’s box to concern himself with something far more interesting. Of the hundreds of thoughts expanding and collapsing inside his head there is certainly not one concerned with the mental and emotional state of a twenty-year-old kid sitting in a dorm room 750 miles away. As he waits the .434 seconds it takes the baseball to arrive at his bat he is certainly not thinking about how the torque in his hips, the trajectory of his swing, or the precise moment he chooses to fire his muscles affects the collective self-esteem of hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians. Yet that is precisely what this swing affects.

To us this game matters in a very real way. It is a playoff game, a potentially deciding one at that. In making the playoffs the Phillies have given themselves a theoretical one in eight shot to do the unthinkable. With a win here they’ll reduce those chances to one in four … in theory.

We all know the trajectory. As Philadelphians, we know how these things end. Our team races to the edge of glory only to teeter there in stagnation, paralyzed by formless phantoms other teams disregard, swallowed up by last-minute trapdoors side-stepped by other cities on their way to a championship. Champagne returned to its dusty rack, we collapse with them. We return to the world different — ours eyes encased in a pessimistic film, a stew of anger, grief and embarrassment brewing in our stomachs making the proverbial day after a long, unmanageable wake. But on the eve of this certain devastation, just days from the inevitable cataclysm of Manny Ramirez ripping our hearts from our chests and clutching them over his head to the roars of legions of Dodger fans, I’ve forgotten all I should remember and renew my investment in my team.

My investment is not financial or material but emotion and self-sacrificial. A Phillies loss would not be a simple emotional letdown. It wouldn’t be a spontaneous emotional reflex that dissipates as time drags on. No, this would be a tragedy. With great embarrassment and unspeakable disappointment in myself, I say that I would feel worse about myself if the Phillies lose. What I see when I look in the mirror will change, a slice of me pulsating with potential energy will remain dormant, grief will build on the long history of sports grief (much of which I wasn’t even alive for) that metastasizes in me. I will be a slightly yet quantifiably different person.

In being a Philadelphia sports fan you sacrifice a part of your self-worth to your teams. No matter how perfectly your life turns out there will always be a valuable part of yourself in limbo, subject to the result of a series of games. Of course the beauty of this is in the opposite case. The case of the penniless failure whose spirits could be flipped upside down one day because he decided early on to render a vital part of his existence out of his control. This sacrifice binds Philadelphians together; it’s the common denominator between 2 million people with nothing in common. There’s a familiarity in the emotional vacancy on the face of the stranger the day after a tragic loss, a reprieve from the loneliness of despair.

For 25 years there has been nothing but despair in the world of Philadelphia sports. No city with four “big four” sports teams has gone so long without winning a title. 100 seasons without victory. And that’s truly 100 seasons, not the paper 100 years for which Cubs fans so nauseatingly demand pity. No, there was no Michael Jordan to relieve our angst with a decade-long stream of trophies. No cutesy Super Bowl Shuffle to lift our spirits after a year’s worth of sports disappointment.

100 seasons. Nothing.

Washington D.C. stole the capital from us. New York City stole prestige.

282 total seasons. Just nine championships.

We are America’s middle child — fat, ugly and trivialized.

Even Boston has won six championships in the past six years.

Our sports teams play in Lincoln Financial Field, Citizens Bank Park and the Wachovia Center. What sort of omen is that? How does a rational person explain that away?

This is the pretext. This is what we drag in tow. This is what is furthest from my mind as Pat Burrell — a phenom turned failure turned fan favorite for reasons that would require another column to unpack — marches to the plate and I cede attention to the TV, the game and me in a vacuum, and wager a part of myself on him pulling through.

This is all overblown of course. Get a life, kid. Pseudo-psychological bullshit made up by a rich brat who can’t get everything he wants. Get back to what’s important. A masturbatory whine. Die for that grade, collect those necessary things, be that number on the piece of paper the ATM spits back at you. A meditation on being a loser.

Tony Manfred is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at tmanfred@cornellsun.com. The Absurdity Exhibition appears alternate Wednesdays.