Cards as therapy

We are a few, short days away from the postseason, my friends. And you know what that means to fans who have a team still playing, don't you?

Angst. Frustration. Hopelessness. Feelings of anger, powerlessness, despair.

For fans of one lucky team, the postseason ends in elation -- a world championship. But for the rest, disappointment is the ultimate destination.

I'm no psychologist, so I can't explain the motivation behind half the things I do, but when I am frustrated during my team's postseason run, I tend to avoid taking it out on my own team -- those are my guys out there, you know. Instead, I take it out on the opposing team.

Often times, that's an easy task. It's easy for me to find something to dislike in the Yankees or Giants or Mets or Diamondbacks. Other times, it's a little more difficult, like with the Dodgers' upcoming postseason opponent, the Cardinals. (But, trust me, I'll find something to dislike. Probably something related to Brendan Ryan's socks).

You may have noticed how I took out my frustration when the Dodgers played the Rockies in a season-ending series to determine who won the National League West. I'm not a fan of the Rockies for a variety of reasons, and I couldn't bear to see them win the NL West. I wish I could be a gracious loser, but I'm not. However, I didn't throw things (that much) or get too loud. Instead, I took it out on my cards.

After the Rockies' win on Friday night, cutting the Dodgers' lead to one game, I washed this 2009 Topps Brad Hawpe card with the rest of the dirty dishes. I don't have a dishwasher, because my kitchen is too small. So I washed the dishes by hand, using the card to help with the daily ritual. As you can, see, it wasn't exactly up to the task. Kind of fell apart on the job.

For Saturday's game, I sort of mowed over a Todd Helton card:

The Dodgers actually won Saturday's game, so there was no reason for me to do this. For an explanation, you can click on my blog. Oops, sorry, Todd.

But the whole purpose of this -- besides having a blog post -- was therapeutic. Slowly reviewing the Dodgers' loss in my mind while I washed silverware with a baseball card, actually helped calm me down a bit. And nothing got damaged, except for a dupe of a base card.

(I absolutely recommend using only doubles for postseason therapy. Don't do anything you might regret).

I don't anticipate doing this again this postseason, unless the Dodgers face the Rockies again, or possibly the Yankees. I have a whole stack of Mickey Mantle home run cards backed up for that purpose.

But I have to say, this is a lot better than punching a hole in the wall, or putting a pile of money down on a shrink to tell him that Manny can't hit a fastball anymore.