You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat.  Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it. 

-- Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer

Over the last year or so, I've been reconnecting with baseball a little bit (I may yet venture out to the ballpark and purchase my first tickets since June 1994).  Last year, I spent the summer working my way through Jim Bouton's Ball Four.  This year, it's going to be Roger Kahn and The Boys of Summer, to which I was pointed by my Batten book.  The above quote is on the second page.

I just found it kind of striking, because those Dodger teams seemed to have evoked a following not unlike our own Leafs RAUP, a passion that never wavers despite the constant denial of the ultimate prize.  I'm curious to see, as I read this, whether I'll learn anything about our own experience through the story of theirs.

Anyway - not something I was going to front-page, but just something I thought was a neat quote.