The Best and Worst Months, Definitively Stated

Apropos of nothing, except the author’s own interior examinations, here are some brief and confidently worded remarks on the best and worst months of the year from the point of view of a baseballing enthusiast.

If, at any point, the reader should find himself doubting the veracity of the following remarks, he (i.e. the reader) should draw his attention to how confidently worded they (i.e. the remarks) are and find himself duly staid by same. Should that fail to instill due reverence, then he (i.e. the same reader) should contemplate the embedded image of the Grand Canyon and allow himself to be awed duly by it — or, at least, by the idea of the Grand Canyon — and to retain that sense of awe while entering the following.

Now, those brief remarks, briefly.

The Worst: October
Whoever said “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all” was misled — first of all, because the “whoever” in question is Alfred Lord Tennyson (i.e. a person that basically everyone agrees was really misled), but also, second, because we very clearly learn from the world’s most successful ethical models that the largest threat to sustained happiness is the excitement of the passions.

In point of fact, October baseball is nothing but an exercise in passion-exciting. In the event that one’s team does make the postseason, there’s only about a 12.5% chance that said team will win the World Series. That’s about the chance that Tim Lincecum would reach base against his own self. The other 87.5% of teams only serve to inspire false hope, and then crushing disappointment, in their fans.

The Best: March
In his poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”, Wallace Stevens writes the following:

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

In fact, Stevens’ is a false dichotomy — or, at least a misleading one. Because, while it might be difficult to discern one’s preference for inflection or innuendo, the most dependable source of beauty is the beauty of anticipation — that is, in the moment right before the blackbird whistles.

March is a month entirely composed of anticipation. Spring training allows one to see the newest iteration of a team in action. Fantasy drafts are prepared for and dreamt about in earnest. One spends entirely longer than one ought to writing out his team’s optimized lineup in notebooks or on the back of receipts. The fan walks about in a dream state — or what the Germans call Wissenschaftssprache.