It is the journey, I was once told, the journey that makes it the trip worth taking. Never the destination in and of itself.

I never realized what this meant when I was a child. Being at the amusement park was worth much more than the four hours sitting in the car. Yet, as I grew older, I started to see it began to make more sense. When you are reading a good book, inevitably when you reach the end, you long for there to be more pages. The same applies with dating, finding out new things, being surprised, is much more pleasurable than a person that feeds you what you want to hear.

Yet, there is a place where the childhood impatience and the mature ideal of savoring the moments along the way meld together to form a picturesque whole. A place located between foul poles, where you see ordinary people do extraordinary things. It is the amusement park. It is the ballpark.

Now, what about the journey? Who wants to wait 150 years to win a championship, who wants to “savor" the moments of loss, heartbreak, and frustration? Well, no one in their right mind. However, like most of people's lives, you cannot control what happens, you are just a passenger on the ride. You can no more will your team to win than the next Joe Shmoe, (and I guarantee for every lucky pair of socks on the "good guy's" side, there are a pair on the "bad dude's"). You can "donate" your money to the cause in the form of buying tickets, jerseys, sport packages and "hits" on opposing players, but in the end, you have no more ability to sway the outcome of your team than the loudmouth in the bar.

Knowing this, you are no more than kids in the car, waiting for your local bums to finally get to the darn Promised Land. Yet, this does not deter the common fan.

So where does the "loving the journey" come into this? Simple. I believe that a championship is like a fine wine. Sure, you can get the knock off name brand in a box, carefully picked last year and squished into liquid form two months ago, or you can save up for that vintage bottle, care of someone's great grandfather, which has matured and developed into something so sweet that the gods themselves might trade it for nectar.

Victory tastes better after strife. I think of the poor Yankee fans, especially the 96ers, who will never know the joy a Red Sox fan, will feel when they finally win it all. Sure, it may not be until Babe Ruth is dug up and burned in effigy, or when we are all suffering at the hands of the Morlocks, but it will happen. Quote me on that. When the fans start to pile out of the stadium into the streets, and Bean town is alight with drink and song, a celebration not seen since God cast Satan out of heaven, you will see the worth of a journey. You will see it in that 96 year old's eyes, who thought he would die before seeing his beloved Sox bring home the gold. In the poor kid's who had to endure an out-of-state school full of fans of teams that have won so much (Apparently the watered down taste of victory is hardly enough to quench some people's thirst, which of course could only be pacified by the blood of a poor downtrodden fan).

Nor will they understand the look in Met fans' eyes when they win. Built on the shoulders of midgets, a decade of loss and a cast of clowns, each championship snatched from the "rightful" hands of their big brothers is more than a trophy, it is a shot at redemption.

There is an endearing quality to a loser. It is the same endearing quality of the game itself, a game that measures failure, just look to errors and era. In life, to err is human. We make mistakes everyday, and we identify with a loser, an underdog, that has to struggle to get to the top. We are the children of parents who gave up all to come to a new land looking for new opportunities, who built their life with the blood and sweat of their hands and tears. We are the team that struggles, and the reason why the Cubs sellout so many home games, why the Red Sox Nation never gives up, and why a team that was the pinnacle of ineptitude grew to have a following that comes in second only to, well a team that wouldn't know loss if it bit them in the face.

Being a fan means sticking with the team through every loss, every hanging slider, every routine ball through the wickets AS MUCH, if not MORE SO that a championship or MVP. The longer it takes to get to that high level, the more pain and strife you have to endure...

the sweeter victory will taste.

Here's to the 01-03 New York Mets, doing their part to making victory sweet.