Sorry, baseball fans, but we don’t have Jo-Jo Reyes to kick around anymore. Our favorite lovable loser had to go and spoil all the fun by actually having the audacity to win a game and thus snap his 28-start winless streak. Now what are we supposed to do?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is great and all that Reyes finally got to salvage a little bit of pride by earning a victory, and earn it he did by going the distance, but c’mon, Jo-Jo! Who are we supposed to pretend to be rooting for when we are deep down rooting against him now?
Maybe I’m just being a sadist, but I know I was not alone in checking in on Reyes after each of his starts this season and getting a little bit of thrill to see his name once again absent from the win column. How do I know this? Because every time Reyes failed this season, his continued misfortune got its own little mention on Sportscenter. If people didn’t care, ESPN wouldn’t keep showing it (or maybe they would, after all, Around the Horn is still on the air). They are just following the age old saying in the news world that “if it bleeds, it leads.” Simplified, that means most people are kind of dark and like to see bad things happen to other people. A 28-game winless streak may not actually have real blood involved, but a losing streak like that is essentially a metaphorical bloodbath.
Quick, who is the only NFL team to lose all sixteen regular season games? The Detroit Lions, and I would venture to guess most of you came up with that answer in 0.0003 seconds.
Next question, who is Anthony Young? You might have needed another second or two, but any baseball fan worth their salt knows Young as the most losingest loser whoever lost when he became forever infamous after losing 27 consecutive decisions during the 1992 and 1993 seasons.
The real question is whether or not Reyes’ streak will earn him a similar place in baseball infamy? Sure, he didn’t win for three years, but he “only” lost 13 times in that span and that is hardly Young-esque. Even at his worst, Reyes’ poorest record was just 3-11. If he goes and finishes this season at 5-12 or something similar, will his losing ways really resonate? As strange as it sounds, his best chance at avoiding such a negative legacy is to get himself demoted to the minors and never be heard from again. What really damned Young was that he hung around for three-plus seasons so that everyone could point and laugh at the guy who couldn’t win every time he took the mound.
Poor Jo-Jo. Damned if he does stay around and try and carve out a nice little career for himself albeit one that will forever carry a loser’s stigma. Damned if he avoids that stigma by fading away into minor league oblivion.
