Halfway through Colorado’s savage summer, Rockies manager Clint Hurdle has twice been ordered to his sick bed while a fan website jokingly counts the days until the franchise sinks so low it flees to Portland, Ore.
Amid a purple blur of botched saves, bobbled balls and losing binges, even the ’62 Mets are sending their sympathy. “I feel sorry for Clint,” says Frank Thomas, New York’s left fielder during baseball’s all-time ugly season: 40-120. But Thomas, comfy with his low place in sports lore, sees nothing epic in the Rockies’ funk.
And right there, floating in the backwater of sports psychology, is Colorado’s dilemma: The Rockies are not bad enough.
The worst of the worst – the ’62 Mets, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper forever tumbling off your “Wide World of Sports” TV screen – are immortalized alongside flashy dynasties. Normal last-place baseball teams are forgotten five minutes into November.
The Rockies, on pace to win a franchise-low 57 games, are bad. They’re just not adorably absurd … yet. Like the ’62 Mets, rained out in their first-ever game. Like the NFL’s 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a winless bunch who so enraged coach John McKay he stopped speaking to his players.
Sure, at 9-38 away from Coors Field, the Rockies may flirt with baseball’s record for road losses, which is 65 set by the 1935 Boston Braves. But fans aren’t flocking to merrily root against them, as thousands did last year for the farewell races of Zippy Chippy. The so-called thoroughbred – which once lost a 40-yard dash to a baseball player – spurred “IZippy” shirt sales while racking up a career record of 0-100.
“There is a kind of reverse immortality to being on a really, really bad team,” said Pat Toomay, a Tampa Bay defensive end during the 0-14 season. “People never forget.”
As the Bucs spiraled toward NFL oblivion, home fans changed their cheers to “Go for O!” And when the team returned from Oakland after its 12th consecutive loss, three fans greeted the team jet at 4 a.m. with a surreal tarmac chant: “What have we got? Bucs fever!”
“It was poignant in a very weird way,” Toomay said. “It put a different light on winning and losing.”
For fans of the profoundly putrid, black humor and rebellious pride often warm their team’s chase for anti-history. They bond in the badness.
But for players stuck in the moment, the psychology of constant losing can spin darker webs: snarling alliances, selfishness and, one night in 1972, the threat of violence.
Three wins and 30 losses into the Philadelphia 76ers’ historically horrid season, rookie coach Roy Rubin tried to substitute for forward John Q. Trapp, who refused and pointed for Rubin to glance behind him. In the Detroit stands, one of Trapp’s pals opened his jacket and flashed a gun. Trapp stayed in. The Sixers went down again, one of their NBA-record 73 losses.
“We knew it was pretty bad, a kind of dysfunctional interaction. … That was the challenge God gave me to live with,” recalls Manny Leaks, the only Sixer to play all 82 games that season. To survive, he tapped a high school lesson learned when he was demoted off the varsity: In bad times, churn harder but smile brighter.
“But I don’t think everybody felt that way,” Leaks said. “We didn’t have the strength to come together and trust each other.”
When losing takes root, it drains a team’s collective confidence, sprouts negative thoughts and breeds more losses, sports psychologists say. Suddenly, a team seems doomed to freakish bad breaks.
Some players begin to fear them. Some just surrender.
“We constantly find a way to reinforce the positive, because we don’t want the end result shaking their confidence,” Hurdle said. “We try to remind them not to take it personal.”
But a losing mindset can take over.
“Losing is contagious,” says Richard Lustberg, a New York sports psychologist who works with high school and college athletes. “Anyone who has played a sport has experienced this – you’re continually getting beat, standing out in the field for long periods. Thoughts start to go through your head. Thoughts of despair. You want to quit, just give up. There comes a tipping point where the whole team goes over like the Titanic.”
Whether a lousy team drowns in bad blood or evolves into a lovable loser depends on the complex mental mix of its roster, Lustberg says. With enough smart, savvy leaders – “clubhouse stabilizers, guys who have been through the wars” – teams and players can survive monstrously miserable years.
“You’re sort of thrown back to yourself because everybody is disowning you,” Toomay says. “So you fall on your pride and ability as a player, you say: ‘I’m going to kick this guy’s butt.”‘
If that doesn’t work?
“Erase your memory,” Toomay says. “And find a hobby.”
Humor helps too.
The 1962 Mets’ hiring of manager Casey Stengel was a master stroke, Thomas says. With players, Stengel was thoughtful and shrewd. With the media, he was purposely wacky – a self-deprecating lightning rod filtering the pressure of mounting losses.
“The only thing worse than a Mets game,” Stengel once said, “is a Mets doubleheader.”
LOVABLE LOSERS
The all-time bottom feeders from the four major team sports produced few wins but lots of laughs.
1962 New York Mets
40-120
Before the home opener, the team stood behind club founder William Shea as he told a crowd of fans: “Be patient with us until we can bring some real ballplayers in here.”
1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers
9-73
Years after Fred Carter was named the team’s most valuable player for that season, he said: “I didn’t know if it was for leading the team to nine wins or for leading the team to 73 losses. I still haven’t figured it out.”
1974-75 Washington Capitals
8-67-5
After 37 consecutive road losses, the Caps beat the California Golden Seals, prompting several players to hoist an arena trash container as if it were the Stanley Cup.
1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
0-14
When reporters asked coach John McKay what he thought of his team’s execution, he said: “I’m in favor of it.”
Staff writer Troy E. Renck contributed to this report.
Staff writer Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
