Capricious Moe

So your friend, Moe, is sitting in your team's dugout, quietly minding his own business. You know he's there, because he's always there when your team races out to a 7-0 lead over its archrival in a late August contest.

But suddenly, Moe bolts across the field to the first base dugout and the seemingly-vanquished foe piles up seven unanswered runs in the last five innings. Then, with Moe clearly on their side, they subdue your team in several key situations and scratch across the winning tally in the 13th inning.

"Woe is you!" everyone cries, because Moe has clearly switched allegiances and will accompany the Philistines the rest of the way, as he did the previous year. This becomes readily apparent when your homies fall behind the next evening by a run as your ace heads for the showers.

But wait, wasn't that Moe sprinting back to the northpaw side of the field? By golly, it was, sparking a comeback that leads to victory. Thank goodness we had Moe on our side!

Wait a second, says the annoying contrarian blogger type. What good is Moe if he's going to be so fickle and unpredictable? You'd be just as well off with a friend like Constance. Why are you so excited to see Moe when he's almost certain not to stick around. He's your friend until...he's not.

Come to think of it, it's not like you're even ever aware of his presence except in retrospect, based on the shadow he seems to cast. Could it be that Moe isn't even there? Could these advantage swings simply be the natural ebb and flow of athletic competition?

This notion is painful, I understand. All these years, everyone who loves baseball (and other sports too) had waxed poetic about Moe's myriad accomplishments, hale-fellow personality and abundant charisma. Now some second-rate flak comes along and takes a club to your Moe pinata. You're suffering from some serious cognitive dissonance.

But here's the thing about the facts: they don't give a flying patootski about your feelings. And the fact is, Moe is a figment of everyone's imagination, as David Murphy made evident last night.