Bill Simmons did a running diary on the Thursday night NLCS game 7.
It isn't bad, overall, but there is one part in particular I wanted to point out:
Someone calls me. I look at the caller ID and see it's my buddy Sal's house, so I pick up to talk him off the ledge. Instead, it's his wife (not a sports fan) calling to get tips for dealing with her distraught husband from the Sports Gal. We end up having this impromptu exchange:
Her (sounding slightly scared): "Bill? What do I do?"
Me: "Is Sal there right now?"
Her: "Yeah. I don't know what to do."
Me: "Don't try to make him feel better. Stay away from him."
Her: "Really?"
Me: "Yeah. Stay away for the rest of the night. Let him stew over this for a couple of hours. Go into your room and read or something. Let him initiate the first conversation."
Her: "OK."
I wish every significant other of every hard-core sports fan could read that exchange.
No one I've ever been involved with has understood that, if your team has just lost a big game, you don't want to be consoled, you don't want to talk about it, and you certainly don't want to hear the "it's just a game" nonsense. In fact, about the last thing you want to hear in that situation is "it's just a game"...I think saying that to someone whose team has just suffered a devastating loss is grounds for breakup or divorce.