I'm not a Nats fan, but I watched their final game against St. Louis with some interest. I'd been to a few games this year (including the game where they clinched the division, even though they lost that night), and I have to say that the Nats are a genuinely fun team to watch.

Plus, I hate St. Louis. So, y'know, anything to make Cards fans cry is fine by me.

Of course, the Cards are the ones who stunned the Nats with four runs in the top of the ninth to complete a comeback from 6-0 down. This is tough stuff to swallow. Especially so for my neighbor and his sons, who were at the game.

Other neighbors have commented on the cruelty of taking kids to such a high-pressure game. "Now they'll be scarred for life," one of them told me.

Indeed they will. Absolutely.

I will also note that the neighbors making these comments aren't big sports fans, and they don't understand how such disappointment is a good thing. The fact that you wake up the next day and realize that the sun is still shining hardens that scar, but it also gives reassurance. There are possibilities in the new day.

My first experience with playoff baseball was 1976. The Royals had won the A.L. West, and they faced the Yankees in the league championship. Back in those days, these were best-of-five affairs. The series went the maximum, and when Chris Chambliss broke the tie with a home run in the bottom of the ninth, I was crushed. Chris Chambliss has remained a curse word for me every since. I was, indeed, scarred for life.

But it got worse. The Royals won 102 games in 1977. They were the best team in baseball. And they took a lead into the ninth inning of Game 5 (against the Yankees, of course). Their bullpen failed, George Brett threw away a throw to first and the Yankees won again. The image of shortstop Freddie Patek sitting with his head in his hands in the Royals dugout remains an iconic picture of the cruelty of the playoffs.

And, yes, it got worse. In 1978, the Yankees beat the Royals in four games to advance to their third straight World Series.

All of this led up to 1980, when the Royals swept the Yankees in the A.L. championship (precipitated by the most famous home run in team history, George Brett's 7th-inning shot off Goose Gossage in Game 3). Even though the Royals fell totally flat in the World Series (losing to the Phillies in 6), beating the Yankees in 1980 made up for all of those past failures. Mostly. Final redemption had to wait until 1985, when the Royals beat the Cards in the World Series.

All Royals fans hate the Yankees. Younger fans hate the unlimited budgets afforded the Bombers. Fans of a certain age (like me) hate the Yankees for 1976-1978. Yes, we are scarred for life. We hate the Yankees. And that is a very good scar to bear.

Young Nats fans have a team very much like the 1976 Royals: Young, loaded with pitching and immensely fun to watch. It's almost unimaginable that this team won't be competing for the playoffs for the next five years or more. Playoff success is a crapshoot, but sustained excellence is not. The Nats have built an impressive organization, and I'd be shocked if they won fewer than 90 games in any of the next few seasons.

Scarred for life? Yes, indeed. Life is a contact sport, and the playing fields are often capricious. The good often lose, and the evil often triumph. Of course, definitions of good and evil are inconsistent and impermanent as life itself. Maturity (and wisdom) is the ability to come to terms with reality without compromising your own ideals.

No matter what, it's better to believe in something and experience failure than to sit around and not get involved at all.

Most of us still have a long way to go there, no matter how many scars we might have.

Jon Worley doesn't believe that sports are a metaphor for life, though he does believe that if Shakespeare were around today two of his plays would be titled George Best and Gazza.