Shame on society for focus on losing

Why do we have such a fixation with failure?

Is frustration, or even heartbreak, a more satisfying outcome than success?

I’ve been thinking about that for some time now, but the cork finally popped last week.

Quick summary: The Washington Nationals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the fifth and deciding game of their National League Division Series.

The Nats thus advanced to the NLCS for a shot at the World Series, while the Dodgers were left to be picked apart like a dead animal set upon by vultures.

Can you name the three Washington players who hit home runs late in that pivotal game?

Most baseball fans probably cannot.

(The answer is Anthony Rendon, Juan Soto and Howie Kendrick, by the way, and they are terrific ballplayers, all of them. Rendon is a legitimate candidate for NL Most Valuable Player.)

But back to the Dodgers, who had the misfortune to lose — and thus instantly become massive chokers.

IF THE Dodgers were gag artists, their manager Dave Roberts — whom you wouldn’t have cared a whit about all season — had to be anointed as the dumbest bunny ever to screw up a fantastic baseball team.

Roberts, to hear it from most of the media, was out of his mind to call on Clayton Kershaw to protect a 3-1 lead in the eighth inning.

Why would he do such a silly thing?

America demanded to know.

Well, uh, Kershaw is on his way to the Hall of Fame as perhaps the best starting pitcher of this era — and in his postseason relief appearances, he’d pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings.

The truth is that any sane person would have trusted Kershaw with the ball.

Imagine the howls if Roberts had chosen someone else — the Dodgers didn’t have a reliable closer — and the Nats battered THAT guy.

As it was, Rendon reached for a pitch so low that it almost hit the dirt, and kind of golfed it without much authority.

In this juiced-ball era, however, Rendon’s fly ball nestled softly into the left-field seats.

So now it’s 3-2 and Roberts elected to stay with the lefty ace Kershaw to face the left-handed Soto — as you would have, as well, having just watched a fluke home run.

Then came Kershaw’s one truly awful pitch, something in the middle of the plate that was begging to be belted, and Soto obliged with a monstrous home run to tie the game.

Roberts was deemed to have blundered again when he left a lesser mortal, Joe Kelly, on the mound with the bases loaded in the 10th inning — and watched Kendrick unload a grand slam to end the Dodgers’ season.

MY BEEF here is that the entire narrative of that soon-to-be-infamous game surrounded a calamitous loss by the Dodgers, who along with the Yankees are baseball’s glamor boys.

By the way, I grew up near San Francisco and loathe all L.A. teams, so it’s not like I was upset with the outcome. The Dodgers now have gone 31 years without winning a World Series, and they can stumble along for another three decades, for all I care.

But...

Forget the Dodgers and poor Dave Roberts.

Where were all the stories about Rendon, Soto and Kendrick? The Nationals —whom we’re now realizing are awfully damn good — had NEVER won a postseason series.

Yet the public wanted to pick the Dodgers’ bones, again and again.

It isn’t just that game, either.

Here in our general neighborhood, the U-Dub football team and coach Chris Petersen were condemned as weak and unprepared when they lost at Stanford.

You had to be a librarian or the mayor of Palo Alto to find any words written or spoken about the underdog Cardinal — a team which played better on one Saturday afternoon.

Oh, hey, did you know the Huskies came back a week later and beat Arizona?

YEAH, BELIEVE it or not.

They rose from the dead but, look, they can still underperform this week against Oregon — with another inquisition waiting.

Wazzu?

Oh, they’re hot copy right now because of a catastrophe on defense — so even Coug fans are making wisecracks about them.

Surely there’s a caustic line about Mike Leach on the tip of your tongue.

Can we be serious here for a minute?

It’s all about the way we think these days.

Never mind heroes, let’s dig into the soul of the loser and concentrate on frailties.

A college basketball coach once mentioned something in my presence that’s obvious but often ignored.

Right after losing a game in which his team was favored, he faced the hungry media and said: “You know, they give scholarships over on the other side, too.”

That’s the point.

You don’t always “blow” a game. Sometimes you just get beat because the other gang played better.

Stories about that, though, don’t seem to satisfy the grumpy crowds these days.

We have to shame someone.

What the hell is wrong with us?

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball once monthly during the offseason. The weekly edition will begin Nov. 5.