Dodgers should leave 2020 broken and parade-less

The Dodgers should leave 2020 exactly the way it is. There should be no fairy tale ending for a year defined by brokenness.

Hollywood loves a happy ending. Television viewers and movie goers demand a happy ending. The 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers brought that happy ending by winning the World Series. But it was an ending the fans never got to celebrate.

The 2020 Dodgers overcame a 31-year World Series drought. They outlasted the Houston Astros cheating them out of a World Series in 2017.  Most impressive was that they were able to play the COVID-shortened season under strained conditions and only lost a single series.

But Hollywood loves a happy ending. The Los Angeles Rams recently won the Super Bowl. Rams fans were given the chance to vicariously participate in that championship through the traditional celebratory parade.

It was a parade that neither Los Angeles Lakers nor Dodgers fans were able to experience. Without said parade, 2020’s fans never got their vicarious celebration of accomplishment and release. Movies are not supposed to end like this. The hero always wins. But the year 2020 would ultimately play the villain who defeats the hero.

But, as we said, Hollywood loves a happy ending. Upon news of the Rams parade, Dodgers fans immediately began clamoring for a joint parade for their beloved team. They, too, want their celebratory feast, their closure on a broken year, their resolution to a year of quarantining, mask wearing and vaccinations.

2020 is broken. It will forever be broken. The year 2020 is the open ending to the movie. It is the plot line that is never resolved. It was the building of tension that never found its release. The guy truly lost the girl in the end.

Hollywood is denied its happy ending. Like Peter LaFleur in the original ending Dodgeball, the year 2020 has taken the happy ending away from Dodger fans. Just as LaFleur lost it all, so too are Dodger fans are tortured by having the joy of a championship they cannot celebrate.

Like that original ending of Dodgeball, many people lived the disappointment and heartbreak of 2020. We didn’t get to see our children attend prom or walk across the stage for graduation. We didn’t get to be in the delivery room when our children were born. We didn’t get to say goodbye when our parents died in the hospital.

Hollywood should be denied its happy ending. To attempt to bring closure, celebration and cathartic release to the open wound left in the wake of 2020 would be to deny the real pain people have suffered. It would be cheap bandage over the open, bloody gash in our lives.

No, 2020 is in the past. The pain and the scars are real. There is no cathartic release. There is no feast to honor reaching the promised land. The journey to the promised land was awash in tears.

Baseball is not Hollywood. It is not entertainment. It is the competition to survive, to be the last one standing when the last out is made. It is not a story to be told.

Instead, baseball is a mirror of life. The 2020 Dodgers lived to the end. They gave fans something to vicariously live through while they fought for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.

2020 sucked. It is a year without closure. It is open ended. It is a

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