Great pains.

Sports can break your heart. It does that. A lot.

It builds up for half a year at a time to single moments, when your heart is about to bust out of your chest, with a storming brew of nerves and excitement and fear and fearlessness, and something completely out of your control feels like it belongs to you, for better or worse, which is a gross understatement of terms because I can’t come up with something else that sounds more right.

It numbs you at the same time as it makes you feel as alive as almost anything can. It hurts, and it heals. It’s exhausting and energizing.

It’s real, and unreal.

It gives you hope to reach up and cling onto, legs dangling, and it crushes dreams, regularly.

If you’re lucky.

Because the heartbreak — the brutal, painful, kick-in-the-junk heartbreak — beats the holy hell out of the indifference and nothingness of teams and seasons that don’t break your heart because they never manage to grab it in the first place.

I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan and a Texas Rangers fan, and I was rewarded with 2016. Including the dual heartbreak, 98 days apart, instant plug-pulling after regular seasons for each that led to a number one seed.

I’m a Cowboys fan and a Rangers fan, and I was hoping for a lot fewer days between the end for one and the start for the other.

Heartbroken, again, but grateful that there are 31 days between football and Pitchers & Catchers, and not 45.

Grateful for the sports-pain.

Again.