How are you coping, Seattle?

Upon returning home Sunday from Arizona, site of the latest Huskies football catastrophe, I found some kids playing baseball at a nearby park.

It looked like a practice; what for in early October, I don't know. I didn't care, either. I just craved a few minutes of unfettered sporting enjoyment — no hot seats, no losing streaks, no angry banter.

Remarkably, while watching those kids for 20 minutes, everything went away. It didn't matter the Seahawks were trailing 34-6 when I last checked, didn't matter I was still befuddled over Washington's 48-14 defeat at Arizona, didn't matter the Mariners lost 101 games or Clay Bennett ran off with the Sonics.

For a few moments, I achieved balance and perspective. When the kids made mistakes, I laughed instead of sighing. I smiled a time or two dozen. Nothing about the experience carried great importance, except to those kids, and that was the most gratifying part. It was sports in the simplest form. It was fun.

So, my column today isn't an analysis of futility. It's a question.

In these cheerless times, where do you go for your sports pleasure?

Are you adopting new teams that don't get much mass-media attention?

Are you finding that mocking your snakebit teams soothes your angst?

Are you, dare I ask, seeking comfort in the arms of foreign teams?

At this point, all coping techniques are valid. Seattle isn't just enduring misery. The city is enduring a curse. Has to be. It's so bad you should wonder if the Chicago Cubs trespassed recently.

Even with an amazing rally in the final three months, 2008 cannot escape being an all-time clunker. You know the heartache too well, from the Sonics to the Mariners to the Huskies to, apparently, the Seahawks. The four most-prominent teams in town all have major problems, and only one has provided a solution. Unfortunately, that was the ultimate err of the year: The Sonics are gone to Oklahoma.

So, what now?

Do you wallow in athletic pity? Or do you champion alternative means of sporting happiness?

Have you recommitted to high-school athletics? Now would be a good time to do so — but without the obsessive vicarious living.

I've never covered a high-school event and left mystified. That was true even during an interesting experience while I was in college. I had written an ill-received story about the struggles of the Glasgow (Ky.) High School football team, and the next time I went to a Glasgow game, all of the players' mothers were allowed into the press box to scold me at halftime.

It was truly surreal. Fifty women were in a cramped room screaming at me, and I could only nod and take it. It was probably the most humbling memory of my career. But I left the football field that night laughing.

These days, I leave confused and conflicted. For instance, after calling for a merciful end to Tyrone Willingham's Huskies tenure Saturday, I walked out of Arizona Stadium with a headache. Enduring the blowout was bad enough, but it's never enjoyable for me to say a hardworking man should be fired.

If it ever becomes enjoyable, I will quit the business. Although these are merely games, although coaches get fat paychecks even when they're dismissed, we're still talking about damaging someone's career.

In Willingham's case, we're still talking about a good man who's done nothing worse than lose too many games. He's not a villain. He's just a coach who is failing in his effort to rebuild a program that was 1-10 when he inherited it.

In the big picture, there are far more worries in life. But for all the goodwill generated when a sports team succeeds, the exact opposite occurs when one fails. The negativity becomes a monster, and any time I write an opinion that happens to feed it, I struggle with myself.

As a columnist, I'm only loyal to my thoughts. However, internal conflict is only human.

Most events I cover these days result in scathing commentaries. What's happening is pathetic. What's happening is unfathomable. What's happening leaves us with a quandary.

How do we escape?

What's your method? What in the sports world makes you happy when the major local teams turn irrelevant?

How can you smell the flowers when everything around you stinks?

It's necessary to wonder that now. We're likely stuck in this funk for the rest of 2008. It might even linger into 2009.

What are you doing to cope? In this case, there is no wrong answer.

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com. For his Extra Points blog, visit seattletimes.com/sports