“In ‘Confessions of a Winning Poker Player,’ Jack King said, ‘Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.’ Walking in here, I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can’t stop thinking about the way I lost it.”

— Mike McDermott (Matt Damon), “Rounders”

Oh yes. You know about this. You are a sports fan, so while you may never have lost three stacks of high society to your bad beats, you’ve surrendered something else, something worse, something much, much worse: small chunks of your sanity. Large swaths of your rational brain.

And oh, so many sleepless nights.

I woke up to over 100 text messages Wednesday morning, screeds and pleas and off-kilter ramblings from that faction of my friendships who care about the Mets. It wasn’t just the furies and grievances posted in these wonderful, angry, gloomy missives, it was the time stamps: 3:17 a.m. 3:55. 4:17. 5:05. 6:17 (and that was the West Coast Bureau checking in).

Such is what becomes of a sports fan’s inner peace when a 10-4 lead in the ninth inning becomes an 11-10 loss that had social media virtually bursting Tuesday night. The Mets had the Nats beat, and then they didn’t, and the fact that it happened on the third of September with the Mets purportedly in a pennant chase multiplied the malevolence by a million.

Caring about sports, when your team does THAT, is like chugging three thermos-fulls of black coffee five minutes before bedtime. Two hours later, you’re counting sheep (but you’re not really counting sheep, you’re reliving every pitch thrown by Paul Sewald, Luis Avilan, and Edwin Diaz).

We’ve all been there. If you care about sports, if you REALLY, absolutely, preposterously care about them with the blind, inexplicable passion so many of us do, then of course you know what it’s like to be staring at a ceiling (or over-working your thumbs on a smart phone) at 4 in the morning.

I have a friend who still can’t get over the Flipper Anderson Game, no matter that there have been three Giants Super Bowl winners since. I know Yankees fans of one generation for whom “Luis Gonzalez” qualifies as an obscenity, and of another generation who can’t say “Bill Mazeroski” without breaking into a cold sweat (27 championships or no 27 championships).

Awful losses don’t need context, they often just need a word or two: “The Gastineau Game” and “The Fake Spike” for Jets fans. “The Finger Roll” for Knicks fans. The Mets? Sure, they’d never blown a six-run ninth-inning lead before, but if you are of a certain age there are three names listed consecutively than can coax you into immediate spasm: Terry Pendleton, Mike Scioscia, Alex Gordon. Say the word “Lanny MacDonald” to a fifty-something Islanders fan, see what happens. Or “DeSean Jackson” to a Giants fan.

Me? On March 16, 2000, my alma mater, St. Bonaventure, led mighty Kentucky by three points late in a first-round NCAA Tournament game. The press pass around my neck precluded me from any sort of emotional commentary other than to alert my neighbor on press row, “We – uh, I mean they – REALLY ought to foul here.”

The period wasn’t yet in place when Tayshaun Prince, later a hero with an NBA champion in Detroit, swished an overtime-forcing 3-pointer. It took two gut-splaying overtimes but the Bonnies lost, 85-80. As I write these words, that was 7,111 days ago. And there are STILL mornings I wake up out of a deep sleep and want to shout “FOUL TAYSHAUN PRINCE!!!!!” loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

Mostly, I don’t do that. Mostly.

And it isn’t a choice. This isn’t something sports fans seek out, after all. Sports is supposed to be fun. Sports is supposed to be an escape. Sports is something to occupy our spare time, those gaps between paying bills and arguing with the boss and negotiating with the guy putting siding on your house. It isn’t supposed to be agony.

Until they become horribly, blindingly, debilitatingly, sleeplessly agonizing, anyway.