“I’m sorry for introducing either of you to sports,” my dad wrote in a text to my brother and me. “Please forgive me.”

Moments before receiving this text, I watched helplessly as USC baseball suffered a walk-off Super Regional defeat to North Carolina, shattering the Trojans’ College World Series dreams at the last possible moment. I sat stunned, head in my hands, in utter disbelief.

This one hurt, man.

It’s bad enough that they were up 3-2 heading into the bottom of the ninth. It’s bad enough that, with a win, they would’ve made it to Omaha for the first time since 2001. What made this particular loss even worse was that I genuinely believed they were going to pull it off.

As a lifelong Mizzou basketball fan, I’ve learned over the years that “hope” is nothing more than disappointment just waiting to happen. It doesn’t matter how far ahead your team is or how much is left in the game; sooner or later, it’s all going to come crashing down.

So, how did I manage to have hope in this baseball team? The short answer: I mean, how could you not? 

As early as February, I was already making wild claims about USC being “something special” after it won its first seven games — a streak that eventually reached 19 wins in a row as baseball rapidly became the talk of the town. Even as the Trojans began to face tougher competition, they never truly fell back to Earth, ending with their highest win total since 1998.

If you’ll recall, quite a few of those wins came at home, where USC finally got to play after waiting out the construction at Dedeaux Field for the past two years. The Trojans wound up going 32-1 in front of their home fans, a staggering statistic that I cannot imagine anyone could have predicted.

And, while the roster was far from being a bunch of nobodies — junior pitcher Mason Edwards and sophomore pitcher Grant Govel were both just named All-Americans — it’s not like USC came into this season with the type of buzz UCLA was getting over in Westwood. How’d that No. 1 ranking pan out for you in the tournament, fellas?

The resulting package appeared to be a team of destiny. They had the narrative of coming back home after years away; they had the underdog mentality, hiding in the shadow of their biggest rival; and, most importantly, they had the wins to back it up. By the time the Trojans won back-to-back win-or-go-home games over Texas A&M to reach the Super Regional, I was convinced: Nothing was capable of stopping this team.

Alas — my hubris. My poor wax wings.

A truly heartbreaking loss like this one makes me reconsider why I watch sports in the first place. Why do I invest so much time and emotion into a group of men playing a game when I know I’m just going to end up sad because of it? Why even bother?

Then I remember: There is no destination without the journey. There is no thrill of victory without the agony of defeat.

If I didn’t await each pitch with bated breath, I wouldn’t erupt in joy during the final out. If I didn’t mope around campus after a loss to UCLA, I wouldn’t scream the fight song with a sea of people after a win. 

Unless you’re a Los Angeles Dodgers fan who hopped on the bandwagon after Shohei Ohtani signed, losing is just a part of the process. It isn’t a very fun part, to be sure, but it means that the eventual taste of victory will be all the sweeter.

Okay, enough high-school-valedictorian-speech mumbo jumbo. I’m still sad about USC losing. So what’s next?

Well, almost all of the key pieces from this year’s squad still have at least one more year of eligibility; however, that doesn’t mean they’ll be staying with the Trojans.

Sophomore catcher Augie Lopez, the team’s leader in home runs, is already reportedly entering the portal, and I’m sure he’ll be far from the only one. Edwards is certainly headed to the MLB Draft as well, dealing a major blow to a pitching staff that was USC’s strong suit all year.

To be honest, though, I’m not particularly worried. Head Coach Andy Stankiewicz has made it clear that this is just the beginning of the program’s return to greatness, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s extra active in the portal this offseason. Plus, given how the Trojans fared over the past few months, I imagine more players will want to join the team rather than leave.

I’ll go so far as to make an official prediction: One year from right now, USC will be playing in the College World Series. Book it.

Wait a minute … that sounds like hope. Have I learned nothing?

Bennett Christofferson is a rising senior writing about baseball’s biggest stories and controversies in his column, “Dugout Diaries.” He is also the managing editor at the Daily Trojan.