One Shining Moment, Every Season
My friend Claire always wonders what makes us love sports so much. By “us”, of course, she means guys who have severe Claire-attention deficit problems when a game of even minor interest is broadcast over television, radio, internet, or via grunts and hand signals nearby. I’ve thought about her question for close to four years, much more so this past hockey season as each time the Devils lost, I sunk into a foul mood that even Ben & Jerry’s could not redress.
I think the answer hit me after the Devils decided not to show up in Philadelphia last Friday night. We love sports and sporting events because, for a short time, we do not distinguish between the players and ourselves. When they win, we win; when they lose, we lose and feel anguish; when they flirt with disaster our heart rate skyrockets and when disaster is averted by a goal post, poke check or shot that sails wide, we breathe easier on our way to the bathroom or beer cooler. What man hasn’t personally felt (or at least imagined) the cold ground striking the back of Charlie Brown’s head as Lucy snaps the football away from him? Even in cartoons, we time share with our favorite players.
I think this self-identification is part of the charisma that drives March Madness to ever increasing levels of public visibility. You can be a fan, an alum, or just a long-shot bettor on a school that doesn’t get so much as an ESPN Bottom Line score during an entire academic year, but once you make the Dance, everybody wants to be you if only for a little while. It’s also why all men tear up, ever so slightly, as CBS rolls “One Shining Moment.” We get to trade mental places one more time, and when the clock strikes midnight all of the Cinderellas, young and old, begin to dream of next year’s ball.
I came to this deep, Ganesh-given insight thanks to Bubba, who noticed my funk on Saturday morning. “Even if the Devils don’t do well in the playoffs,” he argued, “another season starts in the fall, all over again.” That was it. We love sports on a tribal level, wearing the colors, designs and marks of our alter egos, but we also love them on a temporal level. The seasons change - football, hockey, baseball, vacation, as the joke goes - and yet things don’t age as long as we have a fresh scoresheet, an empty stats page and an entire schedule of games to fuel our double lives.
Now that college basketball has been safely tucked away for the summer, it’s time to truly focus on the rites of spring: Passover, NHL Playoffs, and the disaster known as the Yankees bullpen.
Tags: yankees