This Is Why Sports Are So Great

A few years ago (2007 to be exact), right after the Colorado Rockies had beaten the San Diego Padres 9-8 in 13 innings in one of the greatest games ever to make the playoffs, I wrote an article for my old website. I described how I watched the game deep into the night with my boy Sam, who was only 10 at the time.

We were the only ones left awake in the whole family, because the game went way past 11:00 on a school night. I wrote about how, when Matt Holliday tied the game up in the 13th with a two-run triple, and then scored the winning run a minute later, how we both were silently running around the room, jumping up and down like idiots.

It's a night I'll never forget.

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you about that is that there have been four moments in the past few weeks that have been similar, and I'd like to try and make the same point I made three years ago.

First, let me tell you guys about the things that have happened recently:

For both of you that regularly read this shit, you've probably noticed that my men's league team, Dawgs I, just won the winter league championship. The videos and hundreds of pictures are a dead giveaway. Just look below this article if you want all the details.

I won't rehash everything, but we had to win two games in a row against a very good team in order to win the title. So we won the first one, 7-5, coming up with five goals in the third period after being down and out.

And a couple of nights later, we were down 5-3, and bounced back one more time to win the damn thing 6-5, getting the winning goal with three minutes left, and hanging on for dear life at the end. It was the best thing I've been a part of in over 30 years of adult league sports.

When the game ended, I threw off my glove and blocker, and the first one over was our captain and my best friend on the team Marty, and we bear hugged and jumped up and down like morons for a minute. The rest of team joined in, and we were all in one big mass of humanity, screaming like teenage girls at a Jonus Fags concert. It looked like this:



Keep in mind that while we have a lot of kids on the team (some still in their teens), some of our guys are in their forties, and there are even a few old fuckers like me in their 50's. But there we were, young and old, all in about a six foot circle screaming like idiots.

It was fucking brilliant.

Here's the next example. About a month ago, Sam's bantam hockey team (13-14 year olds) was in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin playing in a tournament. I'm one of the coaches on the team, mostly because nobody in the organization knows about this blog, or I'd probably be out on my ass.

Anyway, we lost in the semifinals, but had a chance to play for a big third place trophy Sunday morning before we flew home. It's important to note that this team, in five years of play, had won a big bag of jack shit when it came to tournaments and playoffs. They had never scored a trophy. Ever. But here was our opportunity.

Sam was in goal, and we were playing the local Chip Falls team for the hardware. It was a great game, and we were all tied up at 3-3 at the end of regulation. That meant six minutes of overtime to try and decide the winner.

We played the six minutes, and both teams had great chances to win. Sam pulled a couple of saves out of his ass to keep us alive, and we were still knotted up at three.

Shootout time.

Both teams would send four skaters on a penalty shot, one on one with the other goalie, and best out of four would win the prize. No pressure or anything- just a chance for my kid to win the first team trophy in his life.

I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Superbad, but there's a part where the guy that works at the liquor store shakes his head, and says softly, "fuck my life". So before the shootout, I called Sam over to the bench. He skated over, looked up at me, and said "Dad, f my life". I was proud he said "f"- I would have said "fuck".


He was saying "f my life" right there

I did everything I could to calm him down. Right before we left for Wisconsin, the team had shootout practice, and he stopped all 15 of our skaters without letting in a goal. I focused on that.

"Dude, you stopped every one of our guys last week, and they're a lot better than the guys your facing right now. You're good at these- just relax and have some fun. You got this." I could tell by the look on his face, he wasn't as sure about it as I was.

They started the shootout, and of course their first skater scores. Nice pep talk, dad.

But we answered right back to tie, and it seemed to settle down Sam a bit. He stopped the next guy with his blocker, and we scored on our next try to lead 2-1. The next Chip Falls skater made a great move, but Sam stayed with him and made a beauty of a save with his left pad to keep it 2-1.

Now all we had to do was score on our next try and the trophy was all ours. But no, our player Chef couldn't convert, and it was still 2-1. They got one more chance to level it up.

I looked over at Sam, held up my index finger, and mouthed the words "one more". Their guy skated in, put the same deke on as the last player, and Sam stretched out that 28 inch left pad one more time.

He got his toe on it, and it bounced away. Game over.

Sam's normally really calm- it takes a lot to get him to show emotion. But he popped up, threw his stick and both gloves in the air, and started jumping up and down, spinning in circles while he jumped. Total euphoria.

Sam then got to experience what it's like to be at the bottom of a pile with 16 teenagers on top. He'd waited for so long to experience a moment like that, and it only happens a few times in a guy's life. If he's lucky.


He's under there somewhere

And I got to lean on the boards at our bench and just soak it all in. I've been his coach the whole time he's been playing, and I've waited many moons to see something good happen to him. Kids, it was better than sex.

So two weeks later, we're in the league playoffs against a team from Littleton that just happens to have Joe Sakic's son on it. Playoffs are single game elimination- you lose and your season ends right there. And we'd lost to Littleton both times we faced them in the regular season.

The game was tight the whole night. We scored early, and they tied the game in the second. And that was it. One apiece at the end of regulation. Now it was six minutes of overtime skating four on four instead of five on five.

Both teams had great chances to win in overtime, but both goalies were keeping everything out. Overtime playoff hockey, especially when the loser goes home, is the most intense thing I think that happens in sports. And the pressure a goalie feels is enormous. Any other player can make a mistake, and play goes on. The goalie makes an error, and it's time for the end of the year party.

They played the six minutes, and still no winner. In the playoffs, they don't settle anything with a shootout- somebody has to score to win. Except that starting the second overtime, they play three on three. Boys and girls, that is a lot of open ice when Bantams play three on three.

But unbelievably, nobody could still score. Sam stopped a ton of two on ones and breakaways, and the other kid was standing on his head in the opposite net. And you could tell that they were both exhausted.

Just seconds before the end of the second overtime, Littleton came down three on one, and got off a great shot. Sam slid over and somehow kicked it out, and our only player in sight slapped at it to just get it out of the zone.

It went right to our forward Mitchell, who was so tired he was still out of our defensive zone. Littleton had committed all three of their skaters on offense, so Mitchell was by himself. All he had to do was find the energy, and he had a clear breakaway. The problem was he was gassed, and there were less than 10 seconds remaining in the second overtime.

He turned and took off for the other end. I was watching the clock as he approached the goal. There were four seconds left when he crossed the offensive blue line. With two seconds left, instead of shooting, he deked the goalie and cut across the net to his left. The goalie opened his pads just enough, and Mitchell tucked the puck through his legs.

There wasn't a half second left when the puck crossed the goal line, but it was good as gold. The ref pointed to the puck signaling a goal, and all hell broke loose from our bench. Half the kids went to the other end to swamp Mitchell, and the other half tackled Sam. Sam was so tired, he could barely stand back up. He saved 42 out of 43 shots. That's a shitload of rubber for a Bantam goalie.

I asked Mitchell the next day where that goal ranked on the list of best things that ever happened to him. He said "Number one- nothing else comes close".

The last thing I want to tell you all about came two days later, when we played Arapahoe in the league semifinals. We all knew a win would give us a real shot to be invited to the state tournament. We also knew that we hadn't beaten Arapahoe all season, and had only generated 11 shots in each game. They were very good, and we were playing on their home ice.

We came out hot and got the first goal, but Arapahoe came back in the second and early in the third to score the next three. So with seven minutes left we were down 3-1, and there wasn't a lot of hope on our bench. I guess the easiest part for me was that Sam wasn't playing- it was our other goalie Mac's turn. Sam was standing next to me at the end of the bench- that's my spot to open the door and send out our defensemen.

With about six minutes remaining, Sam's best friend Ian ripped a low shot and beat their keeper to get us back to 3-2. Then we went on a power play with four minutes left, and our leading scorer Jacob rifled a beauty into the top right corner and it was a new game.

Now the kids were flying. It's amazing how the momentum can change so quickly in a hockey game. You can be getting your ass kicked one minute, then something good happens, and now you're the one doing the ass-kicking.

There was just over a minute left when my best defenseman Noah took the puck in our defensive zone and headed the other way. Normally about three or four times a game, he'll rush the puck up the ice himself and try to create a scoring chance. This was one of those times.

He beat their winger at center ice, and came into the offensive zone at full speed. He accelerated around their defenseman to the outside, and then cut back across the front of the net. He then quickly snapped a wrist shot that hit the very top right hand corner of the goal- the Arapahoe goalie never had a chance.

I've always been a goalie, so I've never been on the bench before when such an important goal was scored. It's tough to describe- it was almost like an explosion. The kids all mobbed each other, and the coaches that were down on the other end of the bench were going nuts.

As for me, I jumped up and down like a little kid. No shit- a 51 year old man literally leaping up and down. My car keys, wallet, cell phone and several erasable markers were strewn all over the floor behind the bench- they had come out of my jacket pockets during the celebration.

The best part was during about the third leap, I looked to my right, and Sam was doing the same thing right next to me. And he had mad hops for a kid in full goalie gear. He was getting big air. Then we grabbed each other and jumped some more. It reminded me of three years earlier, when Holliday came bouncing across the plate on his chin for the Rockies, and Sam and I were running around the room silently so we wouldn't wake everyone up.

But this time we could be as loud as we wanted. And you can bet your ass we were.

We ended up winning the game and getting invited to state. We'd never been past the first round of the playoffs before, but this team was going to freakin' state.

So now I've told you about four things that have happened, and I'm finally ready to get to my point. That's if you haven't given up because there aren't any of the usual goofy pictures.

The things that I've just described are some of the many reasons that sports are so goddamn great. I submit that there is nothing in this world besides sports that can make a person feel such pure, sudden, spontaneous joy. Nothing else can make a 51 year old man with bad knees jump up and down like a kid. Nothing else can make a parent scream for joy when their son or daughter scores a goal, hits a home run or makes a basket. And nothing else makes a group of 16 men gather in a six foot circle, hugging and screaming like idiots.

Nothing.

You might argue that you get the same feeling when your kids are born. Don't get me wrong- the days my kids were born were the best four days of my life. But we knew they were coming- there was no real surprise or spontaneity. There wasn't the same "it just happened out of nowhere" feeling. It really isn't the same thing, is it?

There's an 80's movie called Vision Quest, where a guy describes watching Pele score a goal one day while he was watching Spanish TV. He says "I started crying, because another human being can kick a ball and lift himself and the rest of us sad assed human beings up to a better place- if only for a minute. Kid, it was pretty goddamn glorious."

It really is. I'll leave you with one last example. You can always remember where you were when bad stuff happens, like the Kennedy assassination, or 9/11. But if you were alive at the time, can't you also remember where you were when this happened and how you felt at that moment that's in the picture?

Me, too. Talk about spontaneous joy...