| Yes, money dominates sports. Yes, owners are greedy egomaniacs
constantly blackmailing their cities. And yes, there are way, way too
many commercials. But the bottom line remains, we still love those darned
games. Here's 10 reasons why:
1. Wrigley Field. The Cubs may break hearts by the thousands each
summer, but I know at least one couple that got engaged at the corner of
Clark and Addison one opening day. And why not? The happiest place on
earth is the Friendly Confines with a seat in the bleachers, a beer in
your hand, the sun on your face and the wind blowing out.
| | Sammy Sosa's success story is one of the great joys about sports. |
But it's not just Wrigley. All stadiums, even the domed ones, are
our homes away from home. More than mere points on the Rand McNally, they
are etched into our personal cartography as permanently as the ink in an
NBA first-rounder's tattoos.
2. N.C. State 54, Houston 52. You won't win the lottery. You won't
date Cameron Diaz. You won't buy a thousand shares of a hot tech stock at
its IPO. But improbably wonderful upsets happen all the time in sports,
swelling our hopes with limitless possibility.
In sports, you never know. As Yogi put it, "It ain't over 'til
it's over." Just when things seem gloomiest, when time is running out
and everyone insists you can't win, when the boss wants that report
pronto and you just want to hoist the white flag and hide in your
cubicle, who knows, you just may find the ball in your hands and Lorenzo
Charles open underneath the basket ...
3. Eddie Robinson. From the darkest days of segregation in the '40s to his retirement in the late '90s, Grambling's grand man taught
class after class of young men about life, giving them direction and
purpose and, along the way, also showing them how to play football pretty
well, too. Robinson exemplified the best of those coaches at all levels
who touch us, who know that growing is more important than winning, whose
instructions help long after the final game. Those people you can
honestly call a role model.
Of course, your opinion may differ during line drills.
4. Notre Dame Fight Song. You never feel more alive than while
walking across campus to the stadium on a crisp fall afternoon and
hearing the school band strike up the fight song. If the first chords of
Notre Dame's fight song don't start your heart pounding, you probably
didn't cry at the end of "Brian's Song," either.
5. Sammy Sosa. He grew up so poor he sold oranges on the street
and wore an old milk carton for a baseball glove. Through baseball, Sosa
escaped that poverty to become a hero in two countries, so much so that the
president of each honored him. As Sammy says, "What a country."
It's a frequent tale in sports. Regardless of an athlete's
background, whether he's a Dominican orange seller or the child of a millionaire
baseball player, sports still provides a commodity more coveted than a
Mark McGwire home run ball -- opportunity.
6. The Green Bay Packers. There isn't a lot to do during a Green
Bay winter (unless Billy Ray Cyrus is on tour), but for eight decades
residents have had their Packers. And I mean, their Packers. The owners in Green Bay are like you and me, shivering
in the snow instead of entertaining corporate clients in a heated luxury
suite. From Don Hutson to Brett Favre, the Packers have made Green Bay
the warmest community in the nation.
That's the power of sports. In impersonal times when people know the names of all the Baldwin brothers but not their next-door-neighbors, sports
remains one of the few areas that still provides a sense of community. Be
it thousands of cheese wedge-topped fans cheering in Green Bay or
thousands of baseball-capped fans mourning in Red Sox Nation, sports
brings people together like nothing else does. Or can.
7. Michael Jordan. There are certain moments in sports so
beautiful they seem almost choreographed for the stage -- and I'm not
talking about the Bob Fosse-like routines players perform after a
touchdown. McGwire connecting with a fastball. Elway connecting with a
receiver. And that most perfect moment of all, the one that never failed
to bring us to our feet and our jaws to the floor as we were awestruck by
the wondrous possibility of the human body: Jordan on a tongue-wagging,
gravity-defying, no-luggage-to-check flight to the hoop.
8. Mets 4, Atlanta 3, 15 innings. We aren't impressed by much in
this entertainment-drenched society where television channels number in the
dozens (and those are just the home shopping channels). But a game like
Game 5 of this year's NL playoffs glues our eyes to the screen with the
attention normally reserved for a canine watching its owner open a can of
dog food.
In a sitcom age, the unscripted drama of sports still makes us
forget our homework, forget our worries, even forget how to breathe --
forget everything that is, except that neither Cox nor Valentine has
anyone left in the bullpen or on the bench and Piazza had to take himself
out with a sore arm and the Mets just have to win and isn't sports great ...
9. Box scores. And the games need not end. These little rectangles
preserve games forever. Reading the box scores, Roger Angell once said, is
like "a musician who reads a piece of music and can hear all the
instruments playing."
10. Any team, anywhere. Be it in the majors, high school, Little
League or co-rec softball, nothing compares to being part of a team.
Warming up together, cheering each other on, sharing drinks after the
game ... is there anything else that inspires such camaraderie? You may
not remember your wedding anniversary but you'll always remember exactly
how it felt to be in a locker room before the big game, surrounded by
your teammates and knowing, just knowing, that you were going to win.
Although your spouse may disagree.
Jim Caple is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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