Giants 21 - Patriot’s 17; From an outsider’s point of view.

Something occurred to me last night. Something I never knew about myself. At some point between Tom Brady being sacked for the final time by the Giants to seal their Super Bowl victory and noticing the sheer agony on my beloved girlfriends face, I realized that when it comes to heart-wrenching professional sports losses, I am a completely callous bastard. I really need to work on my empathy towards my friends who were saddened by the Pats loss last night.

It took my girlfriend to yell at me while I marveled at Mario Manningham’s unbelievable catch in the final crucial moments of the game for me to realize my mindset going into this thing had been screwed from the get go. It took the look of complete hopelessness on her face when I looked at her, for me to finally realize; “Holy Shit, you’re not used to this sort of thing, are you?”

As I lied there, on my couch, overcome by the frigid realization of how horrible it must be for this person next to me to endure these sporting emotions for the first, maybe second time in their lives, I kept my mouth shut when she barked at me; “How would you feel if this was the Brown’s in this situation. You would be freaking out”

I kept my mouth shut for several reasons, mainly because I know there is no reasoning with someone in the grips of sports-related shock. They say Polar Bears are the most dangerous mammals on the planet; well I am pretty sure that disappointed sports fans could give them a run for their money.

I also kept my mouth shut for the fact that I had nothing nice to say in reply to her. In my head, all I seemed able to land on was “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how thrilled I would be if the Browns even made it to a Super Bowl, in my lifetime? I wouldn’t care if they lost by 38 points.” To say this back to her would have been hopelessly counter-productive.

The main reason I kept my mouth shut was because I know exactly what she was going through. I know how futile any words or actions are to soothe the disappointment she was feeling. Lucky for her she was able to make it to adulthood before enduring such wounds; I got to learn about that kind of pain when I was eight.

To be honest with you Jessie, if it were the Browns in that situation, I would have been sitting next to you, stoic and unsurprised by their failure, speechless, yet calm, because I was freaking out in 1987 when I learned about the game of football as John Elway marched the Bronco’s down the field in the final moments to a touchdown in the AFC Championship, crushing the Brown’s Super Bowl dreams.

I was irate a year later, in 1988, when Brown’s running back Ernest Byner could have simply fallen down into the end zone through a hole, large enough to drive a dump truck through and instead fumbled on the one yard line. And as his fumble was recovered by those same hated Bronco’s, another AFC Championship was lost and another Super Bowl was missed.

For me, the worst came two years later in 1989 in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, as the Cavaliers, out of a timeout, called a defense that would inevitably force Craig Ehlo to switch onto Michael Jordan. You can imagine who won that matchup. By the time Ehlo had jumped and landed again, Jordan was still rising through the air in his signature fade away jump shot, with less than a second left on the clock, he sent a line drive shot that hit the back of the rim, rattled around for what seemed like an eternity, and then unmercifully fell through the basket, winning the game for the Bulls and sealing the fate of, what is still to this day, my favorite Cavaliers team of all time.

It was this game, when I was 10 years old that I really, consciously realized how horrible the world of a professional sports fan could be. Little did I know how these losses, I would carry with me forever, stains on my soul.

I wish I could say that this was the end of this torturous journey for me, but since, I have had to endure a blown save in game 7 of the World Series by Jose Mesa, allowing the Florida Marlins to win the game in the bottom of the 9th, with 2 outs, crushing the championship dreams of the Indians in 1997. I again had to watch them lose to the Braves in another World Series and lose to your Red Sox in the ALCS after winning the first two games of the series.

I have endured being a fan of a basketball team that until recently, made the playoff’s every year for six seasons and never managed to win a championship, even though they had the best player in the word on their side.

I have had to watch that best player in the NBA spurn my home town, live on ESPN, to announce he was joining the Miami Heat which also happened to take place on my 30th birthday.

Fast forward two years when I am expected to empathize with someone about a sports team, which I’ll be honest here, I sort of half care about to begin with.

At first I felt like the victim, of a person taking this sports loss out on me as I ogled at Mario Manningham’s miraculous fourth quarter catch. I felt like I was being attacked, used as a punching back. Then I thought about it. Look at the body of work it has taken for me to become so hardened to this sort of disappointment, a decade’s long siege of soul crippling misery for me to transform into a person who doesn’t even so much as bat an eye to losses by my teams that I root for.

I am so used to it, that I expect it now. Even if the Brown’s had been in the Patriot’s shoes, and say they were up by 28 points, with two minutes left, I would still be sitting back waiting for the other shoe to fall. Surely, John Elway would come out of retirement for that final five minutes or the gates of hell would open along the 50 yard line consuming every Brown’s player, and leaving the Giants as the victors by forfeit. This is just the way it is for me and how it always has been.

I firmly believe that there is a certain amount of a person’s soul that is dedicated to sports disappointment. And once it is filled, it cannot accommodate anymore; like being caught in a rain storm, eventually you can only get so wet before any additional water just runs right off. That part of my being has been supersaturated with devastating disappointment for a long time now, and there is nowhere left to tack on anymore.

This is why I immediately went back to using the brand new paper shredder I purchased at Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday as the final seconds ticked off the clock in the Super Bowl; my girlfriend marching around the apartment, throwing things and completely beside herself. There was no consoling her, just as there was no consoling me in 1989 as I hyperventilated on the stairs of my childhood home, my parents imploring me to just breath in my nose and out my mouth as I watched the Cavaliers leave the court, and Michael Jordan celebrate his achievement.

In a way, if you are going to choose to continue rooting for sports teams, it is better to be like her. To react like that shows that she still holds out hope for her teams, something I don’t do anymore. The fact of the matter is, your disappointment stems from the fact that most of the time, your teams win, which is why this comes as such as surprise to you. Rooting for a collection of teams who have never won anything in my lifetime, and as of today do not seem real close to changing that inconvenient fact, eventually transforms you into the callous bastard of a sports fan, I am today.