Does writing a blog mean your opinion matters? No, but we’d like to think so. Does writing a sports column a in said blog make you an authority on sports? I’d like to think so. Will anyone care what my top team (including year) for each of the four major sports is? Damn right.
The playoffs are always the right time to have me remember my favorite teams of the past. Given that the Sox and the Steelers are the only ones that give me potential hope, I go back to the days when my teams made me fall in love with them. It’s like a sweet 16 romance, except without the movie dates and seeing which one of your buddies has the guts to buy contraceptives knowing full well he’s not going to use them until their shelf life expires. Now on to the dance …
1999 New York Knicks
Had 2004 never happened, this may have been my favorite pro sports team ever, and they didn’t even win a championship. Sure, the 1999 season was shortened due to the strike, but man, those Knicks sure can make up for the drama. Keep in mind, I was 16, and five years removed from the hell that was seeing the Houston Rockets steal the Finals from the Knicks. We were the eighth seed that year in a stacked Eastern Conference. Alan Houston’s game five prayer against the Miami Heat had me in tears, literally. There was no realistic reason we should’ve beaten the Heat, the Hawks or the Pacers. But through divine intervention combined with Larry Johnson, Houston, Charlie Ward, Marcus Camby, Chris Childs and Latrell Spreewell, the Knicks had me going into June thinking I’d have bragging rights for a year.
Then the Spurs happened. Patrick Ewing was injured, and honestly I don’t believe we even would have won with him. But for the first time in my pubescent adult life, one of my teams made me believe. They made me giddy to the point that my parents were sure I was fighting off death when Marcus Camby posterized Dikembe Mutumbo in Atlanta. Sure, no one outside of Madison Square Garden will have the nostalgia of a four-point play quite like LJ, but if only you could.
1994 New York Rangers
I couldn’t even tell you why in 1992 I picked the New York Rangers to be “my team.” I guess growing up in Richmond, Va, you have your choice. Its been 14 years since Lord Stanley has graced a team I felt remotely deserving of it (I still hate Detroit). My memories of this, and hockey for the most part have faded, but seeing Mark Messier approach middle-age and still skate like he was 18, even then I knew it was magical.
2004 Pittsburgh Steelers
Sure its cliche, but lightning in a bottle. I didn’t even know who Ben Roethlisberger was, much less spell his name correctly. But when Tommy “XFL” Maddox went down in Week 2, quite frankly I was happy to see anyone outside of Kordell Stewart step in.
The rest as they say, is pseudo history. Yeah, we ran into a bit of a problem with the New England “Don’t Call It A Comeback If You Say Spygate” Patriots, but up until then …
You have to realize my quarterback issues in Pittsburgh. I was not alive when Terry Bradshaw couldn’t spell “cat” and won four Super Bowl titles. My life as a Steelers fan has consisted of Neil “Oh %^*@ that was a Cowboy” O’Donnel, Mike Tomzack (yeah, I want to hear nothing from you ‘Skins fans), Stewart, Maddox and Kent Graham. So, to have Big Ben come in and not only play, but lead us to an NFL-best 15-1 record, I was astounded.
I mean we could not find a way to lose, it was unbelievable for me to have my team destined for a Super Bowl. Sure, it was a year delayed, and we’re not even going to go into what happened in Detroit in February of 2006, but for one season, and ever since, my one concern was solved.
2004 Boston Red Sox
If I could re-live that fall all over again, I would pull a “Groundhog Day” trigger and never let it stop. You want to talk about vindication? You want to talk about an exorcism of demons that you thought would never leave? You want to talk about calling your parents at 1:30 AM because you don’t know what’s fueling you other than the adrenaline? You want to talk about drumming on Chugs’ car because you have literally thought of every other way to celebrate? You want to talk about calling out a local townie at the bar because he is a Yankees fan and looks like Santa? Welcome to my October.
I called people I had not talked to in years, I had Yankees fans who I had known forever refuse to look me in the eye. I had my team absolve me of every season I had watched a Yankees logo be placed on a championship ring. (Side note: at least five of those Yankees fans have not spoken to me since)
If you’re not Bryan McBournie or me, you probably won’t understand. If you are of the Red Sox Nation, the real Nation, you know all too well.
To appreciate the highest of highs, you need to feel the burn. Well, hell for me was games 1-3 of the ALCS. Everything after that, let’s just say if you were a Radford University student in 2004, you knew who won the ALCS and the World Series whether you wanted to or not. That fall will never happen again, but if it only happened once every 86 years, well damn, glad I was born when I was.
Top five things that annoy me in sports this week:
I already did a list, leave me alone.