That's two years in a row that my team's star wide receiver scored a TD late to get the lead, only to see it slip away later, then watch a desperate comeback fail. It sucked. Seeing the Patriots lose last year was a shock. Seeing the Cardinals lose was a bummer. I don't buy into the "well they had a great year and should be proud they made it that far" talk. By the time a team gets to the Super Bowl, all they want to do is win. There's no way anyone in the Arizona locker room was talking about how much they proved by getting that far...they wanted to go all the way. And they almost did...
This got me to thinking...how many sporting events have I truly enjoyed? Not many. The fact is that when I care who wins, even if the team I want to win does, I don't particularly enjoy the game. I really enjoyed the Fiesta Bowl because I really didn't care who won. The same could be said of the uber-exciting 2003 Insight Bowl I attend with my brother. This past year's Insight Bowl was a blow-out of Minnesota by Kansas, so it wasn't very exciting. That's...about...it. I wouldn't even say that I particularly *enjoyed* the no-hitter I saw in 1999. This was, of course, an exciting game, but toward the end every pitch was excruciating because we were expecting a seeing-eye grounder or a broken-bat single.
I can't say that I ever truly enjoyed a Red Sox game, with the possible exception of this gem by Pedro Martinez. Strangely enough, this game was just a few weeks before I saw the no-hitter, so it was still fresh in my mind. However, since I always want the Red Sox to win, it's never truly enjoyable. Even when they do, like in 2004 and 2007, it's never enough to make up for the disappointment of 1986, 1999, 2003, 2008, and every other year that they weren't even close. I don't know what it is. I really would prefer not to care about sports. There are so many other things that are infinitely more worthy of my caring, but there are always times when they take a back seat to sports.
After last night's game, Joshua was literally crying his eyes out. I didn't think he cared. I really didn't. We all got pretty excited during the game and the emotion might have just been too much to him. Afterwards, when we'd gone home and he was lying in our family room, I asked him how much better his life would be tomorrow had the Cardinals won. Not much. Then why, I asked, should it be any worse since they lost? I don't know if he got it, but not 10 minutes later he was cheering me on while I was playing Boom Blox on our Wii. I thought I gave him some pretty good advice...I just hope I can take it for myself...
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