Where to start? Thank you those folks that sent me texts and emails. One of my favorite sports books of all time is Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. Hornby is obsessed with the London football club Arsenal. He sees every home game, lives just blocks from the stadium. Arsenal are very good now but he suffered through many long long seasons where they were not very good at all. The chapters are organized by games he saw live or on TV, most live. This quote is from The King of Kenilworth Road Luton v Arsenal 31.8.87.
"With football, there is none of this randomness: you know that on nights like the '89 Championship night, or on afternoons like the afternoon of the 1992 Wrexham disaster, you are in the thoughts of scores, maybe even hundreds, of people. And I love that, the fact that old girlfriends and other people you have lost touch with and will probably never see again are sitting in front of their TV sets and thinking, momentarily but all at the same time, Nick, just that, and are happy or sad for me. Nobody else gets that, only us."
ESPN made a documentary about the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team. (The whole jingoistic angle is played a little too heavy for my taste but it is a good doc about those kids.) And after hearing John Sterling's very classy call when the Rangers clinched, it made me think of that doc and an interview w/ one of the Russian players who lost. He posited that the Russians were so used to winning that it was a marvel and wonderful to see the pure unaffected joy of the Americans, something he and his teammates had not felt in a v long time.
Lastly, there is something I have been wanting to post on facebook and here for a v long time but did not (worried about jinxing the Rangers post-season run.) I was going to post it during World Cup. This is it:
"The only thing more stressful for me to watch than this US Men's National Team would be if the Rangers ever made it to the World Series. And that will never happen."
Well it did. Get ready Giants. The Rangers fly in to SFO Monday night.
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