A Ten Year Old at the Plate With the Bases Loaded

Which side of the line do you fall on? Are you happy living in what is perceived as the “age of parity?” Or do you pine away for a simpler age? A time when you knew the San Francisco – Dallas winner would be dousing Gatorade over the head of their coach on Super Bowl Sunday, or the era you knew that the Canadians would be drinking from Lord Stanley, the Lakers and Celtics battling for hardcourt supremacy, and (perhaps most polarizing of all) you could bank on the maniacal domination of the pinstriped evil empire. The leagues themselves love parity, and why not. For Paul Tagliabue and the head honchos in the NFL offices it makes economic sense to champion the chances of each team each year. After all, even the most die hard fan eventually succumbs to decades of despondency. They love that they can regale the downtrodden with tales of the ’99 Rams, who went from a weepy eyed Dick Vermeil led 4 – 12 to a weepy eyed Dick Vermeil led Super Bowl victory. Thus, all 639 remaining Cardinal fans need not despair, while they might stink this year, next season could be completely different (well, ok, maybe not for the Cardinals, but there’s still hope for the NFL’s other franchises).

For casual fans the enticement is obvious, your team could rally at any time and if you time your jump well enough, you can always hope onto the bandwagon to wave your very own Rally Monkey in the playoffs. But for me, a man (well, boy really) whom my Girlfriend would bemoan as the biggest of sports fans (poor girl didn’t know what she was getting herself into…), well for me, parity is good and all, but a dynasty, well a dynasty’s the cat’s pajamas, or the dog’s tuxedo if you will.

On Saturday as I sat down to watch what might have been the single most hyped college football game in history, I wondered what exactly it was that had me cheering for USC to continue their phenomenal streak of 27 wins by defeating Notre Dame. I’m not from Los Angeles, I didn’t do any of my studies at the University of Southern California, nor did any of my close relatives. I don’t particularly dislike Notre Dame, so it isn’t as though I am pulling a reverse cheer or anything. Really, the only reason I pulled on the old USC pom-poms was because they are the two-time defending National Champions trying to win an unprecedented third straight title. So why do I cheer for the dynastical Trojans? Certainly a large part of my support comes from my history obsessed nature, Unless a team does something particularly special (like the perfect ’72 Dolphins) a team which wins one or two championships simply isn’t as historically significant as the team which steam rolls to three, four, five… it isn’t as though the one offs are forgotten, but nobody talks about the 94-95 Rockets being one of the greatest teams of all time, they do however discuss the greatness of the 91-93 and 96-98 Bulls.

Yet as I watched Pete Carroll’s Trojans epic victory over the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, I realized that my passion for dynasties goes far deeper than any historical reasoning. It strikes right at the heart of me as a sports fan: the child in me has never grown up. I remain, eternally, the ten year old boy standing in my backyard, bat in one hand, tennis ball in the other, game 7 of the World Series, my team down 3, bases loaded, count full, and I’m swinging for the fences… No child dreams of being the utility infielder who never makes it off the bench; they dream of greatness: of feathering that perfectly weighted pass from behind the net, like Gretzky; jumping up and down, hands extended, fingers pointed skyward after another Montana like touchdown pass; or of shedding the defender like tissue paper before draining the championship shot with a la Michael Jordan. The child in me watches dreamily, while the adult in me cherishes the opportunity to witness someone do sublimely what I cannot. Without question the enthrallment to brilliance extends beyond the sports realm. I am fascinated by genius, not the sort denoted by the Intelligence Quotient, but true genuine brilliance, of the sort that allows a six year old child to play Mozart with the ease most adults play chopsticks. Yet sports is the realm that makes the most sense to me, if for no other reason than because it is on the field where the ten year old boy in my heart wants to be: standing on the Notre Dame field, 80,000 rabid Catholics screaming for blood as though I were a pagan battling a lion to the death. Only in this case, death is the season, my place in history, the hopes of an entire University and its millions of supporters. And the lion is a Notre Dame team which has shown nothing but heart, pride, grit, and strength in taking me to the brink of defeat. What does it feel like, on 4th and 9, the game all but lost, 80,000 people bursting out of their seats in anticipation of Victory, what does it feel like to shake off a terrible day and throw a perfect pass for a 61 yard gain. Or better yet, what does it feel like as time virtually expires to push, shove, fight, scrape, and ultimately spin and fall into the end zone. Do you realize at the time that you are making history?

Watching it on television my heart was exploding, each pound surely sending surges of blood through my body, but to be there, in the house of Knute Rockne, the Four Horsemen, and Touchdown Jesus, to be there in front of 80,000 people, not to mention the millions who were watching on television and the millions more who had been drawn into watching the final moments, well, well… I’m just not sure that my imagination is good enough to “be Matt Leinart” as he falls over that goal line. But I do know that either way, it will be there tomorrow night sinking the winning putt, hitting the game winning home run, or, maybe, just maybe leading my team to greatness.