The ivy, the cheeseheads, the drama
By Jim Caple
Special to ESPN.com
ESPN.com
Yes, money dominates sports. Yes, owners are greedy egomaniacs constantly blackmailing their cities. And yes, there are way, way too many commercials. But the bottom line remains, we still love those darned games. Here's 10 reasons why:
1. Wrigley Field. The Cubs may break hearts by the thousands each summer, but I know at least one couple that got engaged at the corner of Clark and Addison one opening day. And why not? The happiest place on earth is the Friendly Confines with a seat in the bleachers, a beer in your hand, the sun on your face and the wind blowing out.
Sammy Sosa's success story is one of the great joys about sports.
But it's not just Wrigley. All stadiums, even the domed ones, are our homes away from home. More than mere points on the Rand McNally, they are etched into our personal cartography as permanently as the ink in an NBA first-rounder's tattoos.
2. N.C. State 54, Houston 52. You won't win the lottery. You won't date Cameron Diaz. You won't buy a thousand shares of a hot tech stock at its IPO. But improbably wonderful upsets happen all the time in sports, swelling our hopes with limitless possibility.
In sports, you never know. As Yogi put it, "It ain't over 'til it's over." Just when things seem gloomiest, when time is running out and everyone insists you can't win, when the boss wants that report pronto and you just want to hoist the white flag and hide in your cubicle, who knows, you just may find the ball in your hands and Lorenzo Charles open underneath the basket ...
3. Eddie Robinson. From the darkest days of segregation in the '40s to his retirement in the late '90s, Grambling's grand man taught class after class of young men about life, giving them direction and purpose and, along the way, also showing them how to play football pretty well, too. Robinson exemplified the best of those coaches at all levels who touch us, who know that growing is more important than winning, whose instructions help long after the final game. Those people you can honestly call a role model.
Of course, your opinion may differ during line drills.
4. Notre Dame Fight Song. You never feel more alive than while walking across campus to the stadium on a crisp fall afternoon and hearing the school band strike up the fight song. If the first chords of Notre Dame's fight song don't start your heart pounding, you probably didn't cry at the end of "Brian's Song," either.
5. Sammy Sosa. He grew up so poor he sold oranges on the street and wore an old milk carton for a baseball glove. Through baseball, Sosa escaped that poverty to become a hero in two countries, so much so that the president of each honored him. As Sammy says, "What a country."
It's a frequent tale in sports. Regardless of an athlete's background, whether he's a Dominican orange seller or the child of a millionaire baseball player, sports still provides a commodity more coveted than a Mark McGwire home run ball -- opportunity.
6. The Green Bay Packers. There isn't a lot to do during a Green Bay winter (unless Billy Ray Cyrus is on tour), but for eight decades residents have had their Packers. And I mean, their Packers. The owners in Green Bay are like you and me, shivering in the snow instead of entertaining corporate clients in a heated luxury suite. From Don Hutson to Brett Favre, the Packers have made Green Bay the warmest community in the nation.
That's the power of sports. In impersonal times when people know the names of all the Baldwin brothers but not their next-door-neighbors, sports remains one of the few areas that still provides a sense of community. Be it thousands of cheese wedge-topped fans cheering in Green Bay or thousands of baseball-capped fans mourning in Red Sox Nation, sports brings people together like nothing else does. Or can.
7. Michael Jordan. There are certain moments in sports so beautiful they seem almost choreographed for the stage -- and I'm not talking about the Bob Fosse-like routines players perform after a touchdown. McGwire connecting with a fastball. Elway connecting with a receiver. And that most perfect moment of all, the one that never failed to bring us to our feet and our jaws to the floor as we were awestruck by the wondrous possibility of the human body: Jordan on a tongue-wagging, gravity-defying, no-luggage-to-check flight to the hoop.
8. Mets 4, Atlanta 3, 15 innings. We aren't impressed by much in this entertainment-drenched society where television channels number in the dozens (and those are just the home shopping channels). But a game like Game 5 of this year's NL playoffs glues our eyes to the screen with the attention normally reserved for a canine watching its owner open a can of dog food.
In a sitcom age, the unscripted drama of sports still makes us forget our homework, forget our worries, even forget how to breathe -- forget everything that is, except that neither Cox nor Valentine has anyone left in the bullpen or on the bench and Piazza had to take himself out with a sore arm and the Mets just have to win and isn't sports great ...
9. Box scores. And the games need not end. These little rectangles preserve games forever. Reading the box scores, Roger Angell once said, is like "a musician who reads a piece of music and can hear all the instruments playing."
10. Any team, anywhere. Be it in the majors, high school, Little League or co-rec softball, nothing compares to being part of a team. Warming up together, cheering each other on, sharing drinks after the game ... is there anything else that inspires such camaraderie? You may not remember your wedding anniversary but you'll always remember exactly how it felt to be in a locker room before the big game, surrounded by your teammates and knowing, just knowing, that you were going to win.
Although your spouse may disagree.
Jim Caple is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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