"Every man has his breaking point"
- Red, speaking of Andy Dufresne, inthe Shawshank Redemption
On January 24th, I thought I'd reached mine...
When I was about 5 or 6 years old, I got my first football jersey. It was a Pittsburgh Steelers, Mean Joe Greene replica. I believe they beat the Rams that year in the Super Bowl. It was my first football memory. The combination of the Super Bowl victory and thesweet-looking jersey made mean instant Steelers fan. Sometime, somehow,in the next year,I switched allegiances. I don't recall how. Maybe it was the Kramer-to-Rashad Hail Mary .Maybe I thoughtbeing a Steelers fan was too easy. After all, they had won all the Super Bowls I had ever witnessed...
Just to clarify, I am not an advocate of violence against children (except for the ones on 'Are You SmarterThan a Fifth Grader'. I'veonly seen about 5 minutes of that show - enoughto find that,apparently, I am not). That written, for most of the last 2 weeks,I wanted to go back in time and slap my 6 year-oldself upside the head. Too easy? Really? To quote Mr. Hand ,what are you 6 year-old Paul,on dope?? So many times, we, as Vikings fans, have been teased, only tobe tortured byDarrin Nelson's drop, Gary Anderson's miss,taking a freakin'knee, Nate Poole's catch, and Spurgeon Wynn.And despite the multitude of cruel near misses, I've always come back for more. Maybe it was the naivete of relative youth, but within a few days of all those losses,Iwas over them. I quickly got back to believing that next year would be OURyear...
It's beenover 2weeks now since 12-men-in-the-huddle, the interception, and the OT screw job.I am just nowstarting to come toterms with it.Call me a pathetic whiner if you wish, as a rather curmudgeonly old sportswriter seems all too willing to do, while seeming to forget that he himself has a rather annoyingwhiny voice, and that local sports fans, even the whiny ones,do, in fact,help securehis gainful employement.But I digress. What made the Saints game so difficultfor me was that when the Vikings had somehow overcome all thebumbling, fumbling, etc to getthe ball to the 33 yard line, I just KNEWthey were going to win. It seemed so fitting thatsuch a star-crossed franchise would finallybreak through in sucha strange way. Well,we all know what happenednext. (A disclaimer for what I'm about to write -I realize it's just a game and thatthere are far more important matters and questionsto concern ourselves with right now, likeearthquakes, theeconomy, andthe location of the nextJersey Shore season.) That game was flat-out devastating.Ithad me questioning my Viking fandom. Why would I keep subjecting myself to this type ofmisery?It certainly didn't help that some buddies, my brothers, and Ihad a trip to Miami planned, only to end upspending Super Bowl weekendin the upper midwestduring Snowpocalypse 2010. The best analogy Ican think of isspending an awesome 4 months witha really hot girl(the Super Bowl trophy, I guess? Bear with me...), only to have her suddenly dump you. Then,she twists the knife bymarrying thepopular guy who everybody loves (read: New Orleans, everybodyLOVESNew Orleans. No, I'm not bitter...). Sorry if that doesn't make sense - other than my wife, I haven't really dated any hot girls (I know what you're thinking - dude has an internet blog , I thought women would be taking numbers).Anyways, Idid what anyobsessive, irrational, and slightly unbalancedfan would do - I took2 weeks off from sports -almostentirely. No KFAN.No college basketball. No ESPN - not even" the Ocho". About 5 minutes of the Super Bowl. I didcheck out the Strib a couple times to see what the Twins were up to (pretty good offseason by the way, with the potential to be borderline great with a Mauer signing), but that was basically it...
Until tonight. Ihappened upona MLBnetwork recap of the 2004major league baseball season. The opening of the program showedAaron Boone'spennant-clinchinghomerun for the 2003 New York Yankees. By blowing a 7th-inning, 3-run lead to their biggest rival,that gamemay have been the most gut-wrenching loss in Boston Red Sox history. Imagine blowing a 21-point, 2nd-half lead to the Packers witha Super Bowl berth on the line.The following year, theRed Soxfaced a 3-0 deficit in the ALCS following a football score-loss in game 3 (19-8).Things couldnot have looked bleaker.If you follow baseball at all, you know what happened next - theRed Sox, fueled by a combination of talent, desire, andanabolic steroids,made an unprecedented comeback against the Yankees on the way to their1stWorld Series title in86 years.Keep the faith Vikes fans - it will happen. Let's just hope it doesn't take86 years...
Thanks to you all for reading throughout this year. I have enjoyedthe opportunity to blog here and will continue to do so until theykick me out. I opened this blogwith a quote from one of my favorite films. So I thought it appropriate to close with one: