2009-10-19 - 12:43 a.m.
I made a poet friend when I went out to Utah and the other day she sent me an email, to say hello, to check in, to talk a little shop. At the end, she asked, so what are you doing today, watching football? And she was joking and my first reaction was to apologize, to say, yeah, I was watching football but that's just because I was a little hung over or because my team was on.
But that would be a lie because my team wasn't even play that day. I've watched sports for a long time and like them very much and what I should have asked her but didn't was, hey, have you ever seen a two-seconds-left touchdown that wins the game and which was so improbable that half the fans had already left for the parking lot and who were kicking themselves for hearing about it on the radio? And have you seen a guy so excited about that touchdown that all that calculated swagger just leaves him for five seconds as he instead falls to his knees or does an awkward jump or just cries, he's so happy? Guys jumping and shaking all over after they score a big goal, and Kirk Gibson plopping a bottom-of-the-ninth homer into right field, afterward hobbling around the bases, one of his knees throbbing and little more than bone-on-bone? Because, when it's good, it's all high drama, and you can't get any more honest than you can in those crucial bunches of seconds when there is no posing and no bombast but instead only effort and will. And, then, the glorious moments just after the will wins, or doesn't, when the world is simply naked loss, or naked win. Watching those moments feels like some kind of alive.
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