As a sports fan, I have been party to several great moments.
I am an Arizona native, and when the underdog Diamondbacks defeated the mighty Yankees in game seven of the 2001 World Series, I was in a room full of men who had probably never hugged each other in their entire lives. Yet, as soon as that Luis Gonzalez blooper landed in center field, we all leaped out of our seats and embraced each other in an act of instinctive, unrestrained joy.
I am a lifelong Denver Broncos fan (predating the Cardinals migration to the desert). I watched John Elway through his whole career. I watched him suffer through three humiliating Super Bowl defeats. And then came Super Bowl 32 (screw Roman numerals). With the scored tied 17-17 in the third quarter, and the Broncos facing third-and-six at the Green Bay 12, Elway dropped back to pass, couldn't find an open man and took off up the middle of the field. He was nearing the first down marker when strong safety Leron Butler cut him off and prepared to explode into the 37 year old quarterback's body. Quarterbacks are supposed to slide in that situation. Elway didn't. Instead he went airborne and recklessly threw his body into the oncoming tackler. Butler's hit spun Elway around in mid air and he landed just in time to absorb more punishment from defensive back Mike Prior. First down. Anyone who was watching knows that was the pivotal moment in the Broncos first Super Bowl victory, and it perfectly summed up Elway's career. I got legitimate chills while I was watching it. Hell, I'm getting chills writing about it.
I could list many more special moments I enjoyed as a spectator, but the greatest moment of my life-in-sports came not as a spectator, but as a player.
I played a lot of organized basketball growing up, but that came to a halt once adult responsibilities (job, wife, kids) intervened. And then, after several years of inactivity, some friends and I decided to join a recreational adult league. Most of the players on the team had very limited organized basketball experience. So we didn't necessarily expect to be good, but we at least hoped to be competitive. Those hopes were quickly dashed. Most of the other teams in the league were made up of guys who had played high school ball together. They were bigger, stronger, more experienced, more skilled and vastly more athletic than us. We were absurdly outclassed in just about every facet of the game.
One of our opponents was not quite at the level of the elite teams that were regularly crushing us, but still significantly better than we were. As it happens, this team was made up entirely of deaf players. So naturally we referred to them as "The Deaf Team". In this league, each team played every other team twice. The first time we played The Deaf Team, we were soundly beaten. Then came the rematch.
Fast forward to the end of the fourth quarter where we find ourselves in the familiar position of being on the wrong side of a double digit deficit. Down by 11, with 2:30 left to play, I drive to the hoop and score two. On the next play, somehow our atrocious defense manages a stop. Then, with a couple minutes on the clock, my brother--who was our three point sharpshooter--drains a trey to cut the lead to six. Miraculously, we get another defensive stop. Now hope is begin to creep in ever so subtly.
We feed my brother the ball praying for another three, but he is smothered by a double team, so he finds me in the corner...and I knock down the triple instead. We're within three! Another stop! We have the ball with less than a minute remaining! Once again my brother is tightly covered. The ball rotates around. It ends up in my hands. I spot up from the wing, and with a hand in my face, I can my second of back-to-back threes. Tie game!
But not for long. The Deaf Team races down the court and breaks our Thermopylean defensive stand with a two point bucket. We're back down by two. 10 seconds left. The Deaf Team sets up in a full court press. My brother is our best ball handler, but two defenders are on him like a strait jacket, so I race to the ball and receive the inbounds pass. I start my dribble, but immediately two men converge on me. Even if I could dribble out of it, there is no time. And the only open man down court is the player on our team with virtually no basketball experience, and a complete inability to shoot. Not the guy you want holding the ball with the game on the line. But there's no other choice so I wing a pass into his hands. And then, as I feared, a defender sprints over, grabs the ball, and ties him up. Game over.
But wait! Our player--who is maybe 5'7" and weighs 130 pounds soaking wet--is overcome with the heart of a lion and wildly twists his body, tearing free from his Goliath-sized defender. Unfortunately, now he's falling down with two ticks left on the clock. But my brother, who had rushed to his aid, is standing nearby, at the top of the key just beyond the arc. He flips the ball to my brother, but there's only one second left. There's no time to spot up, or even look at the basket for that matter. As soon as the ball touches my brother's fingertips, he just hurls towards the basket in one fluid motion on pure instinct. The buzzer goes off. The ball banks in.
I wish I could say, "The crowd goes wild", but there were perhaps half a dozen people in that musty old gym, and I'm not even sure how many of them were watching the game. But it didn't matter. As my brother leaped into my arms and I held him aloft while we were mobbed by our teammates, I was suffused with such unadulterated elation, that it's hard to imagine the victors in the NCAA title game feel any better.
And that's the point. This game could not have been any more meaningless if it was pick up hoops in the park. But we had played our hearts out, and we had won, and for one shining moment, we were on top of the world.
That's what I love about sports.
