1 Down, 1 Still Standing

I began following sports (basically hockey and baseball) around 1980 or so, when I was 7 or 8.

For baseball, by far my most beloved sport, it has been nothing but disappointment. I was an Expos fan from the start and they never won anything. Spring after spring, summer after summer, sometimes close but never close enough. Then, the year they had the best team in baseball and were on their way to the NL pennant, the season was cut short by a player's strike. Their star-studded team was dismantled and traded away before the league started up again. Finally, a series of weasely fucking owners, businessmen and politicians literally conspired to move the team from Montreal to Washington DC in 2004 and that was the end. Now, I cheer for my hometown Blue Jays. In my 26 years of passionate attachment to baseball, I've never watched my team win the World Series.

As for hockey, in 1980 I randomly picked the Edmonton Oilers to cheer for because they were playing Montreal in the playoffs on the night I first watched a game. It was basically a toss-up. I didn't know anything about either team. Turns out I picked the right one. They went on to win something like 4 or 5 Cups when I was young. Then when Gretzky was traded in 88 (by then I was a big Gretzky fan and I even had Gretzky wallpaper in my bedroom), I abandoned Edmonton and switched allegiance to Los Angeles with Gretzky. (I was also developing an anti-corporate ideology and interpreted the trade as a cold-blooded business move on the part of the Oilers millionaire owner, Peter Pocklington - all the more reason to turn my back on the team. [Ironically, Gretzky himself has turned out to be the ultimate corporate whore, allowing just about anyone with cash to exploit his legacy in a whole series of maudlin tv ads over the last few years.]) I spent a few years cheering half-heartedly for LA but it never really felt right. I was essentially without a team. Then, in 92, I moved out on my own with my friends to Ottawa and that very year the city had a brand new NHL expansion franchise, The Senators. The Sens and I were starting out on our life's journey together, so to speak. So I adopted them as my team and suffered through some of the worst hockey that has ever been played professionally as they went through their growing pains as a group of castoffs and pimple-faced draft picks. Gradually they got better and now, 14 years later (Oh my god, where is the time going?), they are one of the best teams in hockey. And yet, yesterday, they were eliminated from the playoffs again this year.

It's now been 18 yrs since I tasted the ultimate victory of a fan whose team has won it all. Such are my disappoints as a sports fan... the Oilers' cups are nice but I was young and I got lucky, getting on the bandwagon just as they became dominant. There's a greater victory in having suffered through lean years with your team or to know that you've been there from the start... This is why, although the Sens have left me feeling down this week, I can still say that I have a chance to celebrate victory as I type this. You see, from the very beginning, when I was sitting on the couch one evening and decided against my better judgement to see what it would be like to actaully watch an episode of American Idol, I have been rooting for Taylor Hicks to win this year's title. And, unbelievably, he is still in it! In fact, he might be the favorite of those who remain! One can hardly compare the two: the Stanley Cup and AI but, hey, I'll take anything right now, so this will do for the moment (and we'll see where the Jays are in September...)