October 28, 1991:
I was six years old and when my parents came into my room to
wake me up to go to school, I had only one question: Did the Braves win?
I can’t remember which parent woke me up that morning and,
yes, I had to look up the date, but I do remember the immense disappointment I
felt when I was told that the Braves had lost Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.
February 6, 2017:
I went into my son’s room to wake him up for school. He is
five. The first words out of his mouth were “did the Falcons win?”
I teared up, and told him that they did not win. His head
dropped.
For nearly four months I have wanted to get back to writing
my blog. There have been so many things going on in sports. I did post a single
blog that I wrote last year about my experience at the 2016 Masters, but each
time I began writing, I just couldn’t get into it.
I missed March Madness, the start of the Major League
Baseball season and the opening of Suntrust Park, the NFL Draft, UGA Spring
Practice, and maybe most importantly to me, the inaugural season of Atlanta
United.
Every single time I think about the Super Bowl I just shake
my head. I don’t want to relive it, and I’m not going to. You blame whoever you
want. You deal with it however you want. For me, the best thing to do is try to
put it into perspective.
The Super Bowl loss is the biggest cherry on top of Atlanta’s
Sad Sport Sundae. I’ve said it before and maybe at some point people will start
to believe me. There is no city in America that has dealt with more
disappointment from sports teams than Atlanta.
If you say the Chicago Cubs, I say Michael Jordan and the
Bulls. If you say Cleveland, I say you got Lebron James and an NBA title, not
to mention Ohio State football. I won’t even address Boston, which is now Title
Town, USA.
1.
1 professional title in nearly 50 years of professional
sports in this town. If you expand it to major college sports, all you add is a
national title for Georgia in 1980 and a shared national title for Tech in
1990. If you do the math, the 2.5 titles this state can claim divided by the
total number of seasons played, means that Georgia teams lose more than 99% of
the time.
Not only do we lose constantly, and many times in amazingly
dramatic fashion, but we also have to listen to the idiots in the national media
knock our city as a bad sports town. When the Houston Rockets lost to the Spurs
in game six of the Western Conference Semifinals a couple of weeks ago, there
were a lot of fans dressed as empty seats in the arena, but no one said
anything about it. The reality of the national media is that they are one of
the laziest groups of people getting a paycheck.
Don’t believe me? Just listen
to how many national shows will be talking about “Mount Rushmores” over the
summer. Lazy.
Atlanta isn’t a bad sports town; it’s just like any other
town in the country. When our teams are competitive, we fill buildings, and
when our teams are terrible, people find other things to spend their money on.
I say all of this for one reason.
One day, things are going to turn around for us. One day, we
will finish the job and the Falcons will win a Super Bowl. The Braves will win
the World Series again. Georgia will win another national title.
When the day comes that Atlanta is able to be a champion
again, I truly believe that the taste of victory will be that much sweeter
because of all the bitter losses we have had to endure.
I’ll never get over the Super Bowl. I’ll never get over the
2012 SEC title game. I’ll never get over the 1996 and 1991 World Series.
Fan is short for fanatic; I don’t have to be logical.
I am moving on. In the next week, I will be writing about
Georgia’s upcoming football season, what the Braves should do with the 2017
season, and I’ll try to convince some of you to try watching the very exciting
Atlanta United.
Time to bounce back.
