Five Talkin’, Pt. 3: The Sporting Life

Mid-January provided back-to-back nights that scored high on my Sports Hate meter: Tom Brady’s Buccaneers were routed by (North) America’s Team on Super Wild Card Monday night then Asspicker (R*f**l N*d*l) lost in straight sets to a former college champion from UCLA in the second round of the Australian Open twenty-four hours later, a tournament ranking among the most enjoyable tennis majors in recent memory. As satisfying as it was to see them both licked, it transpired simply because of their advanced years and war wounds. Still, I argue, a loss is a (perhaps too pleasurable) loss. Unwilling to delight in their misery for long—I’ll be picketing 80 for Brady screenings to remind cineastes that the two-time Superb Owl loser once impregnated two women within a nine-month span, not unlike their Public Enemy No. 1 Nick Cannon—it spurred on an idea that had been percolating for months: a return to “Five Talkin’,” the biannual list-o-graphs celebrating my top five favorites within specifically selected categories. (You’d think I wouldn’t have to explain this anymore—and that I’d have created a better description, or even a tagline—but when navel-gazing this deep into one’s umbilical hole, what’s another sentence plus em dashed digression?)

Having previously tackled art and food, the obvious passion in need of a nostalgic nosedive is sports. Early during the pandemic, I convinced myself that I could hack it without the bulk of them for years, hell, maybe a lifetime. Sometimes I fool myself because my passion for many doesn’t burn as bright as in my first three decades, but several continue captivating and consuming me, and the stuff capable of thrilling me on a level equal to how it always has at times makes fandom more rewarding than ever. Delaying the inevitable is only fun for circle jerk taste testers (didn’t see that one coming/no pun intended) and Susan Lucci, so let’s get to it, we shall. *plays John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock,” the NBA on NBC theme you’re now humming, that soundtracked games back when I found the sport not merely watchable, but more Must-See than any TV defining the era/talk about a long aside, huh?/sure beat listening to nonsense sung about tossed salad and scrambled eggs*

Athletes
Mariano Rivera
There are few times in my life I’ve felt worse for someone I didn’t personally know than when Mo blew the save in game seven of the 2001 World Series. The bad throw to second base? A one-off. The subsequent tying run? Hey, it’s been the longest season on record, gotta win the fourth straight championship in extra innings. And Luis Gonzalez’s wimpy hit to dethrone the Yanks? It hurt because it wasn’t supposed to happen to my athletic idol. The man embodied consistency, simplicity, and dignity. Seeing his first ballot Hall of Fame smile after he ended another game never failed at making me beam in turn. My regrets for not worshiping him in a playoff game in person are offset because I saw his last game, a farewell to a man who made me feel the warm way I assume old-timers did about Mantle or Munson (minus the pointless anger I should be directing at Zoomers for not caring about America’s pastprime). I stand by taking an inebriated college debate position where I would entertain no arguments to the contrary about why he’s the first guy you should select in an all-player draft due to his level of unparalleled consistency. A career snapshot: jogging onto the field while Metallica blasts, throwing one pitch twenty times, and producing the desired conclusion ninety-ish percent of the time. Odds are we won’t see another two-decade modern athlete as mystical as Mo, which is why I recognize the MLB-wide retirement of #42 to be partially in his honor.

Michael Jordan
My father tried like hell to imbue me with his passion for reading and collecting comic books, but the superhero of my youth was MJ (and not the Lakers' MJ who my father loved more). I cannot fathom being a kid who came of age as a '90s sports fan and didn't love the most consistent big game player in history. He fulfilled all late game clichés that I dreamed about while using a NERF hoop in my 10x10 bedroom, often suspiciously willing to miss a final shot to uplift my Ghost Opponent’s spirits. If anything, I should mention how much I also loved Scottie Pippen, the one guy the Air Bear (sorry, not sorry/on second thought, sorry again) thanked without a backhanded putdown during his Hall of Fame induction speech. Scrutinizing The Last Dance, the ESPN documentary about this man and his ‘90s Bulls, was as joyous as flipping through old family camcorder tapes (inserted into larger VHS tapes), a reminder of how much bliss watching a stranger succeed brought me (my mother, equally taken with him, examined nearly all the playoff games too). Hell, I loved him so much that I refused to read my copy of The Jordan Rules, too afraid I’d learn unpleasant shit that would rot my rose-colored childhood specs. (Doubt I’ll read it now either.) This man is the sole living human being I would designate to be God.  We’ll get there although I fear where it will take our dearly beloved, the “Crying Jordan” meme.

Andre Agassi
Before I detail my love of Double A, a shout to his spouse, Stefanie Graf, who still ranks as the single most dominant athlete I've seen (wish I'd been around earlier to see more of Wayne Gretzky, my pick for the most dominant team sport athlete). Can’t say I wanted her to win early on, but as she neared the end of her career, it was ultimately impossible not to be wowed by FKA Steffi’s ability to crush anyone in her path. As for Andre: his run at the 1994 U.S. Open made me ecstatic, plus it ensured that boring dud Pete Sampras finally had someone who could prevent him from sweeping majors (Roland Garros aside). As I’ve written before, I vividly recall Andre winning Wimbledon in ‘92, but I also white knuckled a recliner during his two sets down comeback to win the career grand slam at the ‘99 French Open. Something about a short, bald speed freak was aspirational: I wound up taking tennis lessons one summer, not that I could serve, volley, or do much more than towel off the ‘spiration exiting my per, but this man was the reason why. Agassi’s memoir, Open, is one of the finest sports books you'll read, a gritty career retrospective that runs you around as vigorously as he did all the baselines he encountered. Still wish his wig had fallen off once during a match. Imagine if he’d picked it up & used his forehand to rocket the fake ponytail into the grandstand? Advantage, Merkin. What?

Roger Federer
You probably have your own favorite sports profile, but I submit David Foster Wallace’s lengthy breakdown of the sports world’s most suave (just give us suavest, OED) man, a guy whose elegantiasis [sic] and inability to sweat were matched by a gracefully robotic brilliance with a racket in his hand. It’s too bad both Asspicker and Is Wayne Brady Gonna Have to Djokovic surfaced, not because the competition was unwelcome, but because their charisma and likability combined is a mere fraction of what the Swiss Maestro possesses despite their requiring equal press coverage. Arguably more than any other athlete, I cannot play devil’s advocate and summon a solitary reason why any neutral party would choose to root against Fed’s preeminence, but they’re likely the same folks who also loathe milk chocolate and time. When Fed beat Andy Roddick in ’09 to win his fifteenth major, surpassing Sampras’s record, and donned a jacket on Centre Court immediately afterward to commemorate the achievement, people jeered that he was arrogant; some of us don’t deserve a King Shit of Fuck Mountain. I would watch a reality show where this man cooked omelettes, filled his bird feeder, ironed, and completed virtually all conceivable domestic tasks, really, because of how effortlessly cool and fucking perfect he would make them look. Case in point: RF posed with Blackpink the other night and it might as well be the next Bond movie poster.

Emmitt Smith
I’ve been a fan of three NFL teams in my life: the Giants, the Cowboys, and the Jets. My greatest love affair was with Emmitt and the boys, a group of cokeheads and egomaniacs who had fun stomping on teams for four glorious seasons. Barry Sanders was undoubtedly more entertaining, but Emmitt’s ability to zip through defenses, score touchdowns, and save all his point-earning balls was a ritual I could get behind. One year for Christmas, both my cousin and I asked for full pads, jerseys, helmets, etc. so we could play backyard football; my inspiration was Emmitt, and even though we played games in our unsullied fatigues no more than five times, I like to think the future Dancing with the Stars champion would’ve respected the hustle. Imagine if he competed in Career Swap with his stepdaughter’s dad, Martin Lawrence? There’s Emmitt gamely refusing the advances of Sheneneh while Martin, in a shock to no one, averages more than sixty yards per game rushing behind an offensive line that was more concerned with getting Troy Aikman concussed than letting anyone lay a finger on the bald, black Baryshnikov. Betrayal and contempt are modest summations of the feelings that arose when grimacing through Emmitt’s two seasons as an Arizona Cardinal, a former divisional rival; breaking his shoulder in his return to Cowboys Stadium proved that the Eye in the Sky had forsaken Sunday worship via the suddenly skeptical roof hole.

Venues
A couple notes before listing The Five: the focus is on places I’ve visited while acknowledging that there are countless stadia I’d be glad to (humbly, natch) brag that I entered. The shortlist is PNC Park in Pittsburgh (nearby Fallingwater and the Warhol Museum make the potential trek more exciting) and Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City (there’s something about its scale and outfield), Lambeau Field (for a September tilt) and State Farm Stadium (what an architectural doozy), the Islanders’ UBS Arena (an inevitability), Cameron Indoor Stadium and Pauley Pavilion (historians heard groaning at the absence of Allen Fieldhouse and The Palestra, aestheticians dismayed at Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gymnasium and Indiana’s Assembly Hall being excluded), several top-rated golf courses (Pine Valley, Oakmont, Merion, Seminole, Cypress Point, and Pebble Beach), and a dozen-ish college football meccas (a longstanding if-I-won-the-lottery dream is to rent an RV and travel the country to college campuses for gridiron ganders one fall/first stop: Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge). 

Runners-up to The Five: the Rose Bowl (saw the one hundredth same named game by daylight and a national title game at night, the views from opposite sides and vantage points equally spectacular in spite of some archaic venue oddities), Lime Rock Park (one of Connecticut’s ideal spots with full tree cover), Crypto.com Arena (kills me to call it by its new name/gorgeous arena although sitting in a suite enhanced the experience), and a quick nod to Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin (for its sheer immensity), Madison Square Garden (the most comfortable seats under lights), the entirety of the USTA National Tennis Center, and Yankee Stadium (sit in the Legends Seats if you’re prepared to be a justifiable snob about all other sub-VIP stubs afterward).

Michie Stadium, West Point, New York
It may have been ranked Sports Illustrated’s number three venue of the twentieth century, yet many would likely deem the place somewhat underwhelming due to the bleacher seating and Army’s often subpar opponents. The defense: I defy you to attend in October when peak foliage curtains the Hudson River backdrop and find something to carp about in a setting comparable to protected land for its natural beauty. Between the men holding assault rifles perched above one endzone, the shockingly non-rah-rah military fanfare (helicopters, parachutists, and cannon blasts, oh my...eye), and the sense that you’re seeing the purest example of how important college football, this country’s finest sport, is to northeasterners, Mike E. is a must. Moore once took a photo in the tunnel from behind the Cadets before they ran on the field and showed it to Josh and me at school. “What’s the first thing you see here?” he asked me. “It’s awesome! Look at how close you were!” Josh, who’d answered first, was more concerned with fitness: “Look at how sweaty their asses are!” It took more than a decade before I witnessed my first Army victory at the place, but the annual pilgrimage rife with Mr. Moore’s Camry incomprehensibly blasting heat full throttle, ample coffee/cigarette roadside stops, and one unforgettably ill-timed 9/11 joke added to the annual day most significant to the greatest friendship I’ve known. My one regret? Not getting a photo with the school’s donkey mascot, a sweaty ass that might’ve tempted Josh on a biblical level.

TPC River Highlands, Cromwell, Connecticut
Augusta National compelled me to fall in love with golf on television—it’s not included on this list because placing it first is redundant since at this point it’d be on a short list if I made a top five for Reasons Life is Worth Living (other contenders: bread, laughter, boobs, a pile of records, friendship/love, crossing my legs, the coastline of Maine, the imagination, a shimmering head of hair, lists, ...)—but the TPC sold me on the beauty and serenity of walking a top tier layout. Sitting on the hillside above the sixteenth hole eating ice cream with my grandfather, walking the front nine after my great uncle told me to inspect bunkers and “report back in twenty” to wake him from a nap, hoping to see a hole-in-one with my mother while camped out on the short par-four fifteenth (my favorite hole), and ooh-ing approach shots from the seventeenth bleachers opposite the watery green with Moore, I realize I’ve made more live event memories with different people at my home state’s finest jewel than any other. The thirteenth, abutted by train tracks, offers frameable picturesque views on a sunny day, plus it’s rumored that Eldrick Tont Woods declined to play in the Greater Hartford Open (its name in my heart) because he feared suffering from an urgent need to publicly fuck a gallery girl after seeing a phallic choo-choo pass by before entering a distant tunnel. (What is this, the conclusion of North by Northwest?) Perhaps I’ll make Sue attend with me this year since she’s consistently up for an invigorating walk in her carrots-themed Crocs; when I bury her behind the remote eleventh green for failing to comprehend my flawless explanation of golf’s scoring system, I assume a course official will assess a penalty for implementing a wood, not a wedge, as my shovel.

Oracle Park (née AT&T Park), San Francisco
First took a drizzly, gray tour in December 2012 before a return five years later for the mutually terrible Phillies and home team, scoring cheap front row seats behind the Phils’ dugout. My buddy Rick and I were pounding on tap ESBs from an Oregon microbrewery, it was mid-August but registered akin to a perfectly autumnal New England evening (donned a hoodie and cargo pants), and I left with a ball (second one I caught, Rick insisted I give the first one to a nearby kid, which I agreed to following desperate pleas to the contrary, not that I regret my actions). The park is as beautiful as it looks on the digidial, plus its location in a city I’ve visited on three separate outstanding trips unfairly improves its value. When Rick and I were air horns-ing to Cage the Elephant’s set at Golden Gate Park during a music festival occurring days prior, he insisted that Giants’ right fielder Hunter Pence walked by us, and of course it wasn’t called back a single time during the game to mock him. Who do you think I am? When we saw a transvestite taking a dump on a midget’s chest beneath the Willie Mays statue on our walk in, we knew the nearby cop would arrest the hirsute “lady,” but it took her lighting a Merit for the cuffs to emerge. Unrelated but topical: best venue popcorn, and so good that Rick gifted me an additional bag to inhale afterward.

Superdome, New Orleans
The only dome where I’ve seen a game, it felt immense yet compact, as if any seat were more “on the field” than comparable spots in significantly smaller locales. It’s odd to nominate this ancient biscuit for three reasons: (1) the power went out during Super Bowl XLVII, (2) the seats were nestled unnecessarily close to one another, the kind of claustrophobia that tends to make my armpits moist, and (3) I didn’t visit a concession stand or partake in the myriad specificities that make live event attendance such an all-sensory thrill. (I’d already purchased souvenirs at the convention center a mile away where StubHub handled ticket delivery.) If anything, I’d long loved it on TV during NCAA tournaments and Sugar Bowls so seeing it in the flesh offered overwhelmingly positive affirmation to this lifelong venue connoisseur-slash-database. Also neat that I caught a twelve-minute concert—Sasha Fierce coupled with a Destiny’s Child (medley) reunion—but consuming a nearly inedible Chinese food container at a dive afterward made me regret not grabbing an authentic twenty-five dollar po’ boy even if Mandarin makes more sense than pidgin. When the Niners fans around me stomped and jumped during an ultimately (and thankfully/hated ‘em since my days as a Giants fan) unsuccessful comeback, it was a testament to the joint’s structural integrity that minimal globs of sausage gravy began leaking through a yeasty air pocket in the roof (why are you pronouncing it like rough?).

All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, Wimbledon
Okay, I’ve technically been here, but it was for five minutes and in September. I embarked on my first solo trip on the sixth day of my semester in London after one flatmate insisted that the world’s supreme grass courts would be easy to spot, especially since the Tube station was named WIMBLEDON. Clueless once I exited into town, I walked five or six miles, chafing my thighs, pouring sweat, and happening upon the AELT&CC (reads like a new phone company) minutes before it closed, peering inside through a locked gate—those still on the grounds could peruse the gift shop—to see the backside of Centre Court. As for the aforementioned shortlist of must-visits, this is my easy number one choice: strawberries and cream, saying the word “fortnight” often (a word I admittedly use more than I should solely due to Wimbledon’s influence), and seeing a lady get her period during a thirty-shot rally while sporting the Club’s enforced all-white clothing. “Geez, man, so that’s why you wanna go?!” Of course not, gullible one, this is the Serve & Volley Mecca, a chance to see the most lionized piece of the tennis landscape surrounded by people whose teeth repulse me. Tennis is a superb in-person experience, which translates as craving to experience the speedy lawns up close. Who knows if I’ll choose to return to the country I treated like a dumpster during my seventh semester, but it can now commence placeholding as a fiftieth birthday destination goal. I’ll know where my British luck’s at if Asspicker’s still playing and wins the damn thing, which I wouldn’t put past that obsessive-compulsive balding robot. Consider me chuffed in advance just to be there, bruv.

Teams
There are no-brainers I’m listing by proxy with the athlete entries (’96-‘01 Yankees/more on the ’09 gang below, ‘91-‘93 and ‘96-‘98 Bulls, ‘92-‘95 Cowboys); I’m not going to expound on them when guys like Buster Olney, Sam Smith (like I would know/Jordan Rules author), and Jeff Pearlman already took care of business (Olney and Pearlman each wrote must-read documents about these specific eras). The ’01 Duke squad is omitted in part because the LBS covers ample Blue Devil ground; there’s less to say about them than those on display below, but they certainly rank high as an honorable mention (time for a compulsory nod to their incomparable twenty-two-point 2001 Final Four comeback against Maryland while being booed by a “neutral” crowd). Oddities that crossed my mind: the ’99 Toms River East American Little League team that won the Tiny Whirled Serious, the Spanish soccer nationals that won the 2010 World Cup and bookended it with Euro conquests, the ’91-’93 Bricklayers whose MTV Rock N’ Jock three-peat victory was highlighted by Oliver Miller’s twenty-five-pointer (the man went two-for-seventeen from the field, somehow worse than Kobe’s game seven performance in the 2010 Finals), and the 2016 U.S. Ryder Cup team (hell, I was as jacked up on adrenaline rooting for both Patrick Reed and Brandt “Beady Eyes” Snedeker, two common sources of derision, as the firebrands on hand in Minnesota were). Weird choices? Maybe, but you gotta be true to yourself and admit that sometimes the least expected stand out. 

2012 Los Angeles Kings (playoffs)
My mother sold the house, and we packed up a moving truck only for the buyers to back out at the literal last minute. During a sweltering late spring heatwave, I took vacation for the move but wound up extending my time off to battle the flu as well. While sleeping on my mattress, propped up by nothing except the hardwood floor, I savored menthol cough drops (since my throat’s tolerance for soothing cigarettes was mercifully low) and watched the NHL playoffs on a shitty Magnavox resting on the floor at the foot of my bare bones bedroom. More than a decade later, the silver lining of the move-non-move was being riveted by the lowest seeded team in playoff hockey history destroying their four opponents behind Jonathan Quick’s fascinatingly impenetrable goaltending along with all-star-level play by all four lines (five guys with fifteen or more points). During each game I assumed the blades would come off, the Kings inevitably regressing to the team that barely squeaked into the playoffs, but they instead wouldn’t remove their proverbial skates from their opponents’ necks. (How ‘bout that run of banality?) The team became such a force that I questioned if they’d purposely lost the Cup clincher knowing full well that they would destroy the Devils at home before Dustin Brown became the second American-born captain to hoist the most impressive trophy in sportdom. Timing is everything, which is why cherished hockey memories are inexplicably tied to remarrying the property in which I already resided.

1993 Florida State Seminoles and 1999 Virginia Tech Hokies (college football)
My two favorite college quarterbacks were on these teams—Charlie Ward and Vick the Bounty Hunter—and both were transcendent, entertaining as hell, and constantly on television in an era when forty-five games didn’t air each Saturday. FSU didn’t play any close games other than the one they lost at Notre Dame (my least favorite team ‘beginning-‘end) and beat Nebraska (an ugly de facto national title game-slash-Orange Bowl), and while Va. Tech wasn’t involved in numerous nail-biters, Ron Mexico’s (Michael Vick’s old alias) style made blowouts worth watching. When they beat West Virginia on a last second field goal, stomped a Miami team who’d previously haunted them, and conquered rivals Boston College, it led to a match-up with similarly undefeated Florida State in the Sugar Bowl. The game is best remembered for Moore falling asleep before it began, my chat box on AOL sadly devoid of messages as VT came back from down 28-7 to take the lead before FSU played a perfect fourth quarter to vanquish the, at the time, upstarts from Blacksburg (a town with that name feels like a haven for pirates). I’ve loved several other CFB teams, the ’01 Miami squad in particular being the one that gets my vote for Best Overall (those Canes produced nearly forty NFL-ers), but these two reign in the altar of madness that is the college football-obsessed labyrinth within my brain. *tomahawk chop* *preemptively plans to be cancelled for bizarrely assumed Native American bigotry and retaliatorily posts the Ken Jeong air masturbation GIF in advance* 

1995 UConn Huskies (women’s college basketball)
Regional sports pride has eluded me throughout my lifetime—the only Boston-based team I’ve rooted for was Boston College’s football team, and primarily when attending games with Josh in person—but this UConn gals team, the first one to win a national title, was a big fucking deal in the Nutmeg State (that sounds delicious). The Game of the Year was a January battle with then-unbeaten Tennessee, the first in a twenty-two-game rivalry (recently resurrected), which UConn won by double digits at home. Seeing someone wearing Volunteer-colored orange in New England made one’s blood boil during that era of estrogen-fueled basketball fervor. When the two teams faced off on a Sunday afternoon for the national championship two months and change later, it felt vastly more important than Hartford hosting WrestleMania XI that same day. This was the team led by Rebecca Lobo, Jenn Rizzotti, Kara Wolters (now famous for living a town east), Jamelle Elliott, & co. Other future UConn players stand out more, especially Diana Taurasi, an unmentioned runner-up on the earlier Athlete list, but this team ignited a dynastic steamroller for a quarter century, and I don’t mean the short-haired lesbian couples in matching Husky-branded tank tops and/or shorts. (“Is that a Thing, Adam?” you’re asking yourself, and I’m afraid that select answers are anchored behind an inaccessible paywall.) As for the UConn men, my childhood Duke fanhood (trying it out/work with me) long overshadowed Jim Calhoun’s boys. Brief shout to another leather pumpkin gang: the ’92 Dream Team. Seeing MJ, Magic (Other MJ), and Bird play together felt like an Event as a kid; playing videos nowadays does nothing but reinforce those adolescent feelings, and we all know how stimulating masturbatory nostalgia can be. I miss my tee shirt with the dozen ballers drawn in Big Head cartoon form more than most other childhood clothing.

1999 St. Louis Rams
A heartwarming story about a diehard Christian that proved to be irresistible: The Everyman who became The Man by leading a team to NFL glory outta nowhere while they racked up thirty or more points in thirteen of their sixteen regular seasons games (oddly, I remember their 11-6 NFC Championship Game victory more than the rest because it was such an extreme anomaly). There was Marshall Faulk doing it all, vulnerable coach Dick Vermeil weeping like a proud poppa, mockery of Los Angelenos who lost the team and saw their old tenants achieve the glory that eluded them near the Pacific Ocean, and a sense that a new era loomed in the NFL, a sport I largely forsook as a week-to-week viewer once the fucking Patriots initiated becoming a generational pest two years later. Did you know that on Christmas Day 2021 a biopic about Warner (played by former Chuck Zachary Levi) debuted at the pictures to virtually zero fanfare, not the reception the leader of this Little Team That Could deserved. (Having seen the trailer twice, it looked like a bigger budget movie of the Hallmark/Lifetime/Joel Osteen YouTube channel variety.) High irony was that the Rams won their lone Mizzourah title on a defensive stop inches from the endzone, the first Big Game I watched with my step-grandfather Fred (this year will be our twenty-first in twenty-four years), triumphantly cementing as great a surprise American professional sports title run as I’ve seen in my thirty-plus years as a sports nut. Sometimes you can’t fight the obvious stuff that nuzzles all your fandom soft spots. But really: Who the fuck likes the Rams? 

2009 New York Yankees
One downside to your team of teams winning four titles in five years as a teen? Waiting nine years for another! (A regularly scheduled alert will now sound as a censor to mask your Cusser’s Last Stand.) “How can you pick a team with A-Rod?” Good point. I watched this group like a fiend, clearing time throughout the season to bask in the undisputed best team in baseball. Then my mother, who caught bits and pieces during the season, got comfortable on a playoff bandwagon that incorporated winning the final MLB game played in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, pissing on the Angels (one of my top five least favorite franchises), and eviscerating the Phillies in a World Series clincher at home with Pedro Fuckface Martinez tossing the corked sphere much like he did in the eighth inning of the ’03 ALCS. Looking at the lineup, as I have while stirring memories in each of these graffs, sends flashes of Phils Coke and Hughes, Nick Swisher’s happy-go-luckiness, and a former Dead Cock (Johnny Damon) who proved crucial enough to sporadically embrace. When the Yanks have bowed out of the playoffs since, I recall nursing a hangover but driving to area retailer Bob’s the morning after the final win to buy a commemorative gray tee shirt and hooded sweatshirt, the latter a current staple in my mother’s wardrobe. I can forgive myself for being sentimental about a team winning its twenty-seventh trophy in roughly one hundred and ten tries; as a Yanks fan who forces himself to be fair and logical about The Evil (Th)Empire’s overlooked flaws, this is the one team whose spring training photo I wish to be Zelig-ed (in uniform) into the background of as I’m seen attempting to hand Mariano a copy of The Satanic Verses, a hypothetical digression indulging at least three deadly sins that you’re confused by but I swear made sense as I typed it. 

Games/Events
It’s damn near insane to list five games or individual events; in some months or years, there are multiple options worthy of entry on such a list. Two important caveats: I purposely avoided canonical choices and cannot pretend that this might not feature alternate submissions if I allowed myself the exhaustingly comprehensive research I’m somewhat grateful didn’t drive me crazy when drafting the entrants. Well, even I’m startled because that’s all the imperative preamble required. “You sure?” says the OCD Devil on my left shoulder as the OCD Angel echoes, “He’s right! What the fuck, Atom? We were prepared for three or four more paragraphs.” These condescending pricks don’t even spell my name right when they say it! High time we get to the finish line, which is not foreshadowing: running, bicycling, and driving have their sporting merits, primarily when one is being chased by the police, but they won’t be unearthed here. OR WILL THEY? *dramatically portentous musical cue*  

2003 World Series of Poker (No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, especially the final table)
Prior to ESPN airing sunglasses-clad expressionless men sitting in casinos tapping their fingers on felt tabletops, I knew nothing about poker. This Lost Wages showcase is largely responsible for igniting an American obsession with televised card games (*slowly raises hand*), online poker tournaments, and false hopes of spending sixteen hours per day inside towering structures earning a living built on dishonesty, luck, and emotional distance, which accurately describes most jobs minus the Bicycle deck’s quicker results. A man named Chris Moneymaker (not an alias) defeating many of poker’s best on an exceptionally long, pre-taped broadcast yielded nerve-racking theater, absorption of lingo and strategy in a “sport” that could theoretically be ruled by an obese “athlete” who traded in a La-Z-Boy for a comfortable Binion’s-branded chair, and a perverse desire to watch while aware of what cards each player had hidden from his opponents, a sage production choice that afforded viewers a judging omniscience to maximize tension. Sam Farha, the final man Moneymaker vanquished to win $2.5 million, was often seen with an unlit, white-filtered cigarette perched on his lips, the natural Lebanese villain to the southern boy who defied the odds to win against The Professionals. The wrestling fan in me felt certain it was scripted, but the Scorsese fan in me knew someone would rat and end up with his head in a vise, meaning this event was a classic case of “sports” synergy. No future WSoP could rival its’ intrigue, but they all earned screen time in hopes of seeing decks of cards work more magic than any trickster could pull off. “Illusion. A trick is something a whore does for money.” But seriously: Moneymaker? Would you believe 2004’s champ was named Cash Pyle? 

1991 NFC Championship Game and Super Bowl LII
Two radically different games: the first was won by the Giants’ kicker Matt Bahr (five field goals, topped off by a game winner where my father roared in delight) and the second saw a points frenzy featuring one punt, endless broken records, and the Patriots taking the lead before giving it back to Nick Foles & co. The ’91 tilt is the game I relive when thinking about the missed opportunities to view big sporting events with my father in the past twenty-five years, a bonding ritual I’m sure would’ve been intrinsic to our relationship in adulthood, and one of the primary reasons I wish he were still here. Then again, even he might’ve grown to detest the NBA, his favorite sport, but I feel like I would’ve drifted back toward his Giants to share the Eli Manning-led Owl runs with him. As much as Eli gets credited for outshining TBDozen, Nick Foles’s SB52 performance defied all expectations, a nominee for the gold standard in David > Goliath big game moments. It’s difficult for me to summon images of a more perfectly enjoyable NFL game, especially as I’ve paid attention to the regular season from a distance throughout this century. Strange but true: degenerate Eagles’ fans haven’t re-branded The Philly Special as a foul sex act, but there’s no time like the present as they prepare to play in another World Championship of America Game in less than two weeks. Tell me you’re excited for Jalen Hurts to inform Erin Andrews during the postgame interview that the latest trick play was coined Bukkake Ruined My Carpet. 

1995 U.S. Open and 1995 British Open (weekend rounds in particular)
Am I a Corey Pavin or Shinnecock Hills fan? Kinda sorta not really. I might’ve enjoyed Pavin’s well-groomed stache more than his game and my favorite ‘Cock memory from attending the ’18 Open at the course was sitting on the par-three thirteenth hole grandstand bleachers with Brock and telling one man investigating a soiled paper-covered open seat beside us that he’d be squatting on a used maxi pad. Pavin hit an unbelievable approach shot on the concluding hole to best Greg “Choke” Norman and Tom Lehman, the latter a guy I’d forgotten won the ’96 British and moonlit as a likable regular joseph who my mother christened Dockers Man as if his pants defined his game. The ensuing month’s British Open at St. Andrew’s must be lumped in for John Daly’s astounding win at golf’s ground zero. Constantino Rocca sunk a one in a million sixty-five-footer to force a playoff prior to blowing it on the four-hole aggregate round. This marked a time when I studied major golf history, winners along with courses, but hadn’t yet grown disdainful of the dull skies and duller landscapes intrinsic to links courses. Steve Elkington’s playoff win for the ’95 PGA Championship at Riviera and Crenshaw’s one-shot victory to kick off the major season make me wish John Feinstein had been delayed in writing A Good Walk Spoiled one year to document a sensational quartet of high pressure see-saws to hole the rubber rounder. This was the golf era that initiated my hypocritical defenses of excessive water and pesticide usage for groundskeeping purposes, exclusivity for the rich, and borderline casual misogyny. Everyone gloves a villain. 

USC 50, Fresno State 42 (11/19/2005)
If this USC team had repeated as (stripped) champs, they’d likely be on my favorite teams list, but as I recall, Texas upset Nobody to win the national title. (This is a never-ending joke Brock and I make about NCAA records being vacated, as if negating reality somehow makes fans inclined to march in step.) While USC’s win against Notre Dame a month prior is more famous, this late Saturday night back and forth barnburner is a highlight reel classic I thrillingly watched as it aired. Reggie Bush amassed nearly three hundred yards on the ground, breaking open several long, dynamic plays where he zigged and zagged through each tuft of turf like he’d stolen something. Fresno State was a ranked, high-quality team that had a (chocolate?) chip on their shoulder; they took a fourth quarter lead, one exposing USC’s vulnerability that would later cost them against the Horns, but the Trojans “found a way” (or was it that they “imposed their will” or even “refused to lose”)! Having missed their invincible ’04 run while I was in London, my attachment this time around was fierce. There are numerous bowl game and rivalry classics you’d think would’ve found their way onto this list, but spotlighting deep cuts is part of the schtick, see. Another such example is a 1999 Alabama/Florida OT bout where the Elephants missed a game-winning extra point, causing me to feverishly run headfirst into Moore’s basement couch in agony, but my uninjured neck extracted itself upon recognizing that a generous referee had ripped a penalty flag from his pocket; the sanctioned follow up kick sealed it! Roll Tide! More Hatorade: 1994’s Choke at Doak when UF was up 31-3 in the fourth quarter prior to giving up four FSU touchdowns in the span of 11:14 that tied the Gators Done (mea culpa). Forever earns my vote for best winnerless game. Pattern sensed? If UF blew a close one that pundits had guaranteed they’d win, it hit the sweet spot within the hate chamber of my CFB heart. Always has, always will.

UFC 6 (07/14/1995)
My middle school bud, Tony, and I retreated to pro wrestling and UFC when we stopped playing basketball or pretended we weren’t interested in the semi-scrambled softcore porn aired late night on HBO via the black box he owned. UFC 6—back when the brand offered fisticuffs (and footsticuffs) elimination tournaments—featured two Tank Abbott knockouts (an admirably braggadocious asshole), Oleg Taktarov making three men submit (Tank was last), and Ken Shamrock’s victory against Dan Severn, a tedious technical fighter whose resemblance to journalist John Stossel made him a laughingstock in my eyes. I couldn’t have described this event in full without checking Wikipedia, yet it’s from the early era when UFC meant something vital to me as an alternate to the scripted carnage in WWF(E) and WCW. As for wrestling, which has no business being compared to its “real” counterparts (quotes necessary after the officiating in the 2023 AFC Championship Game, one game I’m inclined to think Eric Bischoff or Vince Russo may have had a hand in outlining), I’ll sneak in the trio of Ric Flair/Ricky Steamboat matches from 1989, a triumvirate that wrestling nerds have long regarded as peaks in American technical wrestling/storytelling. I prefer the concluding bout, a Nature Boy victory at 1989’s WrestleWar, but Steamboat’s victory in a fifty-five-minute two-out-of-three falls match at the Superdome along with his Chi-Town Rumble title snatching both hold up nearly as well. Boxing has repulsed me for years but permit me a nod to Mike Tyson’s DQ win against Peter McNeeley in 1995, a long-awaited fight that I watched at my mother’s friend’s house with a group of strangers all historically jacked up to see His Ironness return to the circular square. He’s second to Jordan for intermittent YouTube compilation viewings.

There are far too many MLB playoff games (and a supplementary bevy of Yankees games), major tennis five-setters, and March Madness nail-biters (should be its own category) to narrow down—“Then how’d you manage it for other sports, HUH?!”—but howzabout a few more? Sure! 2011 World Series/Game 6 (bootlegged this, a new generation’s spin on the 1986 World Series/Game 6, on a sketchy Asian streaming site while answering customer emails adjacent to my co-worker Joel, us both working late in disbelief as the Cards came back twice to force an inevitable trophy hoisting in the season’s final game the next night); Federer’s fifth set comeback to beat Asspicker one last time to win the 2017 Aussie, my favorite event witnessed on tape delay; Tourney Overkill inbound—George Mason’s inconceivable Elite Eight defeat of UConn in OT in 2006; UMBC (Umbick, colloquially) becoming the first sixteen seed to win a non-play-in game (by twenty points) in 2018 against the loathsome Virginia team that would need unprecedented luck to win it all the ensuing year, an upset nobody had thought possible; Arizona’s 1997 besting of three top seeds included an unreal overtime game against even bigger underdog Providence to make the Final Four; West Virginia’s hayseeds prevailing in two overtimes against Wake Forest in 2005; Duke’s mammoth upset against UNLV in the 1991 national semifinals at the sorely missed Hoosier Dome, the first Final Four I watched; Illinois’s one-point OT comeback win against Arizona in the 2005 Elite Eight; Georgia Tech’s James Forrest hitting his first three-point shot all season to beat USC in OT in 1992’s second round as Al McGuire kept saying “Holy Mackerel!”; Michigan’s OT stunner against Kansas in the 2013 Sweet 16; Florida’s own bonkers Sweet 16 last man standing OT besting of Wisconsin in 2017; finally, the innumerable first round underdogs like Valparaiso’s miracle swish against Ole Piss [sic] in 1998, a creditable stand-in for the rest (okay, tip of the cap to Old Dominion’s 3OT win against Villanova in ‘95 too, the longest tourney game since the 1985 expansion); and on and on. (I miss the half-hour official Final Four videos ESPN used to air during weekday winter afternoons, a reason to complete my homework on the condo-bound bus ride.) Cannot forget the LSU bottom of the ninth College World Series walkoff homer to beat Miami in 1996 or Michael Phelps’s two award-setting gold medal triumphs (his eighth gold in two weeks earned in the 4x100 relay at Beijing 2008 and his twenty-third overall gold achieved in the same relay at Rio 2016, two team splashfests dripping with goosebumpery). 

Reading Dan Jenkins’s “semi-memoir” His Ownself a few weeks back, he (accurately) noted that the most significant change in sports over the course of his half century covering them was the overflowing greed that exponentially took root. From corporate logos on playing surfaces, jersey patches, and inane in-game product plugs throughout broadcasts, it has become uncomfortably facile to be cynical about sports. That word choice isn’t to defend how nowadays nearly everything contains some element of grift, but also to implicate stans who “just can’t quit” the thrill of it all despite their seemingly unending insistence on profits over product being ruinous, but not ruinous enough to drive them to the myriad options thirsting for eyes in the streamcloud. (No time to touch on how undesirous ticket prices have become for the true fans priced out by A.I. and such, a blog-worthy topic in its own right. As for legalized gambling’s role, additional time for proper assessment shall be granted.) Fred has bitched about billionaire class control whenever we’ve viewed NFL games together the last quarter century (or when he tells me about various NASCAR events he hate-watches out of fealty to an earlier era), but what should we do instead? Question if our pizza’s as delicious as the saucy phrasing during public television debates? Clink glasses for an afternoon filled by competitive word search relay races? Scrap the pros winding through the Pyrenees, check the tire pressure on a couple ten-speeds in his shed, and fulfill our destiny with a photo finish at the imaginary checkered flag billowing on a back road stop sign? There’s only one sports, and as often as it deserves complaints, it knows it has us by the balls. It’s imperative that no matter how often it caresses then tugs, we refuse to let sports shove a finger in our ass, largely due to the fact that we might wind up asking for two the next time. Maybe it’s more like: Sports, you just can’t quit me. Fat (cat) chance.