I’ve changed my mind. Cheese isn’t always good.

Leave it to a Packers fan to ruin cheese.

This is not about God. It’s about a man’s ability to throw an oblong sphere through the air. That’s it.

I’ve decided to add the “Bottom line: Tebow is a winner” refrain to my “I told you so” calendar. It’s set to fire off at the midpoint of next year’s NFL season.

Tebow’s situation is a strange one.

He is completing just 44% of his passes and has thrown 7 touchdowns in 8 games this season.

He has yet to throw for 200 yards in a game all season.

He is 4-2 as a starter, but he has beaten teams with a combined record of 16 wins and 21 losses.

In fact, none of the teams that he has beaten has a winning record.

Is Tebow a winner on the NFL level?

If winning a handful of games against subpar teams while performing exceedingly poorly by NFL passing standards is winning, then yes, Tebow is a winner.

I suspect that time will prove, however, that he is not.

In last night’s game against the Jets, Tebow had one well-timed scoring drive at the end of the game, helping to propel the Broncos to a win. But had Mark Sanchez not thrown an interception that resulted in a touchdown earlier in the game, Tebow would have never had the chance to win the game.

In 56 minutes, the Broncos had managed to score just 3 points, and those points had come on a 50 yard field goal.

I watched the game. The guy can’t throw the ball. Even on his final 95-yard drive to the winning score, he only completed 2 of 5 passes. Almost all the yardage came on the ground, and while Tebow ran for a good portion of that yardage, there are running backs who could do the same.

You’d hope your quarterback could pass the ball a little.

With all that said, I have nothing against Tim Tebow. As long as he is not playing the Patriots, I have no problem rooting for him, as I was last night.

last night, I loved the guy.

But at this point in his career, all empirical evidence indicates that the guy is a below-average quarterback who is not effective at passing the ball.

But that’s not the strange part of the Tim Tebow situation.

This is:

Tebow is a very religious man. He can be seen praying on the sidelines during the game and thanking God after scoring drives. He is vocal about his spirituality and has been embraced by the Christian community.

As a result, there has been a almost unprecedented backlash against anyone who claims that Tim Tebow is a subpar quarterback. Even sportscasters and former NFL players have been treading carefully when discussing Tim Tebow in the media in fear of the reaction they may receive after criticizing this man’s play on the field.

Some of the greatest players in the game are criticized on a weekly basis for subpar play. During their recent two game losing streak, three-time Super Bowl champion and future Hall of Famer Tom Brady was criticized for his erratic play. He had thrown an excessive number of interceptions and failed to get the ball downfield on a consistent basis.

He’s one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, and yet he was criticized by many in the media.

Yet there was no backlash. There were no Twitter bombs or angry calls into sports radio shows claiming that broadcasters “wanted Brady to fail”.  Facebook was not alight with defenders claiming that anyone who did not believe in the man’s skills was a hater.

Yet Tebow has engendered responses like this repeatedly.

Criticize Tim Tebow’s quarterback play and you you had better duck.

There’s nothing wrong with liking Tim Tebow. There’s nothing wrong with believing that he will have a long and prosperous NFL career.

But there is also nothing wrong with someone looking at the data and determining that Tebow is probably a subpar quarterback who is beating subpar teams and has little future in the NFl.

It has nothing to do with faith or religion or mean-spiritedness.

It’s just football.

Could we please keep God out of it?

We’ll see what happens when my “I told you so” calendar fires off next year, reminding me to tell those Tim Tebow supporters that their popular “Bottom line: Tim Tebow is a winner” refrain proved less than accurate, at least on the NFL level.

Perhaps I will be eating my words. But I suspect not.

Football is beautiful.

My daughter came into the living room after her nap and looked at the television.

A football game was on.

She walked up to the television, her noses inches from the screen, then spread her arms out wide, palms up and said, “Beautiful!”

One of her finest moments thus far. 

Perhaps the finest moment.

Don’t swing hard!

Any golfer will tell you that the harder you swing the club, the worse the result. Not always, but often enough.

And yet we continue to swing hard, because it just seems to make sense.  We want the ball to go farther, so we try to hit it harder.

It seems to work out just often enough to keep us trying.

Then I watched this TED Talk, which has nothing to do with golf, and yet it explains perfectly why golfers should not swing hard.

Today I took this advice and shot a 46.

My best round ever.

A coincidence?

Probably. And it’s November.  I’m sure I’ll forget this lesson by spring.

Julie Andrews trumps the Patriots

I missed my first Patriots home game in three years yesterday while attending the final performance of our rock opera, The Clowns. Don’t get me wrong. I couldn't have been more thrilled to see my work performed onstage, but missing the game was tough on me.

The fact that the Patriots lost their first regular season home game in almost three years made my absence infinitesimally more palatable.

But my friend and fellow Patriots season ticket owner, Shep, made no attempt to make me feel better about missing the game.

In fact, he actively tried to make me feel rotten about it.

Only after he was in the stadium did he divulge that his girlfriend, who was sitting in my seat, was a fan of the Giants, the Patriots’ opponent.

Had I known this earlier, I would never have given her my ticket, which I suspect Shep probably knew.

He also sent me texts and photos from the pre-game tailgate party, including this exchange of texts and photos which illustrates how my day went rather well:

Shep:  Norwegians (friends of ours), ribs and cornbread in the parking lot.

Me: Men talking about Julie Andrews. Literally.

First carrousel ride

The first time my daughter saw a carrousel, she cried.

The second time she saw a carrousel, she cried again. 

I thought it would be years before she ever boarded one. 

But while she and Elysha were in New York last weekend, she rode her first carrousel in Bryant Park, and she didn’t cry the entire time.

She didn’t sit on any horses, but she did go round-and-round while sitting on one of those benches.

Elysha took her for her first and second rides (sans tears) and her aunt took her for the third, more tear-filled, ride. 

I was in Foxboro, Massachusetts, at the time, watching the Patriots defeat the Jets, which is one of my favorite things in the world to do.

Watching any Patriots game is always spectacular, but to watch my team crush the Jets produces near euphoria. 

But I must admit that watching my little girl take her first carrousel ride would have been just as good. 

Maybe.  

     

A near-perfect assemblage of words to describe the fabulousness of roller derby

When I was a kid, I watched roller derby matches on television. In the Boston market, the television stations would air this sport at odd times opposite things like candle pin bowling and Saturday’s Creature Double Feature. I haven’t seen a roller derby match since those childhood days, but I have a friend who actually plays the sport in North Carolina, and I am secretly hoping that my next book tour will take me there so I can see a match.

In his Idyll Banter column, Chris Bojalian explains the beauty of roller derby perfectly:

There are any number of reasons to explain the crowd at the Champlain Valley Exposition, but my sense is that any sport that combines interesting, athletic women in fishnets and ripped stockings with speed and the possibility of violent collisions is going to have appeal. There is also a soft, gauzy halo of nostalgia (didn't our grandparents watch roller derby?) combined with the hard edge of good-natured and completely filthy sexual parody. Half the skaters have derby names and numbers that are brilliant and, alas, unprintable. Here, however, are a few that are: "Ivana Thump," "Terminate Her," "Miss Dairy Air," "The Atomic Muffin" and "Track Infection."

Most embarrassing golf shot ever

I was standing at the 18th tee on Sunday, moments away from one of the worst golf shots in human history.

Throughout the morning, I had been experimenting with moving the ball forward in my stance during my tee shot, and the change had improved the trajectory and consistency of my drives considerably.

For my last tee shot, I decided to move the ball up even further. I had no chance for a decent score, so a bad tee shot was not going to ruin my day.

I was wrong.

I had placed the ball so far forward in my stance that as I swung, I had to reach out and bend in order to hit it, causing the ball to fly straight up and curving right in the direction of the the first green, about 30 yards to my right. Four guys were on the green, lining up their putts, unaware that the moron on the adjacent tee box had somehow found a way to hit a ball at a 90 degree angle in their direction.

I saw the ball almost immediately and nearly yelled “Fore!” before determining that its trajectory would thankfully land the ball well short of the green and at a safe distance from the foursome who were preparing to putt. They might see or hear the ball land nearby, but none were in danger of being hit by it. I sighed the sigh of someone who has avoided embarrassment and humiliation of the worst kind.

Then the ball landed, striking the asphalt cart path and launching 30 feet back into the air in the direction of the green again. Before I could warn the guys on the green, my ball landed in the middle of the foursome, barely missing two of them as they prepared to putt.

I am rarely embarrassed on the golf course. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was embarrassed. Since I am a below-average golfer, I feel very little pressure while playing, and even the worst of shots don’t rattle me.  The best players in the world hit horrendous shots. I just hit more of them.

But hitting your tee shot onto an adjacent green while a foursome is putting is pretty bad (and probably impossible to ever repeat), and failing to warn the players that the ball was coming makes it even worse. I’ve been playing golf for four years and have never seen anyone come close to hitting a tee shot onto an adjacent green.

To their credit, the foursome did not give me a hard time. They smiled as I approached the green, and the one closest to me grinned and said, “So I guess you’re putting for eagle.  Huh?”

I’m not sure if I would’ve been so kind.

I’d also like to add that I hit a clean 7-iron off the green with my bag still strapped to my back (a shot I’d never been required to make before), so at least I experienced a smidgen of success in my midst of my abject failure.

A bouquet of amusing words

My daughter is two-years old, and as a result, she has a lot of amusing things to say.  A few gems from the past couple days include:_______________________________________

Me: Why didn’t you take a nap this afternoon, Clara?

Clara: A lion is coming. I have to tell someone.

_______________________________________

A conversation that Clara had with herself while looking in a mirror at the mall:

"I'm wearing my doggy shirt. We're both wearing doggy shirts."

"I have my hat tat (her word for hair elastics). We both have hat tats."

And the best one:

"I'm Clara. I'm Clara, too."

 

_______________________________________

While negotiating a split between football and Peep and the Big Wide World on Sunday afternoon:

Me: Okay Clara, it’s my turn to watch football now.

Clara: NO! Peep doesn’t want to watch football! Peep wants to watch me! I’m running away!

The way the Patriots played on Sunday, I would have been better off watching Peep.

I loved kickboxing. Kickboxing did not love me.

In 2002 I took kickboxing lessons for about six months. I was excited about the lessons. I thought the sport was going to be a lot of fun.

I like to punch things.

But the class was all-female with the exception of me, so the instructors structured the class such that it was 80% kicking and 20% punching.

The ladies, it was explained to me, were more interested in working on their legs and butts than their shoulders and biceps.

But I stuck with the class anyway, learning to take pleasure in kicking the hell out of things almost as much as punching, until the day that we were allowed to finally spar with an opponent.

Since the class was all-female, I was forced to spar against a male instructor.  After donning head gear and gloves, we met in the middle of the room.

About ten seconds later, the instructor was removing his head gear, informing me that he would no longer be sparring against me.

“You don’t understand the definition of sparring,” he said. “You’re not supposed to try to kill me.”

I had landed a couple jabs and an uppercut before he knew what had hit him.

In fairness, I don’t think he ever expected the vicious assault that I launched upon him. He had his gloves up, but had lifted them a second before my first jab.

That was my last kickboxing class.

Cracked ribs, cracked shmibs

Much has been made about Tony Romo’s return to the football game on Sunday and leading his team to victory with broken ribs.

Words like courage and heroic have been bandied about quite a bit when describing Romo’s performance. 

The last time I played flag football with my buddies, I suffered a concussion and my friend, Shep, broke two ribs. 

The only difference is we kept playing despite the pain, and no one called us heroes. 

Shep didn’t even realize that his ribs were broken until a few days later. 

Just sayin’.

Football in every direction

While sitting in the seats of Gillette Stadium yesterday, watching the Patriots defeat the Chargers, I had the following options viewing available to me:

1. Watch the game on the field

2.  Watch the game on either of the two enormous monitors located in each end zone

3.  Watch the actual telecast of the game from an enormous monitor positioned outside the stadium but well within view from my upper deck seats

4.  Watch any current NFL game, including the Patriots-Chargers game, on my phone via the NFL.com’s mobile app

5.  Watch the game being televised on the side of the blimp hovering just above the stadium

It really has become a world consumed by screens and choice..  

No buyer’s remorse here.

“Wait!” my wife said as she was heading upstairs to take a shower. She turned around, went into the living room and switched on the television. 

“What?” I asked. 

“I saw a commercial for the new Hard Knocks (HBO’s behind-the-scenes look at a NFL training camp).  I want to make sure we record it.”

Reaffirmation that I chose the right girl.

The best girl.

“Mother may I, Mr. Brady?”

From Mike Reiss’s piece on the Patriots preseason victory last night:

"The thing that New England does just as well as anybody is their tempo. When you have a quarterback like [Brady], he's able to come out and control the tempo the way he was; he never lets you settle down and never lets you get going," Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris said. "They knew exactly what they wanted to do in every situation, and he was in complete control."

The pace was so fast that Bucs defensive tackle Gerald McCoy looked across the line of scrimmage and said, "Um, Mr. Brady, can we line up?"

Seriously.

Has there ever been a better exchange of words across the line of scrimmage?

Especially if you are a Patriots fan?

Authors should not meet their editors at baseball games with pee-stained shorts

My editor was kind enough to take Elysha and me to a Mets game last week, and though I am a Yankees fan, I love baseball and was looking forward to seeing Citi Field for the first time. 

It didn't disappoint.

Citi Field is a beautiful ballpark with a small, almost minor league feel which suits its almost minor league team well.  Our seats were spectacular and gave us access to an air-conditioned lounge with an all-you-can-eat buffet and bar.  And as expected, the company was superb.  My wife, my editor and her assistant and I enjoyed a perfect day at the ballpark.

A couple observations from the day:

1. I received a surprising amount of flak from Mets fans and parking attendants for wearing my Yankees jersey to a Mets game.

I found this cute.

Yankee fans tend to spend a lot less time thinking about the Mets, since they so rarely pop up on our radar.  A subpar team across town is hardly worth our time or attention.  But Mets fans seem to possess a genuine disdain for the Yankees.

This reminds me of the Red Sox-Yankees fan relationship.  No Yankee fan likes the Red Sox, but you can attend a Yankees-Blue Jays game and never hear a single mention of the Red Sox.

Attend any Red Sox game, regardless of opponent or standings, and you will eventually hear a “Yankees suck!” chant, even if the Yankees are beating Seattle on the west coast 39-0.  And you’ll tee shirts referencing the Yankees in a variety of negative ways being worn and sold throughout the stadium.

The Evil Empire has apparently entrenched itself in the minds of Mets and Sox fans, which I find both amusing and a little sad. 

2. New rule: I no longer drink anything if I am headed into New York City.  For reasons that I do not understand, there are no viable exits for restroom breaks once you cross over from Connecticut to New York, so if you haven’t remembered to stop on the border to use the restroom, you’re doomed. 

On Wednesday, this meant almost peeing my pants after a two-hour drive to the game turned into four-plus hours thanks to construction on the Whitestone Bridge. 

It became a serious situation.  Desperate to avoid me arriving to the game in pee-stained shorts, my wife actually handed me a cup and insisted that pee into it.

I realize that men can pee against a tree (and many other things) with relative ease, but to pee from behind the wheel of your Honda CRV into a cup while in traffic with your wife sitting next to you is a feat even I am incapable of achieving. 

For a minute, I considered climbing into the semi-private backseat and attempting to use the cup, but we had arrived at the tollbooths just before the bridge, and my wife doesn’t like to drive over bridges.  I decided to get us over the span and then trade places with her so I could conduct my business in the backseat.

But as we approached the base of the Whitestone Bridge on the opposite side, I spotted a small copse of trees and brush wedged into a triangular shaped hill of dirt between concrete barriers.  I pulled into the breakdown lane, exited the car amidst the concerned protestations of my wife, leapt the jersey barrier (almost peeing in my pants as I did so), and scrambled up the hill. 

Then I selected one of a half a dozen small trees and proceeded to relieve myself in front of three lanes of stopped traffic. 

Like I said, I’m never drinking a thing before heading into the city again.

Respect yourself and shut up.

I cannot stand to listen to people complain about being disrespected. Earlier this week I listened to professional football players complain about being disrespected by team owners for prematurely voting on a collective bargain agreement, even as their NFL brethren were calling the owners names and tweeting statements like:

Look guys I have no reason to lie! The truth of the matter is we got tricked, duped, led astray, hoodwinked, bamboozled!

You can’t be consumed with anger and disappointment over being disrespected while simultaneously disrespecting the guys who supposedly disrespected you.

Well, you can, but it makes you a hypocrite and an idiot.

More importantly, is there anything more pathetic than a guy whining about being disrespected?

Oh… you felt disrespected?  Poor little linebacker.  Do you need a hug?

One of the worst ways to get respect is to ask for it.

If you have to ask for it, it ain’t real.

But even worse than asking for respect is whining when you are not getting any.

Respect yourself.  Respect those who have earned your respect. And stop worrying so much about other people think.

I hate mulligans

I played golf last week with a guy who has a 3 handicap. For you non-golfers, this means that he is an extremely good player. And by all accounts, he was, scoring well under par for the first six holes.

Which is why it annoyed me so much when on the seventh hole, he hit a tee shot that flew wide right, and he opted to take a mulligan and hit again.

A mulligan, for you non-golfers, is a do-over. It’s a chance to hit another ball after an errant shot. Golfers who play with mulligans generally permit themselves one per round, thought I’ve played with knuckleheads who take as many as they please.

My friends and I do not play with mulligans, and rightly so. We treat every game as if we were playing in the US Open. We play by the rules. We require each other to makesix inch putts when most golfers would be permitted to pick up the ball on the assumption that their putt would be good.

We are bastards on the golf course, but we play the game correctly.

And none of us is even close to a 3 handicap.

I am of the opinion that a guy with a 3 handicap should never be taking a mulligan, but I am also of the opinion that no one should be taking mulligans, regardless of their skill level.

I despise mulligans, for three reasons:

1. Golf is the only sport that allows this kind of ridiculous do-over. It is akin to getting a fourth strike in baseball, a third free throw in basketball, or a fifth down in football. For a sport that is supposedly predicated on integrity and is famous for its players assigning themselves obscure penalties, there is no room for a mulligan at any level.

2. Golf is a game of personal bests and moments of potential greatness. Stick a mulligan into a round and you ruin your chances for both. What if, for example, that 3 handicapper went on to shoot his lowest round ever, including a hole-in-one on the last par 3?

Unlikely? Yes. But not impossible.

So now what? He’s got the scorecard of his life in his hand, but on the seventh hole, he took a mulligan, thus tainting his round.

Does he frame this illegitimate scorecard?

Does he tell his friends about the mulligan when describing the round?

Does he conveniently forget about it?

One never knows what could happen on a golf course. Unlike most sports, you can play golf exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly on any given day, and it is completely unpredictable. Playing with a mulligan taints a player’s opportunity for genuine greatness.

3.  But here is the biggest reason why I despise the mulligan:

A mulligan is almost always taken after an errant tee shot and never anywhere near or on the green.

In other words, it’s perfectly acceptable in the minds of many golfers to take a second tee shot if the first has sliced into the trees or rolled twenty yards from the box. But it would never be considered appropriate to take a mulligan after missing a 6-foot putt or failing to get a ball out of a sand trap.

For some reason, a premium is placed on the tee shot, and doing so favors the long ball hitters by giving them a second chance to take advantage of the part of the game that they excel at most.

I am a good putter. It is probably the best part of my game. But if I was playing with a mulligan, I would never be permitted to take a second shot at the 30-foot putt I just missed. Taking a mulligan on a putt is unheard of.

I would have to live with my miss, as I should. As should we all.

The mulligan also negates the dangers inherent in being a long ball hitter.  Because these guys can hit the ball great distances, an errant shot can often be costly. There is no telling where the ball may land, or even if it will be found. For a player like me, who does not hit a long tee shot, the one advantage I have is that my tee shot rarely gets me into trouble. I don’t hit the ball far enough to lose a ball or end up buried in the woods.

Give a long ball hitter a mulligan and you’ve given him every reason in the world to swing out of his shoes, because he has a do-over in his pocket.

Despite the integrity and tradition attached to this game, I continue to play with guys who take at least one mulligan every round. And even worse, it seems like the better the golfer, the greater the chances that he will take a mulligan.

So here is my plan:

The next time I play golf with a guy who takes a mulligan, I am going to purposely miss a putt on the subsequent green.

Hopefully an easy one. A three footer.

Then I’m going to walk over to my ball, pick it up, return it to its previous spot on the green and say, “Yeah.  I thought I’d take a mulligan, too.”

I can’t wait to see what happens.

Once is fine. But this is a pattern of stupidity.

I’m almost finished reading Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. Amongst the many controversies cited in the book is Jemele Hill’s regrettable reference to Hitler in a 2008 editorial about the NBA playoffs. In describing why she could not support the Celtics in the NBA playoffs, she wrote:

Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It's like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan. Deserving or not, I still hate the Celtics.

For her comments, Hill was suspended for a week without pay.

At first I felt bad for Hill, understanding how her comment, while lacking nuance, was not meant to offend. As a fan of the Detroit Pistons, she was merely pointing out that once you hate a sports team like the Celtics because of the affinity you have for your team, it is impossible to ever alter your position.

As I told a friend, it’s probably a good idea to avoid referencing Hitler in all metaphors, particularly if you are in the media.

At least to avoid Godwin’s Law.

Then I went to her Wikipedia page to see what Hill has done since the controversy.

Under the heading of Controversy was this:

In 2009, Hill was at the center of a controversy after telling Green Bay Packers fans to give Brett Favre the "Duracell treatment," implying that fans at Lambeau Field should throw batteries at the former Packer quarterback.

Later in 2009, Hill once again was reprimanded for her comments after comparing University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball coach John Calipari to Charles Manson. She later apologized to the university.

Suddenly, I stopped feeling bad for her.

One well-intentioned miscue?  Fine.

But encouraging fans to throw batteries at an NFL quarterback?

And comparing a college basketball coach to Charles Manson?

With the thousands of resumes that ESPN receives every year, I cannot imagine why she is still with the company.

I walk like a duck. And perhaps it’s how I should be playing golf, too. And maybe I should just quit.

I was playing golf with friends yesterday when one of them, a longtime friend and colleague who plays well and has taught me a great deal about the game, said, “I’ve been watching your feet. The way they impact your game.” “And?”

“Most people walk with their feet pointed straight ahead,” she said. “But you walk like a duck, with your feet pointed out. But when you go to hit the ball, you straighten our your feet, which would be normal if you didn’t walk like a duck.”

“Are you saying I should stand like a duck when I hit the ball?” I asked.

“Yeah. Like you normally stand.”

My fellow players found this extremely amusing. One suggested I also quack like a duck when I hit the ball as well.

I punched him.

It’s true that I walk like a duck, though I didn’t realize it was so universally known. For years, I played the bass drum in our high school’s marching band, and in order to avoid being blown over by the wind, I hard to turn my feet outward to steady myself. Otherwise the drum would’ve act like a sail and the wind would’ve knock me over.

Sadly, this foot position eventually became ingrained, and it’s still how I walk today.

And apparently how I should be playing golf.

I may have to quit the game.

The Bruins win! It’s kind of depressing.

For the first time since the year of my birth, the Boston Bruins have won the Stanley Cup.

This, in combination with the Miami Heat’s recent defeat to the Dallas Mavericks, has officially removed the sting of the Celtic’s early exit from the playoffs for me. I can enter the summer with a glad heart and a eye toward my beloved New York Yankees.

I was watching alone last night when the Bruins won, and I was thrilled.

I cried in 1996 when the Yankees won the first of several World Series championships, and I cried again in 2001 when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl. There were no tears last night. Though I watch the Bruins quite often and have loved them since I was a child growing up in Massachusetts, my emotional connection to them is simply night as strong as the other teams, perhaps because I root for them alone.

But despite the lack of tears, there was genuine euphoria when the final seconds ticked off the clock and the team mobbed Tim Thomas at the net to celebrate their first championship in nearly forty years.

A couple hours later, I climbed into bed, put my head on the pillow, and realized that the euphoria was already gone. I was still happy about the win, and thoughts of the game were still filtering through my mind, but I could already feel the joy rapidly diminishing.

When I awoke this morning, there was still happiness, and perhaps a little giddiness even, but it wasn’t the same feeling that I felt during those final ticks of the clock.

Not even close.

Here’s the thing:

For the athlete, the joy of the championship will live forever, because it is something that has been earned. My Little League team won the championship thirty years ago, and I am still joyous over that win, because I was a part of it. It was mine, and it still is.

But as a fan, almost all the joy that I experience comes from the journey to the championship and the culminate moment of victory. I live and die with my teams through every pitch, kick, dribble, and glove save, and in some minuscule way, I can share the field, the court and the ice with my teams.  I feel the pressure of must-win game, the tension of an overtime contest, and I can celebrate with as much enthusiasm and excitement as the players on the field when they win.

But unlike them, that excitement disappears quickly. Almost immediately.

In some ways, the best part of any championship season for me are the final ten seconds of a game, when the season is still intact, the team is still intact, and the victory is all but assured.

Once the season has ended, the championship belongs to the players, and my grasp upon it quickly slips away.

I am not the Stanley Cup champion. I have not won the Super Bowl or the World Series or the NBA Finals.

If my team is not embarked on the journey to the championship, then it’s almost as if I have been kicked off the team. As they filter off the field or the court or the ice into the locker room, the celebration continues, but it does so without me.

For the fan, we know our teams as they exist on the field of play. Once they have left the field for the final time, they cease to exist for us.

Less than eight hours after the Bruins’ victory, I find myself sitting here, happy that my team has won, but already waiting for next season.

The Bruins will go on to parades and parties and days spent with the Stanley Cup. They will receive rings and recognition and will always be known as Stanley Cup champions of 2011. For each member of the team, this championship will live on forever.

For me, the memories will last. The happiness over the victory will last.  But part of me is already sad that the journey is over, and that the team will never be quite the same again,

Already, I am anxious for another season to begin.

It is only during the chase that fans are truly joyous about their team’s championship, because it is only during the chase that we feel like we are also in the chase, a part of the team, urging our teammates onto greatness.