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Monday, January 17, 2005
Fourth time's the charm? Last night I actually dreamed about yesterday's Eagles game; it was near the end of the fourth quarter, and the score was 28-24, and one of our players was running down the field holding the ball, and I was saying (in the dream) "Don't fuck up, don't fuck up, don't fuck up..." And then I woke up, and remembered that they had not-fucked-up, and had won, 27-14 (okay, so my dream-numbers were off), and were headed for their fourth NFC championship game in a row. And then I thought, in my conscious mind, "Don't fuck up, don't fuck up, don't fuck up..." This is from my pen-and-paper journal, written back in June, right after Smarty Jones lost the Belmont by less than five lengths: The Philly contestants—teams, individual humans, individual horses—always choke in the clutch. Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Come up short at the last minute. In other words, lose—not all the time, like some teams (I don't know for sure all the legendary ones, but aren't the Red Sox and the Cubs up there?)—in cities that just shrug and wait for another 3-27 season; our teams wind up with 27-3, where the third of the three is the NFC championship or the Elite 8 game in the NCAA tournament or the seventh game of the NBA finals. So, hey, the third leg of the Triple Crown? Hell, we were practically expecting it. (All down the backstretch I was just saying "Please do it, please do it"—never mind yelling "C'mon!", just "don't let us down again.")Yes, okay, I'm sounding pessimistic. But this time it's more like upside-down pessimism flipped into optimism—"we've always fucked up, maybe this time we won't fuck up, maybe this time we will make it, let's just hope they're good enough." They don't have to be great, they don't have to be the best, they don't even have to be good—just good enough. (Or, as the saying goes, "You don't have to be faster than the fastest cheetah; you just have to be faster than the slowest gazelle." Or [the one I like better], as one fleeing Great White Hunter might say to another, "I don't have to be faster than the lion, I just have to be faster than you.") We don't have to be the best team in the NFL; we just have to be better than the Falcons, and we just have to be better than them for one game on one day. So: let's all hold hands and say it together. Don't fuck up, don't fuck up, don't fuck up. If the Red Sox can do it, why can't we?* *Don't answer that. [ at 10:57 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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