I love sports. I have since I was a child. Some of my earliest memories involve sports.
-Standing in the rain with my father at a semi-pro Chambersburg Cardinals games. I specifically remember dad putting a hole in the bottom of a garbage bag and putting it over my head in the rain.
-My father allowing me to stay up late to watch the Phillies and Royals World Series. He was a closet Phillies fan.
-Buying big time wrastlin’ tickets as a Father’s Day gift. I knew he liked wrestling, but was unaware there was a difference between wrestling and wrastlin.’
My love continued into my formative years.
My dad would, each year, take me to Dickinson College to watch the Washington Redskin training camp.
Between my seventh and eighth grade years, I lost television privileges for the entire summer and I really learned to love baseball on the radio. The announcers became like friends.
One year later, after my mother passed in March, we spent the summer in Falmouth, Massachusetts and I fell in love with the Red Sox. Every summer night in New England is like a Buckeye game day and the enthusiasm is infectious.
When my dad and I couldn’t talk about anything else, we could talk sports. Even after I left my father’s home, we watched Cal Ripken break the consecutive games record “together” over the phone.
But the thing is, for the most part, my love has been of sports, not a particular team.
I’ve had season tickets to the Harrisburg Senators baseball team and the Baltimore Ravens. I had a partial package for the Hershey Bears hockey team. Until I proposed to my wife and needed to save money, I was in the process of getting Detroit Lions season tickets. None of these would have been labeled as “MY team.”
While I root for the Redskins, as well as Penn State and Notre Dame in college football, I will always opt to watch a better game (or even attend a live game) before I will watch my team in a stinker. I do not understand how Buckeye fans can be glued to the tv while their team kills Bowling Green or Tulsa or Florida A&M and the like.
I don’t even really have favorite professional or college basketball teams, I just want to see good games.
The notable exception to my rule is the Red Sox. I always want to see the Red Sox win big. I know baseball is better when the Yankees are competitive, but I just hate them so and with they would go 0-162.
The good news is that I enjoy sports all year long and the fewer teams that remain, the more I enjoy the games. The bad news is that except for the Red Sox, I am rarely invested in the games.
Until recently.
I have found a team I enjoy rooting for. I am all in on the Blue Jackets. I have enjoyed hockey for years, growing up in western Pennsylvania during the height of the Penguins success, having Bears tickets and going to many BGSU games when I lived in Findlay. Until this season though, my loyalty was too the sport, not any team. As this year’s Blue Jackets team ebbed and flowed, looked good, fell apart, went all-in at the trade deadline, squeaked into the playoffs then swept a historically good Tampa Bay team, I fell more and more in love with it.
Obviously, I am not the only one. I think all of Central Ohio had Blue Jackets fever. The proof of this was when the Jackets took top billing on local sports, above the Buckeye spring game!
All of this to say that it has been a very long time since I was this sad about a loss, When the Bruins won the series Monday night, I was saddened the season was over. I realized that I will miss not only hockey, but also this team, MY team.
In my grief, I am reminded of two sayings. “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” and “There is always next year.”
My dad taught me that also!
-Mac Cordell is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune