This is why I don't smile in pictures

Sitting in class today, I was thinking about what to write about today, instead of paying attention naturally, given that this was a relatively slow weekend for Seattle sports. I will get around to discussing the ending of the UW & USC game later this week and nationwide the NFL weekend was pretty uneventful (lolz at the Stealers being 1 and 3) but the thought of playing the Bears in the playoffs keeps me up at night. Other than that I wasn’t able to give the MLB playoffs the attention that they deserved as the girlfriend was back in town, but the fact that the Yankees went down so quickly makes my smile a little wider. So with nothing going on I figured that I would start off the bitching that will become common place on Knights of King K.

I was born in 1987 in a suburb of New York City, deep inside Yankee country, and the influence caused me to drift towards the Evil Empire. So that’s how I spent the fall of October of 96, rooting for the Yankees in their run towards the world championship, celebrating outside of Yankee stadium after the final out was recorded in the deciding game. But later the following year, work caused my father to relocate the family to the Pacific Northwest and at that point I was still easy to influence when it came to sports. Under the peer pressure of my friends I began rooting for the University of Washington at halftime of the 97 Apple Cup (They lost, sending the cougars to the Rose Bowl). The next year I fully adopted the Mariners as my favorite team after I attended the August 1st game against the then record setting New York Yankees, coincidently which was the first game after the team traded Randy Johnson to the Houston Astros. I started following the Seahawks after the team hired Mike Holmgren and promptly saw the team blow an 8 and 2 start and finish 9 and 7. As you may have noticed, I’m kind of the kiss of death, as confirmed this weekend after the girlfriend asked me to root for the Cowboys and as soon as I said “Go Cowboys” they gave up 10 points in 20 seconds.

After that though came two of the most enjoyable years of my still young fanhood, the early parts of this decade. The 2000 M’s season was the first time that I had been involved in a pennant race and it was a blast, with me attending a late August game against the Yankees that the M’s won after Edgar Martinez hit a go ahead grand slam in the eighth. Carlos Guillen’s suicide squeeze against the White Sox that sent the Mariners to the ALCS remains my favorite Mariners play in memory. But after game 6 of that series I learned how cruel the gods could be after hearing that David Justice had just teed off of Arthur Rhodes for the lead with a monster homerun into the right field bleachers from my dad’s car.

2001 was even better, every night more memorable than the last. That was the summer that my two best friends expanded their social life and I remember repeatedly turning down countless party and other social invitations so I could be sure that I wouldn’t miss the game. Then just like that, after watching the Yankees go deep off of Rhodes and Sasaki in Game 4 to effectively end the Mariners season, hope died inside of me. I became a cold bitter sports fan, that was incapable of enjoying a moment for what it was worth out of fear of what would go wrong next. The next two years represented nothing but disappointment for the M’s, Hawks and Dawgs but it seemed like that was all going to change in 2004.

The year started off well with the Seahawks making it into over time in 2003 Playoffs, engaged in a hard fought battle with the Packers, when Alex Bannister blew his route and the ball got intercepted, returned for the score and we were off. I got a job at Safeco Field that year and was able to watch firsthand the collapse of a team that had won 90+ games the previous four years. The raping that Pat Gillick did to this team had come to fruition and it looked like the team was going to be bad for a while. But that was ok because the Hawks were going to ROCK that year, and they did, until they blew a 17 point lead at home to the Rams in week four, as I watched helplessly in a bar at Disney World. All in all that year sucked more than all the others because all the hope that was lost. I learned that hope can be the worst emotion because it hurts the most when you realize that you were wrong all along. The 2005 season wasn’t eventful for the M’s with the only notable event being the arrival of Felix Hernandez, and what an start it was. The ending of the 2006 season provided me with more hope than almost all the Mariner seasons in the past, but once again hope can be a dangerous thing, even more dangerous when your team goes 2 and 17 versus the Oakland A’s.

The 2005 Seahawks came the closest of any team to erasing my eternal pessimism. I was at Qwest Field when they demolished Carolina and won the NFC, the atmosphere was out of this world, the most amazing thing that I have ever been a part of in my life and I was outside Yankee Stadium in 96 when the Yankees won. The entire time leading up out to Super Bowl XL my motto was simply “End the pain of 2001” and for a while there it look like the impossible might have happened. Then the Locklear holding penalty occurred prompting the single greatest emotional swing in my life, from pure joy and elation to the sting of reality slapping me across the. But a part of me was relieved that it had happened, it meant that at least we weren’t going to blow a huge lead and lose the game on the very last play, we weren’t going to choke it away. And that perfectly sums up my view on sports right now, it’s better to not succeed than it is to win and risk even more painful failure, it sucks but I gladly take it every year. That being said, God Damn I would kill for a championship.