Ah… all this useless and pointless knowledge. My brain is absolutely inundated with the memory of games and players gone by. We are a society obsessed with the present. I figure this a rare victory for logic, since there is no real sense dwelling in the past, or a future that never occurred.
All it takes is chance circumstance, the slightest gust from winds of fortune and fate, for our best laid plans to splinter into nothingness. It is truly fascinating to ponder what could or should have been, were it not for Rodney Harrison plowing into Trent Green’s knee in a meaningless preseason game, or heaven knows millions of other instances when the script was flipped and lives changed. As a fan, and people too, we want to believe that an overriding force of logic balances the universe. That pain should be repaid with happiness. In a way, these games we play, featuring fair and foul lines and free throws, represent one of our finest attempts at order. But, despite this commendable effort, any fanatic worth his salt could recall innumerable instances where a fickle bounce, incompetent official, or temporarily insane coach rendered talent null. So we lash out, watching helpless through the window of our television screens, indignant, nauseated at a discomforting realization: chaos is king. It drives a man to drink. But there is compensation. We take comfort in legend. There are Billy Goats and hexes to cast our scorn upon, ghosts of imagination free from any real reprisal. All this to explain the inexplicable, to keep our minds from combusting, for there arrives a time to just sit back and be entertained, ceasing the infinite speculation from a voice in our head wondering what would have happened if Prior threw a breaking ball, or if Castillo had swung a millisecond later, or if Bartman hadn’t bought his glove to the game…