For Love of the Game: Sports Heaven Awaits

Sports fever is in the air. Football, baseball, basketball, and hockey seasons are soon to converge, and that makes for sports fan heaven. Add to that the great tournaments in tennis and golf that are beginning or just on the horizon, the final races of the NASCAR Winston Cup season, and what more could a sports aficionado want?

Oh, and let’s not forget all the other great sports such as Soccer, Boxing, MMA, and all college sports. Simply put, we’re coming up on the best time of the year to be a sports fan.

We’re quickly closing in on the start of the NFL season, with the dreams of fans from all over the country being fed by new coaches, general managers, and playing schemes, new acquisitions, the return from injuries by other players, and the return to football itself by still others such as Brett Favre and Michael Vick.

The Major League Baseball season is winding down to the playoffs, with many teams still in the mix for either a division title or a Wild Card berth. Fans from San Francisco to New York, from Chicago to Miami have dreams of watching their team dethrone the venerable Philadelphia Phillies, whose own fans are confident they’ll defend their title against all comers.

The NBA and NHL seasons will be starting up just as baseball winds down, and the competitiveness in both the NBA and the NHL for titles promises to make for more excitement than should be legal.

This is the final year before the much-awaited Free Agent Bonanza that awaits in the National Basketball Association in 2010, with such illustrious superstars as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade coming on the market.

Where they will end up has been fodder for thousands of articles and much speculation, and the play of all three this upcoming season, along with numerous other stars, is sure to give NBA fans all they can wish for.

Top all that off with the fact the US Open in Tennis just started and looks to be an incredibly exciting tournament, especially on the Men’s side, with No. 1 Seed Roger Federer of Switzerland looking for a sixth straight title against the likes of Andy Murray of Britain, Rafael Nadal of Spain, Novak Djokovic of Serbia, and our own American hero Andy Roddick, and how can someone who enjoys sports in all its forms not feel giddy at the moment.

So, forget all the talk about steroids and scandals. Ignore the numerous articles you’ll find that delve into the negativity of the sports world. Just for a moment sit and wonder and marvel at how fortunate we all are to have so many incredible sports to enjoy and so many sports heroes and stars to be enthralled by.

Those who lived during the early part of the last century can surely say they were blessed to have witnessed the exploits of such baseball titans as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Cy Young, Dizzy Dean, Bob Feller, Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson, and Christy Mathewson.

Yet, we can counter with a crop of baseball behemoths of our own in Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, Joe Mauer, Matt Holliday, Ryan Howard, Derek Jeter, Carl Crawford, Dustin Pedroia, Carlos Peña, Carlos Beltrán, Torii Hunter, Aaron Hill, Jim Thome, Gary Sheffield, Gary Matthews, Jr., Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, Derrek Lee, David Ortiz, Mark Teixeira, Robinson Canó, C.C. Sabathia, Justin Verlander, Josh Beckett, Josh Johnson, Chris Carpenter, Tim Lincecum, Mariano Rivera, and Trevor Hoffman.

They can also say they had the unique and incredible opportunity to watch such amazing football legends take the field as Harold “Red” Grange, Bronko Nagurski, Jim Thorpe, Sammy Baugh, Sid Luckman, John “Blood” McNally, Earle “Greasy” Neale, Clyde “Bulldog” Turner, and Otto Graham.

However, we are even more privileged to look upon the feats of such wonderful players as Tom Brady, Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Donovan McNabb, Chad Pennington, Philip Rivers, Drew Brees, Tony Romo, Joe Flacco, Vince Young, Marion Barber, Adrian Peterson, Michael Turner, DeAngelo Williams, Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Steve Smith, DeMarcus Ware, Joey Porter, Julius Peppers, Dwight Freeney, Terrell Suggs, Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Troy Polamalu, and Charles Woodson.

They can extol those around them with the tales of how they were lucky enough to see great basketball luminaries in the infancy of the sport take to the court such as George Mikan, LeRoy Edwards, Bobby McDermott, Mel Riebe, and Ed Sadowski.

But can they honestly really believe they watched basketball at its finest as we get to watch every night when such players take to the hardwood as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Ray Allen, Carmelo Anthony, Ron Artest, Mike Bibby, Chauncey Billups, Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh, Elton Brand, Caron Butler, Vince Carter, Baron Davis, Tim Duncan, Kevin Durant, Kevin Garnett, Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobili, Ben Gordon, Dwight Howard, Allen Iverson, Joe Johnson, Jason Kidd, Tracy McGrady, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce, Michael Redd, Rajon Rondo, Brandon Roy, and Amar’e Stoudemire? I highly doubt they believe that.

They can brag about how they were fortunate enough to follow the exploits of such hockey stars as Taffy Abel, Larry Aurie, Frank Boucher, Punch Broadbent, Turk Broda, King Clancy, Dit Clapper, Lionel Conacher, Bill Cook, Bill Cowley, Bill Durnan, George Hainsworth, Bryan Hextall, Mel Hill, Syd Howe, “Phantom” Joe Malone, Howie Morenz, Didier “Cannonball” Pitre, Joe Primeau, Fido Purpur, Art Ross, Eddie Shore, Earl Seibert, Nels Stewart, and Cooney Weiland.

Yet, we are auspicious to enjoy the heroics on ice of such men as Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Ilya Kovalchuk, Pavel Datsyuk, Jeff Carter, Zach Parise, Nicklas Backstrom, Marc Savard, Joe Thornton, Blake Wheeler, Tim Thomas, Steve Mason, Nikolai Khabibulin, Roberto Luongo, Pekka Rinne, and Tomas Vokoun.

They can even regale you with accounts of observing great tennis legends of that era such as Bill Tilden, Lawrence Doherty, Don Budge, Max Decugis, Henri Cochet, Anthony Wilding, René Lacoste, Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, Bill Larned, Jean Borotra, Jack Crawford, Helen Jacobs, Helen Wills Moody, Dorothea Douglass Lambert Chambers, Molla Bjurstedt Mallory, Margaret Osborne DuPont, Suzanne Lenglen, Elizabeth Ryan, Jeanne Matthey, Daphne Akhurst Cozens, and Nancy Wynne Bolton.

We, though, can declare we get to behold the wonders of such tennis greats today as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Juan Martin Del Potro, James Blake, Lleyton Hewitt, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Justine Henin, Dinara Safina, Elena Dementieva, and Svetlana Kuznetsova.

The negativity that far too often clouds sports-journalism can be dismissed with a simple shrug. There were scandals in the sports world even a century ago (remember the “Black Sox”?). What’s more important than all the articles written by petty men and women calling themselves “journalists” is the love of the game, whatever game it might be, that resides in the heart of every sports fan.

That love gives us a passion for following the efforts of our favorite teams and players. We watch them in marvelous wonder, wishing we had the ability to do what they do; enthralled at their dexterity, poise, balance, and fortitude.

So, forget all the foolishness about sports and simply bask in the love of the game. Watch and be amazed and enter passionately into this upcoming time I call “Sports Heaven”. I know I am.