I grew up rooting for the Rangers, and I’ve only recently developed an affection for the Orioles (definitely post-1983), so I’ve never known what it’s like to win a World Series. But I also grew up rooting for the Dallas Cowboys (I played my first games of street football in the early 1990s), so I know what it’s like to win a Super Bowl.
Stephen King writes:
[W]inning the Super Bowl isn’t the same as winning the World Series. Not even in the same universe as winning the World Series.
King wrote that in May of 2004. The Red Sox were still five months away from winning their first World Series in a while, but the Patriots had just won their second Super Bowl in three years and were about to win their third in four. He didn’t know what it was like to win the World Series, but he knew what it was like to win the Super Bowl.
So what do you think: jealousy? Wanting what he can’t or hadn’t had?
What do you think, part B: Which tastes sweeter to kiss, the Lombardi Trophyor the Commissioner’s Trophy? Maybe the Larry O’Brien Trophy?
2 comments:
As far as trophies go, I think that the best trophy is Lord Stanley's Cup. There's just something cool about the fact that there's only one, and that each person who wins it has their name engraved on it.
But I think I do agree with his sentiment about the World Series vs. the Super Bowl. Maybe it's because the Super Bowl has become a spectacle and less a sporting event. The game seems like a sideshow to all of the other stuff. Less like a football championship and more like a circus.
I concur with your thoughts about the Stanley Cup. It's sorta like how, in Maryland, there's a book that every new attorney since, like, 1804 or something signs right after they take the oath. It's a cool thought that my signature is a few hundred pages after Thurgood Marshall's or Roger Taney's.
I also concur about the Super Bowl being all about the spectacle. When was the last time any baseball game had a wardrobe malfunction that garnered national attention? I'm drawing a blank.
I've been thinking a lot lately, and I think it's the substance of baseball that draws me in so deep. It really is the kind of game where so much happens beneath the surface, beneath the box score even, that the better you know the game, the better you appreciate it.
And maybe, just maybe, that's why football long since left baseball in the dust as the most popular sport in America. That and competitive balance.
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