I’m a sports nut and I find many life lessons, shall we say,
in sports. With the exception of
football, I am a New York fan through and through. And that is tough at times; especially when
your baseball team (the Mets) can count only two World Series Championships,
your basketball team hasn’t won since 1973, and your hockey team, well. . .
Patience. I think
about that word, that virtue a great deal.
I’m not a patient man. And yet,
with my teams, I have the patience of Job.
Every spring I prepare for baseball knowing “this is our year”. And every year – except for two – my heart is
broken by October. And still, as winter
rolls in I say “wait ‘til spring. We’ll
get em next year.”
And then there’s hockey and the New York Rangers. I discovered hockey as a little boy, eight or
nine years old. Ironically, I can’t even
skate. But watching those guys fly
around the ice, I was transfixed. And
the Rangers? They played at Madison
Square Garden; their jerseys were red, white and blue; and they were New York’s
team. It was then I learned of the
curse. “Rangers haven’t won since 1940”,
I was told. It didn’t matter. I knew they’d win.
And year in and year out they wouldn’t. Not in the ‘60’s, or the ‘70’s, or the ‘80’s. Years would come and go and the Rangers
wouldn’t win. Not once in all those
years did I give up on the team. “That’s
what a fan does”, I’d tell myself. And I’d
always know there was next year.
Time moved ahead to 1994.
We were living in Virginia. It
was spring and the Rangers had the best record in hockey. A future hall of famer – Mark Messier – had signed
with the Rangers at the beginning of the season and he had promised “the cup”
would come to New York. All season it
seemed that way. The Rangers were
unstoppable.
We only had one son at that point. He turned six during the hockey season and he
was a “little Larry”. Every night, as we
sat down to dinner, we’d talk sports. I’d
tell him about memories of baseball, football, basketball and hockey
games. And I’d tell him “this is the
year the curse is lifted . . . the Rangers are gonna win.”
The playoffs began and it looked as though once again the
Rangers would break my heart. More than
once they faced elimination; more than once Messier would come out and “guarantee”
a victory. Sudden-death overtime games,
it didn’t matter. Somehow the Rangers
survived and lived to play one more day.
I would sit up late into the night and watch every second of
every game and then the next day replay it for our son who’d sit spellbound as I
described yet another improbable win.
And then it came down to game 7, in the Garden, for the Cup. Our six year old was fast asleep but I’d
promised him “I’ll wake you when we win”.
The clock ticked down, so slowly it seemed. And then there was just thirty seconds left. “What are you doing?” my wife asked as I ran
up the stairs to lift our sleeping son in my arms. “I promised him. He needs to see this,” I said and I held him
close as the clock clicked down, “10, 9. . .”
They panned the arena and old men, men from the era of World War II and
Korea; large lumbering construction workers, wept with joy. Fifty four years and the Rangers finally won!
Natalie Merchant’s song “These Are the Days” played on the
Garden sound system and Messier and his teammates skated around the rink with
the Stanley Cup above their heads and I, I held my son close and whispered over
and over “I told you they’d win. You
always have to believe.”
That message resonates with me. Sometimes it sounds like a tired cliché, but
the truth is, you have to be patient and believe. It’s a sports metaphor, but I’ve come to
understand through this experience, it’s also a definition of faith. “Be patient and believe.”
Last night, the Rangers won another Game 7 playoff
game. I couldn’t help but think of 1994
and wonder, with so much facing me, could this be the year?
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