The King of Pain

(This is an excerpt from my upcoming Bleachers' Brew column. Photos by Mark Humphrey.)

Martina Navratilova pegged it right, “Whoever said, ‘It's not whether you win or lose that counts,’ probably lost.” Sports has a dichotomous nature that I both love and hate. It can be an uplifting experience that some say can be better than sex. Yet at times, it reminds me of a bad break up. You move on. You get over it or you think you do, but every now and then you stop and say, “Damn.” And your mind wanders through myriad roads of “what if?”

It even plays with your heart rate like it was a pinball game.

Not every one feels like Jo-Wilfreid Tsonga who made it to the Men’s Finals of the Australian Open where even in defeat he was glad to be there. Or even like Barnsley which eliminated Liverpool and Chelsea in succession the FA Cup Finals be damned. It was quite a ride, eh, lads?

The Beatles put it so well in Golden Slumbers, “Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight a long time (you know it's a Paul McCartney penned song when it starts out so peacefully then ends up in a deranged rocker)."

Ask Rudy Tomjanovich about 1977. He may have won as the Houston Rockets coach later on but there are some things you can never exorcise. I saw it up close in 2003 as my beloved New York Yankees took it on the chin from the Florida Marlins. I watched in silence as the Bronx Bombers watched the victorious National Leaguers whoop it up on that hallowed patch of earth that in many ways was the godfather of Boston Garden’s leprechauns. I felt that sickening knot in my stomach as I was the last one to leave Araneta Coliseum when the UST Tigers snatched what was a sure victory for the Ateneo Blue Eagles.

Someone asked the transplanted New Yorker in me if I root for the New York Knicks. I responded with, “Now why would I want to flagellate myself? No one can be such a masochist.” Then again I realize that Isiah Thomas is nothing more than a prophet of doom so woe to the Knicks faithful.

Times like this, I wish I wasn’t a sports writer. Everything remains in vivid high-def color in my mind and my keyboard. I reside in the church of the poisoned mind.

But life goes on and move on I, we, must.

Until I encountered the Memphis Tigers who went down in defeat to the Kansas Jayhawks.

"Boy, you're gonna carry that weight a long time."