Admit it, you had your doubts, didn't you?
With three seconds left and Syracuse desperately clinging to a three-point lead over Kansas in the NCAA men's basketball title game, you just knew that they were headed for disaster.
They'd already blown an 18-point lead, and when the ball was swung over to trey specialist Michael Lee with 1.5 seconds left, you could sense a Hollywood ending unfolding before your eyes. Lee bags the three-ball, forcing overtime and a re-energized Kansas squad runs away from the 'Cuse in the extra session, leaving Jim Boeheim once again a bridesmaid, never a bride.
Allow me to interject for a moment and state that if you did indeed envision it all unraveling like that at the end of the game last Monday you had company. Lots of it. It's probably safe to say that most of Western and Central New York were preparing themselves to go to work on Tuesday with that dull ache in their hearts that only comes from having one's dream broken on the national stage.
We've been there before. Those same Orangemen played for the national title in 1987 -- also in the Big Easy -- and were clinging to a 2-point lead with four seconds to play when Indiana's Keith Smart hit a three-pointer that felt like a corkscrew to the heart of every Syracuse fan.
How about Super Bowl XXV? Just seeing those words on the printed page is enough to make even the manliest of Bills fans burst into a fit of uncontrolled shaking and sobbing. And what of the three Super Bowls that followed? They weren't as close as the first one, but they were just as painful to ingest.
Does the phrase "Dallas Stars" send a sharp pain through your chest? When the Sabres met them in the Stanley Cup finals, they did so with arguably the best netminder ever to lace up a pair of skates -- Dominik Hasek -- between the pipes, yet it mattered little, as Buffalo went down in defeat in six games.
Sports, at their best, create a diversion that we get lost in. It takes our minds off of our own, and the world's, problems. At their worst, they serve as a reminder that there are two kinds of people in the world -- the lucky and the unlucky, the winners and the losers.
In other cities in America, the people embrace phrases that celebrate the triumphs of their sports franchises on the field of play. In Pittsburgh, they speak in reverent tones about the "Immaculate Reception," when Franco Harris made a shoestring catch of a deflected ball and ran it in for a touchdown to defeat the Oakland Raiders in a playoff game.
In Denver, they speak of "The Drive." In January, 1987, quarterback John Elway drove his team 99 yards against the Cleveland Browns in the AFC title game and became an instant legend in the process. Elway retired with an NFL record of 47 fourth-quarter comebacks for victory.
In San Francisco, it's "The Catch." Wide receiver Dwight Clark hauled in a last-minute touchdown from Joe Montana to beat the Dallas Cowboys and send the 49ers on to their first Super Bowl win.
Each major sport has its own moments of greatness that ultimately come to define the game itself. In basketball, fans will never forget the image of the Knicks' Willis Reed hobbling from the tunnel to lead his team to victory over the Lakers in the 1970 NBA finals.
In hockey, the image of an airborne Bobby Orr scoring a goal to defeat the St. Louis Blues in the 1970 Stanley Cup finals will be indelibly etched into the minds of Boston Bruins fans.
In baseball, Don Larsen's work in the pivotal fifth game of the 1956 World Series still stands as the only perfect game hurled in the October classic.
And in football, no championship team has been able to equal the mark of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who finished the season a perfect 17-0.
Now, think of the phrases linked to our local teams. How are "Homerun Throwback," "No Goal" and "Wide Right" for an unholy trinity?
focal points of our sports franchises are all ones of great and monumental losses. It sort of mirrors the history of our communities. Losses -- of jobs, people or neighborhoods -- are the single most defining factor of Western New York over the past half-century.
Speaking as someone desperately holding onto the qualifier of "thirty-something," I see our area from the unique perspective of only having experienced the steak-and-gravy days from the remembrances of nostalgic old-timers. I sometimes wonder what it must be like for people of my age group who were born and raised in, say, Atlanta or Raleigh. People who have known nothing but growth and prosperity. People who see homes going up rather than down. People who have their choice of top-paying jobs. People who live with the constant expectation of a new sports franchise coming to town, not with the threat of one leaving. People who feel that they were born just on the cusp of prosperity, not 40 years after that stage left town.
Is it any wonder then, that after decades of being conditioned to experience failure, we feared the worst when Mr. Lee squared up for that three-pointer in New Orleans last Monday night?
Who among us figured on the "Helicopter"? Just as Lee launched the ball, Syracuse forward Hakim Warrick came from somewhere off of M Street near the SU campus to swat the ball, and Kansas' hopes, into oblivion.
It was most fitting that Syracuse won the game with a block rather than a shot. When the 6-foot-8-inch Warrick -- who possesses a 7-foot, pterodactyl-like wingspan -- swatted the ball away, he also swatted away 50 years of frustration for local residents.
For once, there was a Hollywood ending and it was our guys riding off proudly into the sunset. Syracuse's improbable run to the championship means that a flicker of doubt has been permanently placed into the hearts and minds of Central and Western New Yorkers. That flicker -- foreign as it may be to us -- has a name. It is called optimism.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 15 2003 |