So Close

I was thinking, for a little while, about how I can relax and let some of my ennui go in the wake of the somewhat surprising collapse of the Golden State Warriors in their quest for a second consecutive NBA Championship. I was thinking that I have lost a few Super Bowls in my day. That thought stuck around for a few days, and it even came out as part of our community discussions about how we were all going to cope with getting so close to the top of that mountain and then having to it the reset button and start all over again next Fall.
Then I was thinking, "Wait a minute, I never lost any Super Bowls. I never played in a Super Bowl." That's the bottom line. I watched a lot of Super Bowls, some of which involved teams for whom I have invested a lot of time and money in purchase of jerseys, bath towels, hats and note pads. I grew up watching the Denver Broncos, and for a brief period of time I considered playing for them. That was when I was in second grade. Dreams die hard, but my fascination with spectator sports only ramped up from there. I discovered over the years that I wasn't the athletic type. I was the watcher type.
I watched a lot of football, some basketball, and a little bit of baseball. I became fascinated with the notion that I could influence the outcome of certain contests simply by how much I cared. This gave me plenty of heartache as seasons came and went without any Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Championship trophies to show for it. When I was a junior in high school, our basketball team took state. The next year, when I was a senior, they made it all the way to the finals and lost. Major disappointment. Second best team in the whole state and that wasn't worth a day off school like we got the year before.
Then I thought, "Maybe I've been thinking about this the wrong way all these years." I didn't play in any of those games, why should I feel bad? Shouldn't I be getting some sort of personal apology from the teams that let me down? I bought the T-shirt, I sat and stared at the TV for all those hours, wading through all those truck and beer commercials, where's my appreciation for having stuck with it all those weeks just to get the news: Wait til next year.
Or maybe I should look into getting a roster spot.