Because we always want what is impossible, we are transfixed by the past. Around the holidays we become fascinated by “tradition.” We use it to sell 7-year-old books and movies set in the 1940s that were made in 1980s. It’s a misty-eyed racket that sells well, and every passing year grows the tradition a bit more. It doesn’t hurt that DVDs are fairly easy to wrap.

Our love of the past is as simple as it is misguided. A look behind us is always easily explained. There is a line of cause and effect in the events, a clear view of what happened and why. When things look that logical it’s easy to long for the past, a world that makes sense and reminds us of what we already know.

What we forget, of course, is how awful the past can be. We forget social progress or emotional growth. We ignore the mistakes of youth and focus on its easy aspects. Out of a history full of ignorance and bigotry and an early death we choose to cherish simplicity and the joys of a sitcom’s nuclear family as evidence of a happier time.

We romanticize history with fuzzy camera filters and melded memories, but we add the unnatural sheen of possibility to the future as well. We can also spend far too much time worrying about the present. Our perspective is totally screwed up, but the lens with which we view things is important. Oftentimes I think we spend too much time worrying about what we see and not enough time wondering why we see it.

My two favorite Christmas specials are both cartoons. This is because I have the maturity of an eight-year-old boy, but also because I think cartoons can make the most of a Christmas plot. There are plenty of cartoons where the main character helps Santa deliver presents or, better yet, incapacitates Santa and has to assume his responsibilities. Those are fine, but all of those classic Christmas stories do nothing to add to the show itself. It’s wacky hijinks in a fake beard or A Christmas Carol with the smallest character playing Tiny Tim.

The episodes I like use the holiday as a foil to show you something new, to add another dimension to a character that maybe you can’t manage with an ordinary episode. I want Christmas in cannon, and some shows really pull it off well.

In Hey Arnold, for example, the main character learns the background of a quiet man who lives in his boarding house. Mr. Hyunh, who most viewers knew as the guy with the funny accent, lost his daughter during the Fall of Saigon. It gets heavy in a hurry, and years later it still resonates with viewers who got their first taste of Vietnam on a cartoon.

Adventure Time is one of the smartest, most self-aware shows currently on television and its Christmas episode is no exception. If anything, the lone contrast with its usual 11-minute vignettes is that it’s one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen on a children’s cartoon network. In fact, midway through the episode they throw up a “Merry Christmas from Adventure Time!” banner on the bottom of the screen just to remind confused viewers that they are watching the right channel.

The episode itself, subject material aside, is a brilliant example of using a holiday setting to expand the cannon. It firmly establishes a time period for the show and gives the main villain a thorough history. It’s heartbreaking, really, and once you see the Christmas episode of Adventure Time you never look at the show the same way again. It’s an awesome use of the 22 minutes a network gives you a half-dozen times in December. A year later, it still stuns me when I watch it.

Every December I re-read this post. As much as I want to go back and fix the clunky sentences and style errors of my younger self, I never do. It took me three years to write about my worst Christmas, and I think it’s important to leave that moment as it stands. Over the years it’s become a part of the holiday, an idle minute or two brings it all back to sober a happy moment and steels the resolve to have the best Christmas yet.

I hate that post. It’s a bit too personal and irrational for the worldview of my current self. A few weeks ago I wrote that I could live without rooting for the Bills, and I still believe that. Having on record that the team once saved Christmas is a tough fit for that narrative, though.

Staying in cannon is something I used to worry about quite a bit. I have years worth of opinions cataloged on this site, and at first I thought I could keep it all in line. You like or dislike a certain player or team or concept. Pick a side of the fence and stay there no matter what happens because, eventually, someone is going to call you on it if you change your mind.

That’s stupid. We change our minds all the time because we get new information added to the pile as we are helplessly hurled into the future. The cannon is always changing because future is constantly becoming past and the variables of our lives are always in flux.

That’s why I think holidays are important: they put a timestamp on our lives that’s easy to remember. It gives us a chance to reflect on how things have changed and realize what we’d like to change about the next one. New Year’s Day is full of resolutions and reflection as well, it just doesn’t have nearly as many Very Special Episodes attached.

So sometimes Christmas is bad news and funerals. Sometimes it’s board games and just what everyone wanted. Sometimes it even has that perfect snowfall that makes everything look brand new, and most times it’s so busy we sleep through gatherings and don’t have time to write about it all until January 4.

The one thing every holiday has is something new, and that’s a very good thing indeed. Each year you get a new memories that create your expectations for the next one. Maybe, if we have enough tries at it, we can finally get it just right.

The holidays change just like you do. The best we can hope for is a tradition to hold dear.

Note: Furrer4heisman, a Virginia Tech fan and former SB Nation blogger, has talked college football with us on a few podcasts. This season he attended over 25 football games–both high school and college–in search of something. This is what he found.

It’s nearly two hours before kickoff and The Chief has already found his spot for the game.

He stands alone on the track that circles the field of Homer Bryce Stadium at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, just beyond the north end zone between the steeplechase pit and the area used for jumping events. The Chief will stand here for the next five hours until one of the two teams playing tonight, the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks or Northwestern State Demons, claims him. And claiming him is no easy task.

At seven-foot-six, 320 pounds, Chief Caddo is the largest traveling trophy in college football. For a little over three hours, the Lumberjacks and Demons will play for the right to send its biggest and burliest linemen to the track behind the north end zone to retrieve the wood carved statue of an Indian chief and bring him to the winning sideline.

That scene won’t play out until well after dark. For now, with the sun overhead, The Chief stands in a nearly empty stadium with his gaze pointed toward the field. There’s no way of knowing how long he’s been there and there’s no evidence to suggest how he got there. Unlike other traveling trophies in college football, getting The Chief to this location doesn’t seem like it would be as simple as ordering a graduate assistant to retrieve him from a display case. But here he is. No one standing guard and no one is bothering him. It’s as if the sight of The Chief on the track is just as natural the sight of a high hurdle.

There isn’t a good reason to be in this part of Texas the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Nacodoches is a college town nestled in the piney woods that cover the eastern part of the state and is well off the interstate. Today it’s hosting what most would consider a less-than-compelling college football game, outside of it being a rivalry. Both the Jacks and Demons have known for some time this was going to be the last game of their respective seasons.

If SFA were in contention for a playoff spot in the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision, Homer Bryce Stadium would be a lot closer to capacity. Instead, a campaign with some preseason hype was derailed by turnovers and an inability to get defensive stops at opportune times. This evening a crowd of 8,341 will occupy a stadium that seats just over 14,500.

As the gates open and the game draws closer, some of that crowd makes its way to the track to get their picture taken with The Chief. Again, no one is standing guard or appears to be in charge of him. He just stands there, arms crossed, as fans, cheerleaders and band members create a line from the track to the goalpost for their turn to snap photos. Today, The Chief is college football’s Mall Santa.

This is the only real reason I’m here. I’ve driven six hours one way to get my photo taken with a seven-foot Indian carving, which sounds insane as I type it. About midway through the first quarter I’m rewarded for the hours spent on the road and stand next to The Chief, who dwarfs me. The photographer zooms way out to get both myself and The Chief into the frame and a couple of clicks later, I have what I came for.

Nacogdoches is my final destination as a college football tourist this season. The Battle for Chief Caddo is my 13th college game of the season and while I still have three more games to attend, all of them will be in a capacity other than as a fan. The trip to East Texas and the chance for an audience with The Chief is my last chance to really take in all that college football has to offer this year.

A season spent reconnecting with a sport that was beginning to feel more like a job than an escape has culminated with a chance to pose with a piece of what I think makes the sport great. To me, traveling trophies like The Chief and places like Nacogdoches, far away from the NFL’s big cities, are the biggest dividing line between pro and college football.

From the couch, the biggest difference in the two games appears to be skill level or the variety of offenses found in college. At the stadium, the sights and sounds separate the two. Whether it’s jumping during the pregame entrance in Blacksburg, wandering between tailgates in tiny Pittsburg, Kan., or hanging out with a seven-foot wooden trophy, there is no such thing as a bad day of college football.

This sometimes gets lost during the nearly eight-month gap between seasons. When teams get slapped with NCAA sanctions or shun tradition for a new conference affiliation and a larger paycheck, fans can forget why the game mattered to them in the first place.

Thankfully, for me at least, what happens inside the seating bowl can bring it all back. The atmosphere of a night game between two Top 10 teams. Watching a scholarship-less senior try to exhort the small crowd at a D3 game into an uproar or a seeing a first-year starter will his team to a come-from-behind win are still worth putting up with some of college football’s pettiness.

They are things fans miss out on in the sterile, mostly look-a-like stadiums of professional football.

In the end, the SFA fans leave Homer Bryce Stadium happy. Their team scored the last 24 points of the game to claim a 34-17 victory, their fourth in a row over their rivals. After the clock winds down, the Lumberjack players go to the end zone to retrieve Chief Caddo and plant him in front of the SFA band and student section.

The players engulf The Chief to where only his face and headdress are visible and pose for photos. They, too, have what they came for and their season culminates with a few camera clicks while huddled around one of college football’s venerable relics. They have earned the right to keep The Chief another year and when they travel to Northwestern State next season, they will again be the ones responsible for placing him so he can watch the Jacks and Demons play for him once again.

Sometimes an evening with your former self is the best way to spend a Friday night.

Walk through the back door between the gym and cafeteria, past teenagers selling pizza and candy and programs. Go through the gym doors and circle the court, down the baselines past the handicapped seating and under the basket near the emergency exits. Past the championship banners with names that fill yearbooks and dusty memories.

Shake hands with idle coaches and athletic directors and nod at anyone who still recognizes a now-trimmed beard. Get behind the benches and hang a left into the stands, within earshot of a coach’s screams and eyesight of an officials’ signals. Find an empty space away from girls in thick-rimmed glasses and oversized letter jackets. Even further away from parents.

This is different, but not unfamiliar.

One of the best things about being a reporter is the emotion that covering an event can bring. Not the feelings that create bias and draw favor, but the energy of a room and the panic of an impending deadline that drive you to churn out copy with some added gusto.

There’s also a measurable sense of importance that comes with being the person of record, the guy writing things down and presenting them to a public as fact later on. Writers take pride in getting it right and doing it well, and sports are no exception. Knowing you’re the only person responsible for explaining what happened makes the experience significant in a very different way.

If there was one thing I knew I would truly miss about being a high school sports reporter, it was basketball. When poorly played, any sport can be trying to watch. At the high school level it’s not always beautiful, but good hoops teams and a good crowd can make for an electric evening in the gym.

Niagara Falls and Bishop Kearney delivered just that at the Cataract City Classic on Friday night. The Classic is a two-day marathon of basketball that packs nine games and 17 teams into the gym of my Alma mater. The Wolverines—a perennial hoops powerhouse since the “new” Niagara Falls High School opened in 2000—cap each day with a game against a strong non-league opponent. I had covered it the last two years working for the Niagara Gazette, and those were some of my favorite moments while working for the paper.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for when I walked into the gym. Free of deadlines and obligations, I didn’t mind when the early game pushed a pair of overtimes and clock malfunctions wrenched the middle contest to a dead stop. I didn’t transcribe quotes and type excitedly, or wager game clock against atomic clock. I actually paid to get in and found a seat among parents and teens and high school hoops fans.

And I guess that’s what I am now. An occasional freelance story aside, if I’m attending a game it’s on my dime and for my own personal reasons. It was just nice that those reasons were justified on Friday. The Falls game was a thriller, a 52-47 overtime win over a towering Bishop Kearney team that features four D-I prospects in the starting lineup.

I came for the dunk show from Kearney’s 6-foot-9 Syracuse commit Chinonso Obokoh and 6-8 sophomore Thomas Bryant. Instead I got a thundering dunk from Canisius-bound Falls senior Jermaine Crumpton and a furious defensive effort from the undersized Wolverines.

The game had great pace, and a full house in the “Wolvearena” was frantic throughout. The pep band was back and the Falls even had a real student section, complete with matching shirts and the same chants each generation manages to make. That’s something they never could seem to manage even at the height of the Jonny Flynn/Paul Harris days.

It was fun, and I didn’t feel out of place one bit. After two years of press passes and growing pains, there’s no imposter complex left with high school sports. I couldn’t explain what I was looking for on Friday, but once the late game tipped off I knew I had found it.

It’s nice to know that it’s going to be there no matter how I pay the bills.

The problem is, there’s a gulf between what it feels like to watch sports, unencumbered, and all the baggage we bring to it. — Bethlehem Shoals

When we talk about sports, we’re really talking about our perspective. We’re talking about ourselves. Shoals is thinking about himself when he watches Royce White play basketball, he’s just one of the few brave enough to admit it.

Perspective is a position we can never leave, a place we can never share. The gap between what is there and what we see is very real. It’s the gulf mentioned above, filled with forced words, unexplained emotions and plenty of gnashing teeth. It’s what makes all of this stuff interesting in the first place.

In the sports world, things happen and we react. Our lone outlet is the endless commentary we provide in post-production. Even though The Narrative is, for most, determined by a level of gate-keeping just out of reach, how we react to it defines who we are.

We are hockey fans or not. Pro- or anti-soccer. Yankees or Red Sox. Tebow lovers or haters. Pick a side, because indifference is impossible. When you’re a sports fan, your opinions become who you are. Thousands of Bills fans can still recall if they liked Johnson or Flutie better. I know I sure can (Johnson).

For me, ‘sports’ is the noun that you enter into the personality equation society crunches for us. But when that noun goes away, when theater season ends or it’s too cold to play golf, it’s important to remember that we remain whole.

A person’s love of hockey doesn’t make them who they are. It does not define them, but frames them. It creates the context necessary to understand what the world looks like behind their eyes.

The NHL Lockout has robbed franchises of revenue and players of paychecks, but hockey fans have lost something very different. They’ve lost the context of winter, the sights and sounds of changing seasons and falling snow that lets them understand life when the planet feels a little colder.

They’ve also lost the community hockey creates and, deep down, that’s what really stings. People will find something to do on weekday evenings, even without hockey. Maybe they’ll watch some ridiculous singing show or something. The wheel in the sky will continue to turn.

What we lose is more important than 60 minutes of athleticism. It’s more personal than that. We lose the way we understand the place we call home, or what provides common ground for complete strangers. We lose what once gave a weird kid in black jeans and a goat head jersey something to talk about with the jocks. When we mourn the loss of games and weeks and months, we’re mourning our sense of self.

It’s still there, though. All those things that cloud our understanding of sports? As it turns out, all of that is what really matters anyway. Even without the box scores and overpriced beer, we remain complete.

The friends we’ve made through hockey are still friends, and the things we’ve learned about ourselves through faceoffs and overtime goals still ring true. Without hockey, we are still ourselves. We’re still a part of something.

So let’s hang out soon.

On a sunny Saturday in August, my uncle and his oldest son came to my house unannounced. I heard them making small talk on the back porch as I was getting ready for work, but thought nothing of it. Little did I know they were here for me.

As I walked outside to say hello and hopefully manage a quick goodbye, my father stopped me with his ‘we need to talk’ voice. His demeanor looked unusually grave. For a moment I thought the worst. Cancer. Death. Something awful had happened in the family that would ruin this warm summer day.

“What are you doing on Tuesdays?” he asked.

He already knew the answer. My Tuesdays would be open in the fall, until basketball season started and I spent every Tuesday night in a high school gym until the weather broke. Then it clicked. I knew what was coming.

They wanted me to join the family bowling team.

Bowling is pretty big in Western New York, and that’s especially true in Niagara Falls. This is a place that used to have three bowling lanes within city limits. Beverly Lanes, located seconds away from LaSalle Senior High School, was the largest at just over 60 lanes.

Beverly was recently demolished and will become a Walgreens, which will look great next to the Walmart/Olive Garden/Chili’s/Buffalo Wild Wings/Verizon Wireless/Panera Bread conglomerate that popped up after LaSalle bit the dust. Kegglers still mourn the loss of Beverly Lanes even though most admit a house that large would be unsustainable these days.

The Niagara Falls girls bowling team even won a state title this year, slowly playing catch-up with the boys team that are annual contenders. This is no fluke. Basketball gets the high school headlines, but the Cataract City is full of bowlers.

The “family” in family bowling team is a relative term here. Team 15 in the Bowl-O-Drome Tuesday night league evolved into a family affair over the years. My dad joined a number of years ago when my uncle’s team needed an extra member. Slowly the city workers and old drinking buddies that made up the group moved on. His oldest son joined last year when playing Division I football no longer dominated his life.

This year they needed someone new and I, owning a bowling ball and little bowling talent, was next in line. They knew what I would bring to the team when they asked me. A low average, a half-season of membership dues and maybe a big strike or two here and there. Expectations were low.

I’m part of a rolling collection of teammates that occasionally includes another cousin, a former Vegas bookie who moved back to town and a castoff from another team that never misses a week. He tells me about concerts he watched on Palladia and the WWE. We’re a motley crew, and the beers are $1.90 a pint. It’s not a bad way to spend a Tuesday night in the Honeymoon Capitol of the World.

Relatively speaking, I am a terrible bowler. I lack the mechanics and sense of place that comes with years of practice on the lanes. I look like someone who is just trying to figure shit out, an inconsistent mess of open frames streaked by patches of competence. I was not one of the kids on the bowling team in high school, and my prior league experience ended shortly after paying dues meant a coupon for a free cone at McDonalds.

Crossover strikes, the mark of luck resulting from poor form, were my salvation. Social mores required a somber walk of shame back to your table. Catcalls are common. Brooklyns are frowned upon by real bowlers, you know, and I played my part; giving a convincingly sad shake of the head before accepting muted high-fives from my teammates. Pins is pins is pins, man.

A decent start to league play slowly turned dour as the missed spares and bad shots piled up. As my average continued to tumble I made my unceremonious departure from the team in late December. Back to high school gyms for game stories about Wolverines and Lumberjacks and Lancers. I’d like to think I was only missed by the vending machine company’s accountant.

A few months later, I had a new job and my nights were once again free. I returned to the lanes and bowled. Better. Perhaps I was more relaxed with my new occupation, or maybe I just stopped caring what the results were. It clearly wasn’t adjusting to lane conditions or fixing my form. That would come after a long offseason of ‘work’ on the alleys outside of league play. You know, maybe. For now, I was just working with what I have.

One night near the end of the season, things finally came together. Six straight strikes and a pretty good string of easy frames. When the dust settled I bowled a 223, my first ever 200 in a game where we really needed the pins to win a few points. I was, well, thrilled. Progress feels nice.

Later that night, four lanes down, an athletic twentysomething in a red polo shirt was seeking perfection. Strike after strike fell while his bowling family ordered more pitchers of Blue and watched the frames roll on. No one else seemed to notice the chain of Xs forming on the monitor until it hit double digits, attracting a small crowd to quietly look on.

That’s what happens in a bowling alley when a perfect game is within range. Everyone else stops bowling. A gallery quietly gathers behind the lane and the pressure mounts until it is almost unbearable. The whole house is watching, quietly rooting for the pins to fall so they can shake the lucky bastard’s hand and buy him a beer.

This one was different, though. It came on so quickly and looked so easy that it was hard to get that excited. Never before had twelve straight strikes felt so inevitable. The way he threw the ball looked effortless, so clean and perfect it was hard to imagine he ever left an open frame. There was always a “messenger” to clean up a loose 7- or 10-pin. A black bar sweeping an empty lane. After he completed his ninth career perfect game, it was hard to get very excited about a freaking 233.

After watching that, the last few weeks of bowling never felt the same.

This is one of the best sports stories I’ve ever read, because it accurately describes something I felt about bowling that first season. Everyone has a different standard on the lanes. While I’m searching for competency, for respect among ‘peers’ decades older and more experienced; some people truly are looking for perfection.

Bowling stories, like all tales of amateur athletic achievement, are boring. But human stories are always interesting, and the story of Bill Fong’s life can be tracked on the lanes. Fong believes that perfection in bowling has the power to change you, to make you a more complete person. It can be the spark that turns his life around for the better.

I’ve never felt such power in a bowling alley, but I’ve also never been close to perfection like he has. But God, watching someone else reach that point does do something to you. That is something worth aiming for, perfection. It can be downright mystical in the right light.

It is unlikely I will reach perfection in most areas of my life, bowling included. My successes will be smaller, the progress more incremental. In the fall my Tuesday nights will still be about buying my uncle a beer and watching hockey in between frames. Maybe I’ll raise my average a few pins and throw another 200. Expectations remain low.

Knowing that perfection can be found is nice, though. Something to think about when the goal seems too far away. Anyone can be perfect if they’re looking down the right lane.

I wanted to see the rats hit the ice.

It would have been a moment. Something to remember, I figured. Another cool thing to add to the long list of overtime events, the growing catalog of hockey history I’ve been lucky to experience.

Our understanding of the playoffs comes from the past, the things we’ve come to know this tournament represents. For me it is much more than big goals from Derek Plante, Stu Barnes and J.P. Dumont.

There are the Saturday night overtime games that never seem to end. The Hockey Night in Canada late games from Edmonton or Calgary. The ones where, as an 11-year-old boy, you hope they never score so the hockey doesn’t stop.

Paul Kariya’s breath fogging his visor while he lay motionless on the ice, a ghost rushing back to life. Pizzas delivered to locker rooms and cameras catching sleeping children in their seats during the 17 minute intermissions that feel like hours. More than anything, I wanted another story from Thursday night. I wanted it to be something worth remembering.

The fans in Florida wanted the rats as well.

You could see them clutching the plastic rodents throughout both overtimes, standing for every second. They wanted any reason to rain them down on the ice, a Bubonic Plague of euphoria. They already had their comeback. Just one more shot was all it took for a victory.

The tension was there. The excitement, the nervous energy that comes from a beautiful game like hockey. In a game like that you could root for the corporations on the half-wall and you’d still come away buzzing with excitement. Forget the setting, the usual expatriate paradise of a dull, empty building was long gone. It was a new day in Sunrise, a celebration on the brink.

But the Devils spoiled the party. A bouncing puck, a deflection off a glove and a quick shot between the circles and it was over. Just like that. No more tension. No wave of rats on the ice. Just empty bottles and a quiet shuffle through the parking lot.

The feeling was there, though. When it was finally over, when the handshakes were exchanged, the wave of nervous energy and excitement was the same I’ve felt time and time again about hockey. Another overtime winner for the Devils brought me back to a day in Toronto years ago. A Saturday during the first round of the playoffs when my family went to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The Flyers were winning a game shown on a big screen with a bunch of chairs in front of it, and I climbed into a fake announcing booth with my dad to ‘broadcast’ a famous television clip from hockey history. The selection wasn’t great and I ‘announced’ it even worse, but it was a lot more fun than I imagined. It was a New Jersey Devils game, one I had never actually seen. An old memory I’d never had.

Somewhere in an old Yahoo email account is a copy of that clip that I’ll never listen to. I don’t need to anymore. Last night connected the dots back to that feeling I can never shake during an overtime game: how much fun is this?

Thursday night may not stand out in the years to come, but it did remind me of all the times that have in the past. It’s a nice reminder to have. This is an exciting time to love hockey, and we’ve got a long way to go before this postseason becomes the past. Here’s hoping for more overtimes that make you hope Sunday morning never comes.

The line of questioning at One Bills Drive on Thursday was far from unnecessary, but it was telling.

Why did Mario Williams pick Buffalo?

No really, why? Tell us again, Mario. Say it one more time. Please don’t leave. Ever.

For about 20 minutes on Thursday afternoon, Buffalo became the worst girlfriend in the history of contract-based relationships. The Bills doled out $50 million on the first date and their fans couldn’t believe their beau showed up to the restaurant at all.

What was it that got him to stay? The deer? The housing market? Russ Brandon’s Magic School Bus tour of Western New York?

It had to be something we missed, a factor we didn’t consider. Mario Williams doesn’t really like us, right? He simply couldn’t.

Well, maybe. He sure said all the right things. Williams discussed community and family, mentioned the pizza that had his name on it and defended his new home well before he really had to. Oddly, he defended Buffalo to its own residents. And succeeded.

A less eloquent free agent would have been just fine, but Williams all but melted the hearts of Western New Yorkers with his first impression on Thursday. It felt all too perfect, really, like something is bound to go wrong.

Maybe he will never be the same after that big contract. Maybe injuries will creep up and we’ll never have the defense Dave Wannstedt will dream up in the coming months. Maybe, conversely, we need to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and just enjoy the freaking ride.

One thing I do know is this: Thank God for Peyton Manning, who has absorbed every word and second of airtime in this free agency period like a black hole. Nothing will escape his media storm. Resistance is futile.

With Manning/Tebow Watch ready to propel us into a post-apocalyptic oblivion, Mario Williams will be all but forgotten as the weeks pass. On a national scale, that is. Make no mistake that without the Peyton Manning Parade, the national media collectively freaks out that the top free agent landed in Buffalo. Instead, expect a feature or two once training camp opens.

It seems being forgotten is something Mario Williams is used to, I’d imagine. This is a player not financially prioritized on the team that drafted him first overall instead of Reggie Bush in 2006. Bush, the ‘sure thing’ whose production on the field has been dwarfed by college scandals and which promiscuous woman he beds.

Much like the 2006 Draft, whoever gets Peyton Manning (Denver) and Tim Tebow (???) will undoubtedly be the larger story of the offseason. Williams will be forgotten in favor of the more high-profile move. In a maneuver that’s positively throwback, the size of John Elway’s genitalia will be praised for pulling the trigger on Peyton like he did in all those comebacks of yesteryear. The news cycle will swirl and crazy predictions will be made and the story will grow and grow.

Meanwhile, the Buffalo Bills are left with the most important free agent signing in franchise history. Most interestingly, fans are quietly allowed to mull over a world where the Bills could be real contenders again. You know, maybe.

In one of the few national pieces about the Williams signing that doesn’t start with ‘Really? REALLY?’; the final line is notable.

For the first time since the Music City Miracle, though, Bills fans have a reason to enter a season with hope.

Hope is the currency we most often deal in around these parts. For better or worse, hope is what keeps Buffalo a struggling town full of optimistic people. A place mired in dysfunction and the slow grind of failure continues to turn its sports teams into a metaphor for potential and change.

Hope. Love. All those things that don’t count in the standings but we seem to value so much. Maybe too much. Listen to what Buddy Nix said about his courtship with Williams.

“A couple times during the process I thought, Why’d we get into this? The downside was huge. If we lose him, I don’t know how long it’d take for our fans to recover. They wanted him so bad. But you know, you’ve got to step up to the plate to have a chance to get a hit. Buffalo’s got an inferiority complex. That’s why it was so important we get Mario.”

Destiny. Inferiority complex. Nix made it sound like signing Williams was more important to the city of Buffalo than to the football team he’s in charge of building. A city where a failed hypothetical hurts more than yet another beating at the hands of quarterbacks with plenty of time in the pocket. Where, hell, Tom Brady’s thoughts on the hospitality industry makes bigger news than the fact that his tight end grew up in the nice part of town.

The truth is that oftentimes we are sad and petty and pathetic in these parts. This place, and the people who inhabit it, can feel there is nothing redeemable about Buffalo and Western New York. Nothing to show off. Progress comes too slow and the politics are too dirty and no one really wins anything. Ever.

It’s right there in the ‘Tell me I’m pretty’ line of questioning Williams got on Thursday. Even worse is that it felt justified to make him repeat the reasons for staying over and over again. Just in case the recorder ran out of batteries or a camera wasn’t in focus. A mic could have shorted out. The fire alarm could have gone off. Heat-seeking missiles… bloodhounds… and foxes… barracudas…

The truth is that we needed it. For posterity, for hope and for all those times where it feels like we aren’t worth it. Maybe landing Williams will help us get over ourselves for once. Get out of our own way.

Maybe someday we won’t sit in disbelief and wonder why a talented athlete is willing to wear red, white and blue in exchange for $100 million in cash from an old guy. Or that he doesn’t mind the climate or lack of an IKEA near the city proper.

Maybe it was the deer or the pizza or architecture. Maybe none of it. Maybe Mario Williams just wanted to come here and it took him three days to figure out an explanation as to why. Maybe none of it really mattered to him and, someday, we won’t have to ask why. We just won’t need to know.

Now that’s a hypothetical worth getting excited about.

Ryan

Tim Wakefield won his 200th game last night. Mariano Rivera got his 600th save against the Mariners. The two are fairly independent milestones that happened to occur on the same day.

This post will not debate which achievement is better or more importantr. That doesn’t matter and, of course, is not a universal feeling anyone can really attribute to anything at all. The interesting part is why they matter, and that answer may be even more difficult to determine.

For the most part, wins suck when it comes to evaluating a pitcher’s true value. There are dozens of stats that do a better job explaining why Tim Wakefield is important to the Boston Red Sox. The same goes with Rivera in the Bronx, but there is something remarkably definite about a win or a save. The idea of a game completed, a termination point, makes those things incredibly concrete for a baseball fan.

To consider that Wakefield has given Boston 200 wins is impressive, despite the fact that he’s most certainly contributed to dozens and dozens of other wins where the run support came late; or even pitched well in games where it never came at all. Rivera’s milestone seems even more astounding — putting 600 games in the win column for a single team — but even that stat doesn’t tell Rivera’s story.

Joe Posnanski wrote an excellent SI piece about Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit and asked the same questions about a number’s significance. The question is never really answered because there is no proper way to approach it. It matters and it doesn’t. To everyone.

As baseball analysis slowly shifts and changes, the statistics we value fluctuate. But the reasons these milestones matter to fans is much more than the accuracy or importance that number holds. The reason we care about the number is because we like the person those digits are attached to.

I like Tim Wakefield. He’s a big part of a team, my team, that won two World Series titles. But more importantly, he’s a big part of what made me fall in love with baseball way back when. I think he’s an extremely interesting guy who has had a remarkable career. It’s significant that no one has ever really blamed him for 2003, when Aaron Boone crushed a first-pitch knuckler to win the ALCS. I find it very tough to dislike Wakefield in any way, and plenty of other Red Sox fans feel the same way.

He always seems to be there, sitting in the bullpen ready to go out on the mound and make batters look silly. Or get lit up; depending on the wind, the weather and who is behind the plate trying to catch the damn thing. Someday that won’t be the case, and when that day comes these milestones will help me remember just what Wakefield meant.

Wakefield’s quest for 200 was long, seven trips to the mound between 199 and 200 filled with bad beats and the frustration of waiting.

“It did cross my mind,” Wakefield said when asked if he thought he might always be stuck on 199. Then he said something remarkably human with all those cameras and recording devices shoved in his face.

But I kept telling myself that a milestone doesn’t determine me as a person. (I’ve) been very fortunate to live out a dream I had as a kid and I’m just thankful that it happened tonight and I’m very grateful that it happened in front of our home crowd.

Quotable for sure, but if he’s being honest than he has a pretty excellent grasp on the magnitude of that win for almost everyone involved. There’s the Wild Card and his own statistics, the fans and even his own value as a human being in one soundbyte. Athletes live remarkable narrow lives, but for someone whose singular focus is putting small numbers on the big board, Tim Wakefield seems to have things sorted out.

I’m happy for Tim Wakefield, not because he really cares about 200 wins but because I’m allowed to care as well. That milestone represents something special, the concrete detail necessary to gauge greatness and the impact a realative stranger has had on my life.

Arnold has Mickey Kailine’s lifetime batting average memorized in “The Baseball” because he loves the way he plays the game, not because he drafted him in a nondescript big-city roto league. Arnold — there’s a smudge on the last name — also has odd trivia about the slugger memorized and just had to see his final game. He could have made 400 bucks off that last home run ball, or cherished it forever, but the entire point of that episode is that Arnold’s selflessness and humanity make him feel for Kailine as a person. He gave the ball back because it meant more to a retiring baseball player, and even just the memory of playing catch with him meant something more to a fourth grader with a football-shaped head.

Growing up everyone wanted Arnold’s cool room, but the secret to that show is that it taught you something about yourself each episode. I think that’s what good media is supposed to do, and these days just about everything is media.

Today I’m really happy someone I’ve never met reached an arbitrary statistic that means nothing. Because when you think about it, that’s what sports are all about.

By Chris

Since my last day at WECK nearly a month-and-a-half ago, I’ve had a lot of time off. It’s been a nice and relaxing fake summer vacation. I’ve read a couple of books, watched a lot of Spaghetti Westerns, attended a few concerts and developed a pretty solid farmer’s tan. And through it all, I’ve expressed a majority of my opinions in 140 characters or less.

Writing short can be fun and being able to keep points concise is an important skill to hone. I’ve found Twitter to be a great tool to work on that aspect of my writing.

If I want to channel my inner less-funny Mitch Hedberg, a one-liner in that medium can do an adequate job of summing up how I’m feeling, what I’m watching or what I’m doing.

Sometimes, however, — actually, a lot of times — 140 characters isn’t enough. This space exists to expand upon ideas and I’ve done a really crappy job with that as of late. It’s virtually impossible to search the archives of Twitter for something I might have thought of four months ago. But if the thought was good enough and I was able to develop that spark into a backyard bonfire here in the Roost, then chances are I can find it here and be able to revisit those feelings at any time.

Of course some tweets and thoughts should be left to die in that timeline.

Twitter is also great for conversation. I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here. It’s called social media for a reason and interacting with other people is a big part of being social. With a simple ampere sign, I can be connected to anyone on Twitter.

So when Donte Whitner backtracks on where he says he’s signed, I can throw a question about that out to local journalists and see how media outlets should handle quotes attributed to players’ accounts. That’s pretty cool.

Most times on Twitter, I see reactions to news before the news itself. When I see Bethlehem Shoals fire off a series of tweets that include, “WHAT IF DWYANE WADE SOLD CARS?,” “WHAT IF RANDY MOSS AND JASON WILLIAMS WERE BEST FRIENDS?” and “WHAT IF I SAW L-FUDGE AT THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE? WOULD I REALLY EXIST?” I should probably find out what he’s referring to. And within two or three minutes, I can piece the story together.

That’s how I initially found out about ESPN The Magazine’s “What if Michael Vick were white?” article. Soon enough, it was all over the place, including CNN.

The controversy isn’t about Touré’s thesis. You could debate the article’s points — the essay could actually be more about string theory than anything else since a major change in any one of Toure’s tenets of race, parents, economics or opportunities could send a person’s life trajectory sideways. But readers are stopped cold upon viewing the accompanying art.

“We did not want people to shut down. We wanted people to stop, look at the picture and then read the article. Which, in fact, is what they did,” Senior Editor Raina Kelley says in the CNN interview.

What readers did, however, was shut down. The art had the exact opposite effect they say they wanted it to have. They failed in that regard but refuse to admit that. That could be because they knew the picture would cause controversy and give them media attention outside of their own car wash.

With that picture placed adjacent to the essay in the magazine and right at the top of the page on the website, the impact of anything Touré has written is suddenly softened. Although Touré would like you to judge his article on its own, it’s extremely difficult to do that if you’ve seen the story the way ESPN intended to present it, as one complete package: essay and art.

And not only is the art inflammatory, but the headline itself undermines the entire piece. The question, “What if Michael Vick were white?” is dismissed early in the essay. It is a question that Touré writes is “so facile, naive, shortsighted and flawed that it is meaningless.” He used the question as a hook and then breaks down why that question has little to no merit despite it being popular to ask when stories like Vick’s break.

ESPN The Magazine used that question as a hook and cast it out into the waters, using it as the basis of their visual centerpiece. What is going to get people to at least flip to this page of the magazine? How about photoshopping Michael Vick to look like he’s about to star in a rejected Wayans Brothers sequel. And I’m not talking about “Little Man.”

The Mag took a hypothetical that the author says can not be properly quantified and turns it into an in-your-face literal image. Subtlety is weak trump to them.

In fact, from Touré’s viewpoint, and this is where M-Theory kind of comes into play — I’m no scientist, I’ve just seen the first two “Terminator” movies a few times — if Michael Vick were born white, he probably wouldn’t have grown up to become an NFL quarterback (Aside: While I’m sure there were also poor white kids in Vick’s neighborhood, although probably small in percentage, Touré doesn’t seem too concerned with that thought).

It’s as if the editors commissioned the artist with only the essay’s budget line and then fell in love with the idea of publishing the image they got back. (Second aside: Wouldn’t it be funny if the Photoshopper submitted a stack of really great illustrations to go with the essay and threw the one in question in there as a joke, thinking, “They’ll never pick this one, right?” Like the complete opposite of how Liz Lemon prefers to audition new cast members for “TGS.”)

That CNN interview is also notable because it features both Touré and Kelley. And it’s interesting that the author of the text is openly debating his editors through a moderator on live TV, seemingly at odds with them over how they presented his words. Touré wants everyone to know that only the letters in the essay are his — nothing more, nothing less.

Luckily Touré believes in what he wrote. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw up his hands and admitted that he never wanted to write about Vick and race. It’s just that ESPN The Magazine decided to devote its entire NFL Preview issue to one player and they needed content. That would be like if they published their annual Body Issue and dedicated all 60+ pages to the left pinky fingernail.

I want to see where the story goes from here. Chances are it’ll die down (if it hasn’t already) and its legacy will be marked by a few good fantasy football team names. I wonder what Touré’s next piece for ESPN will be about or if he’ll even have a “next piece.” I could see him being distrustful of the editors after this entire ordeal and I could see them not liking that a writer has taken an opposing stance when it comes to an article in their publication. Who knows (besides Touré and his editors, of course)?

Whatever comes of it, I’ll probably hear about it first on Twitter. After all, that’s where I’ll be, writing shorter and probably about “Breaking Bad.”

Email: chris@thegoosesroost.com
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Click here to read the other stuff I’ve written.

by Ryan

The worst day of my life as a sports fan started with a pitch from Tim Wakefield.

Aaron Boone sent the knuckleball into the bleachers before the Fox broadcast could even come back from a commercial, and I went off to bed feeling sick to my stomach knowing what would come next.

Vancouver’s descent into madness last night isn’t the product of a single entity. Where individuals are intelligent and rational, groups of people are dumb, crude and volatile at all the wrong times. Lost in the chaos are thousands of people who went downtown ready to celebrate, looking for a joy that never came.

I like to think of 2003 as the year I really started loving the Red Sox. I’m no longer ashamed to admit that’s when it all really started. I got into things after the All-Star break and it just escalated so quickly from there. I was a sophomore in high school and it was time to finally fall in love with a team.

Then Tim Wakefield threw it all away.

When I think of big crowds I remember the silence.

I wasn’t outside HSBC Arena rooting for a miracle during Game Five. I was inside sitting next to my dad when Daniel Alfredsson’s shot got through Ryan Miller and the Senators won the Prince of Wales. The dream of a city died right there on home ice, and as thousands streamed out of the building in shock so many more watching outside followed suit.

It was quiet. No yelling or honking or chaos, just murmurs and the hum of engines powering a great escape.

I went to school the next day with a feeling I’ll never forget. It wasn’t fear or shame or dread, but something even darker. I was sad, sure, but more than anything I felt terribly alone.

I had exactly zero friends who could really understand what I was feeling, the new emotions that come with the gut-wrenching sorrow the Red Sox provided so often back then. Every baseball fan I knew rooted for the Yankees, and so I walked around that Friday like a ghost.

Late that night I sat alone in my basement and read Bill Simmons. I had just discovered Page 2 and was eating up anything they posted there, but Simmons quickly became my favorite writer because, well, he wrote like me.

The truth, of course, is the converse of that statement; but reading it was a revelation nonetheless. Not only were there other Red Sox fans out there but they felt the same way I did, and as thousands wrote him emails I got to experience for a short time what it’s like to be with a group of Boston Red Sox fans in mourning.

Sometime that night, well after the solace wore off, I pulled up a Word document and started writing. For the first time in my life I wrote without a due date or a word count. A few hours later I was satisfied, and the remainder of my weekend was spent debating what to do with it.

The 2006-07 Sabres season was very much a communal experience. I had a ticket package with a group of friends and we watched almost every game together in some regard. We went to the wildly successful house party for Game Four as the Sabres extended the season, and the plans were in place to go for Game Six once the Sabres got there.

Even in the hours after the Sabres lost we together at a friend’s house for a birthday party. It was a more somber affair than we were expecting but the decompression happened, the conversations usually held on the ride home finally took place one last time.

Hours later, of course, was when the real emotion came to life in a room lit only by the glow of a computer monitor.

I don’t remember exactly what I wrote that first night but I know the echoes of that first draft are all over the posts I’ve written here. That night, in the wreckage of my first baseball love, something changed in me. Writing became about more than just grades and assignments, and sports became a way to tap into a duality I wasn’t aware of.

It wasn’t just the hat I wore that made me different, and in that isolation something wonderful happened.

Every Buffalo sports fan has fantasized about the night their team finally wins it all. The immediate desire is to be in downtown Buffalo to take it all in, whether the Bills win the Super Bowl in some sunny city or the Sabres clinch at the foot of Washington Street.

What does the crowd do? It’s impossible to answer, but since 2007 my logic is clouded by that silent march out of downtown Buffalo. Fans that day seemed too preoccupied by the moment to express any real anger, and it’s scary to imagine what could have been.

Buffalo fans might be known for rowdy tailgates and Sunday afternoon brawls at the Ralph, but rarely does that brand of chaos spill into the hockey world around here. Knowing it’s there, though, makes the day they finally win it all that much more uncertain.

In sports it seems I’m not so alone anymore. I know dozens and dozens of Red Sox fans, and even a few Arsenal supporters now that I’ve discovered soccer. Boston has won a pair of World Series and I’ve cried tears of joy that make that dreary journey through the halls worth every damn step.

But I’ll always appreciate the way I learned to cope that day, the way I found my voice. I’ve found that sporting failure and disappointment can be transformed into something great if you give it a few quiet hours. Writing provided a way for the darkest parts of losing to escape my head and become something productive, something good.

I feel bad for those people in Vancouver who never got the chance to cheer. The cityscape we see as the sun rises out west isn’t the logical conclusion of a fascinating hockey season. Something else happened downtown after the final whistle sounded that’s much more than hockey and more primal than a single human being can muster on its own.

I’ll never understand what drives a man to flip over a car or break a window because of sports. There is pain and anguish and disappointment, but I’ve always come here when the monsters in my head need a place to run free for a while.