The Rising and the Falling

The best team effort at Super Bowl XLIII.

Bad Fed searching for his groove, changes need to be made uptown.

Good luck, good-bye -- DeRo gave due respect to the sacred second base position of our ballpark.

(Photo by Maureen Malloy)

The sports world as I know it is upside down, from the Northern Hemisphere to the South Pacific Rim. It was supposed to be my Super Sunday with a cherry on top, starting with the Australian Open men's singles championship and ending with Bruce Bowl. But this was the actual scientific chain of events, as it turned out in reverse: We got stuck in long lines everywhere at the Bangkok airport, so I could only follow the tennis match on Blackberry, refreshing every minute instead of watching at least some part of it with a cold Chang at the bar. I boarded the plane with the first two sets tied at one-all and as soon as we hit tarmac, I checked immediately (my fingers were trembling). So I knew what happened, I read all about it when I woke up. Then I watched the Super Bowl Half-Time Show. Then I read more tennis coverage. Then I watched the replay of the match while running at the gym.

But the story really begins in 1988. I was 11, had been playing softball for two years and was a big Dodgers fan. I watched Kirk Gibson hit a pinch two-run, game-winning homer with nothing but pure upper-body strength, barely able to stand on a swollen right knee and a brokedown left hamstring (which means that a sprained ankle or any other meangingless injury should never come between playing ball or tennis or trekking down a mountain) and he became my first true sports hero. In these same October playoffs, he had already made a full extension diving catch to rob the Mets' Mookie Wilson of a double after slipping on wet grass and hit enough clutch homers throughout the month for a Kate Spade purse collection. With the championship on the line and a thin bench, Gibson told Tommy Lasorda to put him in, coach, and he delivered like a FedEx van gassed by caffeine.

Having played softball and been a baseball fan for more than two-thirds of my life, I often believe that people should travel in packs of nine or 10 and that it takes two to make the dream come true, at minimum. Down in Tampa -- some call it Jungleland -- 'neath that giant Raymond James Stadium sign that brings this fair field pyrotechnics, there was an opera out on the catwalk as a ballet was being fought on the yards. Bruce Bowl started with the star quarterback leaning against the massive linebacker and ended with the QB passing back and forth with the coolest little running back as they tagged team all the way into the end zone. The fullback set the tempo, the first-string wide receiver played second guitar, the wide receiver pumped the bass lines, the punter put some kick into her fiddle, the super sub came in for a fallen blood brother (who was there like a spirit in the night), the special team came down the I-95 from the Turnpike and even the unnecessary cheerleader got some action. The thing is, when you've played together on the same team for 38 years, you don't even need a playbook. You look for the captain's finger in the air, you look for how long he's shaking his ass, you improvise on your formations and you back him up. Put it this way -- the Eli Manning-David Tyree play that won the Super Bowl last year? If that was performing music live, the E Street Team completes that pass night after night after night. You might not count on crashing into a camera, but you'd have accounted for it.

When Johnny Mac says Roger Federer really needs a coach to beat Rafael Nadal, I accept his wisdom without question because unquestionably, this is the most brilliant mind in tennis -- the Steve Stone of the sport. He's on his own and he can't go on -- he holds court perfection for 13 days and then breaks down at the feet of a face contortionist with Jose Canseco arms. His confidence level is lower than HGH percentages in Major League Baseball, he can't last five sets against a 22-year-old toro and worst, he's played the same strategy against Nadal for the last three years. It's not going to work because Nadal keeps getting better and Bad Fed is stuck like the Kennedy at 5pm during a blizzard. Why is he expending energy on genius first serves when he ends up with a high second serve percentage that undoubtedly saps precious juice needed to go distance? Why does he continually hit to Nadal's backhand, the equivalent of throwing a fastball down the middle to Manny Ramirez? His tentative winners and mis-judged net shots look like the 2006 (or 2005... or 1997... or...) Cubs and when he double-faulted and sailed wide sprays outside the lines to a massive fifth set derailment, well, that was Ryan Dempster in Game 1 of the 2008 National League Division Series after serving up a grand salami on Spacca Napoli pizza to James Loney of the Dodgers. It might be a men's singles game, but it's time to channel Rocky and find a Mickey. You'll never walk alone.

What I'm trying to say, if you've made it this far with me (Good job, team! Hut!), is that two of my biggest heroes made me cry at two extreme ends of Monday. At 9am, tears came to my eyes as they always do when Bruce came on. It's a kind of electricity that pulsates at the speed of a slinging 97mph Jeff Samardzija fastball through the soul when he turns the ignition to start a set, the very aura of his karmic charisma and the fact that him and his music stand for everything I believe in. The back bend, the stage slide, the swagger, the intensity, the clowning, the brilliance and the religion of rock & roll as it was always meant to be preached -- it's a real class act. At 5pm, as another class act fell short of the honor roll again, the ice man melted in the Melbourne humidity and started to cry steadily. I was getting on to my eighth mile running and without meaning to, I shocked myself when I began to sob as well. I had perspiration streaming down my face and a baseball hat pulled low, so you couldn't really tell, but I'll tell ya what -- salt on salt is double the sting. There was sweat and there were tears, so the only thing missing was blood (but that will come when we realize that Jake Peavy doesn't make a World Series champion, not when he comes from winning the Cy Young and 20 games in a litter box ball park with long dimensions and no lake breeze to loft the homers out). I was planning to hit 10 miles but I had to stop because you can't really breathe when you're heaving, thinking about trying to learn to walk like heroes we thought we had to be, and after this time to find out we're just like all the rest. That's a Springsteen lesson from an eight-minute record, and you ought to listen to a boss man who has never sent two true ballplayers to the Cleveland Indians to make payroll room for undeserving journeymen. Guys who would have taken a pay cut to stay on the team like Andre Dawson did in 1986 or accepted a blank contract like the Hawk did in 1987. Guys who were never ashamed to take the blame for a bad loss only to come back and win three games in return. Guys who loved the game, and you knew it from the way they conducted themselves in and out of uniform and the respect they gave to the fans and the best ballpark in America. Guys who made Chicago their home and still won't leave, even though we've thrown them out on the street -- it's been a bitter winter, one that started on October 1, 2008, and this team need a bailout bad.

So I stopped running while Roger continued to unravel and went to work on crunches to mask one kind of pain with another, but it didn't quite work because I don't have abs of steel (they're more like the swamps of Jersey). Instead, I found a sinking feeling in my gut that morbidly appreciated the fact that being a former Cubs fan meant my heart had already been sliced and diced in every way and fray, and I was out of dollar store duct tape. So I stopped crying and pulled the towel off my head and realized in the mirror that I was wearing a Cubs N.L.D.S. 2008 hat, which I had unknowingly grabbed from a pile of hats this morning. I mean, I have an avalanche of Cubs hats. It would cost a fortune to convert them all to Indians hats, or gear from my new American League project, the Kansas City Royals. I would have nothing to sleep in if I threw all my Cubs shirts into a bonfire. Then there's all this Cubs stuff people keep giving me -- a door mat from Ellen and Hope, a Cubby bear from LP, Pez dispenser from Toshiko, shopping bag from Beth, DeRo shirt, calendar, boxers and bracelet from Sas -- what a chore to have to go baseball team shopping again. (Mets blue light special in aisle sixty-nine, get your own Mr. Wright with every Johan Santana purchase!)

Old habits die harder than Ron Santo in fake legs and a toupee, so I'll finally admit that yes, despite what you might have been hearing from me, I wake up everyday and know exactly how many days it is until pitchers and catchers report to HoHoKam Park for spring training (10), how many days to Opening Day at Minute Maid Park in Houston (60), and yeah, they're still my team, even if I have to put up with Milton Bradley, our new Sammy Sosa, in the outfield. Roger is still my guy between the lines no matter how many hate messages and lusty jeers I get from Rafa riffraff about how he just got foreclosed on land he used to own. Because the only boss I listen to says forever friends on the backstreets until the end, to stand side by side each one fightin' for the other, and if I should fall behind, wait for me.