A few years ago, my best friend's dad made me promise that if - by some horrible twist of fate - I ever got to write my own column, I'd call it "Rage Blackout."
Here it goes.
My idol, Bill Simmons, once wrote about a time in his life when sports meant far too much to him. He claims to have outgrown that period.
Well, I am perpetually trapped in that period. And Simmons is full of bleep.
I care too much. It's my Achilles' heel. Unfortunately, anyone who picks up this newspaper for the next year has to deal with that, so I apologize in advance.
Because I care too much, I get too excited when good things happen to My Teams.
Obviously, that's why this fall has been the best three months of my life. All of last year's bad karma - the Patriots not winning the Super Bowl, the Red Sox not winning the World Series, the Eagles not going to the Orange Bowl - is currently on its way to being completely reversed. Completely.
The Patriots are the best team in the history of sports. (A few weeks ago, during a heated debate with Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe newsroom, I heard Charlie Pierce say that. Word.) The Red Sox get to be kings of the world for the next 11 months, until they de-throne and re-throne themselves next October. And the Eagles … well, maybe I should be thanking Matt Ryan for giving us all the best season we've seen since 1984.
(Actually, I kind of did thank him. I paraded around the Globe newsroom this week campaigning for him while I interned. Literally, I convinced the people who actually vote for the Heisman to vote for Matty Ice. Tebow? McFadden? Who are they?)
However, because I get so up on my teams when they're winning, there is, inevitably, a downside to the equation. I tend to take it way too personally when they lose, which is where the rage blackouts come in.
Rage blackouts account for the fact that my computer mysteriously ended up broken when Boston College lost a critical game to Rutgers in basketball a few years back. (I have no idea who pushed it off my desk. Couldn't have been me.)
2008 Woodie Awards
