When You Were Young

When you’re young, you’re impressionable. You’re haven’t experienced much, and you’re emotionally immature. You most likely haven’t experienced major heartache, except when it comes to sports. I remember crying during Chuck Noll’s last game on the sidelines, and I can still feel my stomach dropping after Sid Bream slid safely into home plate. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown less emotionally attached to sports. I’ve realized that these are grown men playing a game for millions of dollars, and there’s no need to lose sleep over a devastating loss, cause there’s always next year (except for the Pirates.) When you get old, you experience more catastrophic things…death of a loved one, losing your job, finding your wife in bed with your best friend, etc. Unfortunately, some people can’t get over their emotional attachment to sports and let it carry over to their everyday lives, but who am I to judge?
I don’t really hate anyone in sports, per se. Well I do hate some of them as human beings, but not as athletes. It’s not their fault that the general public deifies them and puts them on a pedestal, inflating their egos to astronomical proportions. But there are a few sports teams and figures that I still hold grudges against, because as a kid, in some way, shape or form they somehow crushed my spirit. Like I said before, when you’re young you’ll believe anything, and that stuff sticks with you. Some of these guys are good human beings, but when you’re young you don’t look at a sports figure as a human, you look at him as a killing machine who was put on this earth to destroy your favorite team and steal your soul. Here are some of those guys and teams whose image I can’t shake out of my head…

Tim Kerr; Philadelphia Flyers.

I can remember sitting in my dad’s basement in the mid 80’s watching the Pens play the Flyers as if it were yesterday. Tim Kerr carried on the legacy of the Broad Street Bullies of the 70’s. It seemed like every time the Pens played the Flyers, Philly would destroy them and Kerr would somehow be behind it. I remember being a monster, physically huge, with a moustache that is forever burned in my memory. I hated him. As the years have gone on, my hate for the Flyers still burns, but I have grown to respect Kerr as a player. It upset me to read that his wife died during childbirth some years back.

Bernie Kosar; Cleveland Browns.

Bernie Kosar had two huge strikes against him. He went to school at “the U” and any Penn State football fan knows the history behind those two football powerhouses in the mid 80’s. Bernie’s second strike was his circumventing of the draft system to somehow end up with his hometown Cleveland Browns. He became the face of the franchise, a face I would come to despise more and more each fall. I remember stories growing up of family members attending Steeler games in Cleveland, getting heckled and pelted with every object that wasn’t nailed down. I remember watching grown men on TV acting like savage beasts in the Dawg Pound, it scared me more than Freddy Krueger. When Art Modell ripped the team and the heart out of Cleveland, I remember being upset only because I couldn’t really make fun of Cleveland anymore. As I look back, I feel a little bit of sorrow for Browns fans. While the NFL did the right thing and gave the Browns back to the city, it’s only caused more misery with every losing season. As for Bernie, I still imitate the “Bernie Kosar sidearm flip” in the backyard to this day.

The 1992 NLCS

Wednesday, October 14th, 1992. A day that will live in infamy. This has to be the single-most traumatizing sports moment in my lifetime, as it probably is for most Pittsburghers around my age. Baseball was my sport growing up, I followed the Pirates with a passion reserved only for them and GI Joes. They had their share of villians, the Mets (the obvious choices are Strawberry and Gooden, but for some reason the hate for Kevin McReynolds and Howard Johnson resonated deeper)...the Phillies (which was hard for me, they were my Little League team, I thought I was the second coming of Mike Schmidt)...the Reds (Glenn Braggs robbing Carmelo Martinez's two-run homer in the 1990 NLCS)...but on that fateful night, my opinions on many things changed. The usually sure-handed Jose Lind boots a routine grounder by David Justice (I hated him for the sheer fact that he was married to Halle Berry, she was hot back then too.) Jose would further tarnish his legacy years later by getting busted driving with no pants. When I would pitch, I emulated Stan Belinda's sidearm delivery. After that ninth-inning debacle, I soon attributed my delivery to Kent Tekulve (which I should have done in the first place) and tried to pretend Stan Belinda never existed. Sid Bream's place in this matter hurts, too. I loved Sid when he was with the Bucs. I wanted to play first base and grow a sweet moustache just like him when I grew older. But seeing him celebrate at the hands of my beloved Buccos hurt more than pissing the morning after banging an STD-infested hooker. As for Barry Bonds, what else could be said about him that hasn't been said by millions over the past few years? His ego bit him on the ass that night, and it's his ego that still hurts his legacy today. One of the greatest to ever play the game, and instead of letting the masses honor him the way he should be, he lets you know it himself.

As for you, Francisco Cabrera, I'm glad you got your fifteen minutes of fame. For us Pirates' fans, it's turned into 15+years of infamy. If I ever find you, I'm sure you're probably either landscaping somewhere or trafficking drugs, I will kick you square in the testicles, because the only pain that resonates longer than that is the pain of being a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.