A Brief Sportsball Interlude

Ok. It’s confession time.

I’m a New York Giants football fan. Wait - hear me out.

As a child, my dad had seasons tickets to the Giants at Yankee Stadium, way before they moved to the swamps New Jersey. We sat in the bleachers behind one of the end zones, on metal high school level bench seats - no comfortable seat backs for us. While we did not “know” the people who sat around us, we all had one thing in common - we loved the Giants. And back then, they stunk. I’m talking really bad. But every game I attended, one group brought pickles, the other brought chips, another brought beer and soda, another sandwiches, and without knowing each other’s background or politics or economic circumstances, we all shared in the joy and misery of good food and bad football.

I played in high school and briefly in college. And while its harder these days to watch grown men who I know will have brain damage by the time they turn 40, I still love the game. And I love my Giants.

So, with two boys, I handed down that fandom to them, and by the time the boys were young preteens, they, too, were Giants fans for life. Two years ago, I took the boys to the Meadowlands of New Jersey to see the team play the New York Jets, with whom they share MetLife Stadium. It was cold. It was raining. It was bad football. It was miserable. And yet, we were ecstatic because the Giants were winning 10-7 with 23 seconds to play. They had the ball 4th and 1 on the Jets 13-yard line. They were going to win! And yet, somehow in the most implausible way, they lost that game. To compoundm the misery, we sat in traffic for two hours leaving the stadium.

Which brings me to the present. Stretching way back before that miserable Jets game, Big Blue (as they are affectionally known) are going through another stretch of, well, being really bad. Yet this year, there have been glimmers of hope.

I should have known better.

Late yesterday afternoon, the Giants played a good team, the Denver Broncos. The G-Men (as they are also affectionately known) led 19-0 going into the 4th quarter. They scored two more touchdowns in the 4th quarter. Yet, in an even more most implausible way - yep - they lost on a last second field goal kick by the Broncos. They Giants gave up 33 points in the 4th quarter, only the 4th time this has happened in NFL history out of over 18,000 games played; it happens every 4,500 games, or at a rate of 0.02%.

Takeaways?

1. I called my boys and told them I rue the day I made them Giants fans, and that they deserve cash compensation from me for imposing this on them, and

2. Writing about policy/politics - even in the era of Trump - may be less painful than watching the Giants play football.

Thank you for understanding…