Mad-Dog Mean ...
.
We’ve mentioned, a time or three, that sports are useful because they --- > feed a human hunger that is at the same time:
- Primal
- Noble
Is that possible? That the same food should nourish both our frontal lobes, and our hindbrains? Can a microprocessor digest the same material as does a reptile?
…..
There was a period, during that Seahawks-Redskins game, that you had a sinking feeling of re-watching Super Bowl 40. (Let’s call every other Super Bowl by its Roman numeral.) Was it the third time that they called back a Percy touchdown?
Later, you were able to shake off the feeling that there were a lot of People, people who cast long shadows, who badly wanted to see that +7 score covered. We're a few degrees off center.
Okay. All we’re really getting at is a famous Jerry Kramer / Vince Lombardi quote: “We never lose a single game. Of course, sometimes the clock runs out when the other team happens to have more points than we do, but we feel like if we kept playing forever, eventually we’d win.” In Instant Replay, Kramer wrote about a sinking feeling during a fourth quarter, like the clock might run out at an inconvenient time. (It did not.)
That, gentlemen, is a rather important glimpse into the heart of a champion. "That's the way the cookie crumbles," said Dan Miller to Robin Stone in a Jacqueline Susann novel. "My cookie doesn't crumble," snapped back Stone.
……
The Seahawks-Redskins game had that feeling, like the clock was destined to expire at the wrong moment. Was it the Russell Wilson flip to Marshawn Lynch that sidestepped an “accident” in the standings? Doesn’t matter.
The Seahawks’ talent is great. Their personalities are great. Their 12th Man is great.
What I like better than any of those things: their fighting spirit. I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never, at any time, seen a sports team battle with more grim iron determination than these Seahawks do.
Some teams battled with as much. Larry Bird’s teams, Michael Jordan’s. Great boxers and wrestlers. But week after week after week like this? The consistency of their fighting spirit is INCREDIBLE!. The 1970’s Steelers weren’t as hard to beat by 8 points as this team is.
…..
A favorite quote from Harry Cook:
Clint Eastwood, in The Outlaw Josey Wales, tells his companions that when everything looks bad and it seems you can't win then you must get mean, "mad-dog mean," in order to survive. This is the basic attitude necessary for effective self-defence and it has always been a precept of the martial arts that if we must choose between technique and fighting spirit, then go for fighting spirit everytime.
Does that sound like a cliche? If so, might that be because you have not yet contemplated the dilemma with sufficient depth?
Here's the whole article by Cook. Billy Connolly put it more succinctly: we've become far too comfortable with lawsuits, and far too uncomfortable with people getting smacked in the teeth. He was joking. Kind of. ;- )
Some guys chuckle at Clint's spaghetti westerns. Fine, it is America; you have the right. But go around the corner and scoff out of my sight. Each new generation will connect with the instinct that is both primal and noble: that self-forgetful quality that allows a man to fearlessly lose himself in a cause, and to discover that there is something greater than the Self.
......
Ask Mo' Dawg about a round of golf that means something.
Bob Costas put it another way: Michael Jordan is what you get when you combine supreme talent with the heart of an overachiever.
In baseball, sabermetricians have argued methodically that heroism doesn't impact baseball games in this sense. In my opinion, this is one of the most important debates about the value of the sport. And in the NFL, priorities are the opposite of what they are in pop sabermetrics. Teams spend how much?, trying to figure out how to reliably identify the next Russell Wilson.
MLB's doing fine. It ain't the NFL. This is one of the reasons why. We baseball fans have a vague distaste for what makes Kyle Seager different from Dustin Ackley. In football, they relish this difference.
.....
It’s our great privilege to saturate ourselves in the 2012-14-ff Seahawks. Karma like this is 40 years in the making. Don't blink, or you'll miss it. If it lasts 15 years, it won't last nearly long enough.
War heroism with no casualties?
Sign me up,
Jeff