Cheers To The Calm

As published in The County Times (countytimes.somd.com)

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

It’s the Saturday before Christmas.  The first college football playoff game was played the night before in whatever the postseason process of selecting the national champion is called now.  Today the sports calendar is packed: three more college football playoff games and two NFL games.  The Terps played Syracuse in NYC.  It wasn’t close; it’s cold outside but College Park’s reptiles blew out the Orange.  Oh, and on another unknown channel (who can keep track of such things these days), I caught a glimpse of two Woods’s – Tiger, of course, and his son Charlie playing in some sort of golf tournament together.  A broader view of the sports landscape delivers the good and the sad: a Capitals team among the best in the NHL, despite the prolonged absence of Alex Ovechkin and his “lower leg” injury (classic hockey vagueness) and the death of MLB Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson.

Regarding all of that football, resisting the urge to overthink this unprecedented college/pro intersection is proving to be a difficult task.  The right answer, if in the correct frame of mind, is to simply sink deeply into the couch, grab the remote and commit fully to consuming at least three times more calories than a sedentary body will burn.  Working the remote with fervor, though, has to count for some level of cardio, right?  Right.  I trust few readers will dispute that obnoxious and scientifically dubious statement.

When the bass player and drummer are out of time, the entire backbone of a song disintegrates.  Any compensatory actions by the singer or guitar player are futile.  The song is just off.  My mental bass player and drummer are not in synch.  I’m watching all of these college playoff games, every one a blowout, and trying to get my head around Notre Dame playing football non-descript Indiana and SMU playing Penn State in Happy Valley.  Somehow Arizona State and Boise State get involved later.  Gotcha.  And to clarify, all rosters of all schools get reset every offseason through the transfer portal.  Gotcha, again.  I’m sure this is totally legit.  Tons of money will not allow for any other conclusion.

As for the Caps and the Woods family, these are fantastic stories.  How the Caps are doing this I neither know nor need to know.  My interest in this completely unexpected success is only in its continuation deep into next spring.  The Woods’s story is, shall we say, uncomfortable for those of certain ages.  In a nut: How does Tiger have an adult son who will soon be (is?) his golf superior?  If Tiger is that old, what does that say about me?  Rhetorical.  No answer required or desired.  As for Rick Henderson, his death is hard to process.  He seemed indestructible and forever young, playing profession ball into his late forties.  He was just 65.  Double sky point to the greatest leadoff hitter of all time.

The holiday season lands in the middle of all of this change, chaos and surprise (both exciting and uncomfortable).  With it comes the familiar, the traditional, the reliable: the stuff that never changes!  Green and red.  Lights on homes.  Well-adorned trees.  A red-suited, rotund dude with a serious commitment to facial hair.  Flying deer.  Talking snowmen.  Elves on shelves.  An entire genre of timeless music.  Then New Year’s arrives: countdowns, descending balls, toasts, resolutions and hope for the year ahead (real…or manufactured in an attempt to fool the mind’s processing of a concerning future).

It's all a fantastic tonic: a pause on an impossibly fluid world where control is but an illusion, plans are merely suggestions awaiting inevitable modification, and nearly everything - except for entrenched holiday traditions - will be tweaked, manipulated or forever altered by the winds of change.  For a brief moment, things slow down and the world slips into an unspoken yet fully coordinated annual routine – fabulous repetition for the old and an amazing introduction for the young.  Unpredictable chaos, in sports and life, will return soon enough, but that’s a January 2025 problem, and that calendar hasn’t yet been hung.  In the interim, cheers to the calm.

Happy Holidays!