The Gr8 Familiar

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

It is a dreary Saturday afternoon after a monsoon blew through Southern Maryland.  Walking in the yard sounds like skipping across a saturated sponge.  Best to settled in for some deep couch sitting and, what’s this, an encore showing of “Avengers: Infinity War”. 

No happy endings with this one: Thanos victorious, the Avengers broken and half the universe’s beings reduced to dust by the combined power of the Infinity Stones and the snap of Thanos’s fingers.  Those left were more confused than hurt, unable to process the speed and depth of change.  It feels like College Park was just a victim of Thanos’s omnipotence.  Just days after the best season in men’s basketball in a decade, the coach (his name will not be typed here) and every player of consequence is gone – to graduation, to the NBA Draft, to the transfer portal.  New names and faces are gradually filling the vacancies, but the only thing familiar about next season will be the jerseys.

Familiar.  It is a highly valued commodity as a child.  As one ages into adulthood, there’s an assumed disruption, as life, opportunity, school, career, friend groups and significant others pull in all directions.  Then mid-life arrives, somehow by surprise despite society’s and an aging body’s strict and inescapable keeping of time, and familiarity again becomes a desired state of mind and being.  And for a world that encountered a pandemic and has been on tilt ever since, the added disruption and confusion has created great weight on conscious minds that crave a recognizable stasis. 

Even in chaos, seekers can find familiarity.  It can been in simple things: a spouse’s warm smile, a favorite dish, a drive through town or the feel and smell of a dear pet hugged tightly to one’s chest.  There is familiarity in big things too: the moon overhead on a clear night, the incomprehensible beauty of mountains extending into the horizon when viewed from a peak in Shenandoah National Park, a sports team you’ve followed all your life, or in a star player that feels like a friend despite you never having met.

Reflecting on Terps basketball, this season won’t be anomaly; it is indicative of the way things are and a predictor of the future more than a one-off created by the confluence of strange circumstances.  Stated more bluntly, there will never be another Juan Dixon or Len Bias, players we watched grow up over four years and grow into a national champion and the greatest player in program history.

Local pro sports have provided a few athletes that were “Great Oaks” in our lives.  Skins fans enjoyed 20 seasons with Darrell Green.  Ravens fans had a similar run with Ray Lewis.  The greatest example, and something out of a fairy tale, was Cal Ripken Jr.’s career with the Orioles.  Local kid.  Dad worked for the O’s.  Drafted by the team.  Played 21 seasons in Baltimore.  Won two MVPs, a World Series, sets the consecutive games played record and punches an immediate ticket into the Hall of Fame.  Does it get any better than that?

No, but it can get as good. 

Alex Ovechkin has been in the news of late for an extraordinary feat: breaking Wayne Gretzky’s goals scored record by netting number 895.  In a sport where 50 goals in a season is an extraordinary accomplishment, scoring nearly 900 once seemed impossible.  Ovechkin has disregarded previously held hockey and human limits.  After being the top overall pick in the 2004 NHL Draft, Ovechkin’s career in Washington has somehow exceeded all expectations: perennial all-star, three Hart Trophies (MVP), nine Rocket Richard Trophies (league leader in goals scored), a Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP), a Stanley Cup, and now the all-time goals scored record.

Immediate thoughts of Ovechkin lock on these superlatives.  In the afterglow of his record-breaking goal, though, there is something else, something extraordinarily simple.  For 20 years now, flipping on a Caps game has meant seeing Ovechkin, D.C.’s great hockey oak, on the ice.  The hits, the tooth-challenged grin and that that glorious shot from his “office”: In an otherwise ever-changing world, Ovechkin’s unchanged and perfectly familiar.