Baseball anxiety I can handle; hockey, much tougher.
I checked my grid right after you posted, and I'd dropped all the way from 27 to 5. I was surprised too--just the way it goes.
Trying to make sense of the Megalopolis descriptions in Sam Wasson's book--which starts present-day--was a real chore. That clip is sort of interesting, I guess, but hard to gauge much unless characters are interacting--Coppola's masterpieces in the '70s had great performances top to bottom
Still remember a teacher I was working with at the time telling me about his grandson, five or six at the time and just becoming a fan, crying uncontrollably. Hooked for life, no doubt. Was thinking today about my own odd connection to the Leafs: born in Toronto, lived there till we moved 30 miles away in the summer of '67, a month or two after the last Cup (which I wasn't fan enough to remember--I became a fan for the next three or four years, till that got pushed aside for baseball around '71).
I want to be a wise guy and say "Anything that was ever meant to make me a better person," but I know I could immediately refute that with a couple of hundred counter-examples.
I was in Cambridge this morning, so I was able to catch about an hour of call-in sports out of Toronto. Weird: a lot of it was about Nylander, or how much pressure was on the Bruins, or whether Matthews at 75% was a plus or a minus, etc., etc., but the whole time, you felt this, yes, invisible elephant in the room, that every caller and all the hosts knew exactly what's going to happen tonight.
Even I'm on edge, and I'm as bandwagon as it gets. I played tennis this afternoon with a paramedic in town who'll be working tonight; suggested he stay close to the phone if the Leafs fall behind by more than a goal.
“The guy is probably the closest to Tony Gwynn that there is right now, so I’m looking forward to seeing him in the lineup. Only seven batting titles away [from passing Tony Gwynn],” Tatis said with a laugh. “That why I said the closest.”
It really is, down to the split-second--especially the way Chaplin keeps disappearing behind the referee.
Same basic point for both guys: even in the FA era, when you're that good, a third team this early in your career is (I think) relatively rare, or at least for non-pitchers.
Probably even be difficult to find someone with a .320+ lifetime average about to play for his third team before he's 30.
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