IT JUST COMES NATURALLY

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Not the picture I swore at!

The other day I opened the sports pages of the Newsday and there was a big picture of Geno Smith, the new rookie quarterback of the NY Jets.

A sudden impulse overcame me to start screaming at the picture and yell: YOU BUM! YOU STINK! GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY WHY DO I ROOT FOR YOU? The poor guy had yet to call his first snap from scrimmage in a regular season game!

This is a rather odd reaction to a newspaper photo and suggests that maybe I need some psychological help. I admit it, and there is nothing I can do about it but try to hang on. You see Dear Reader: I root for bad teams. My whole life has been one sad rooting experience after another. There are few years in the interest of sports that I have had a happy time of it.

Once the Brooklyn Dodgers left Brooklyn, I had been spoiled at a young age of one World Series win in 1955. Then the Mets and Jets came along, and my world crumbled into a pile of loses, disappointments and infectious losing teams that I passed down to my son, making him a perennial loser also. Aside from hating the Yankees, and always will, I used to root for the Giants and Rangers until the Jets and Islanders came along. Geographically they were on Long Island. Even the Knicks were abandoned for the New York Nets until they moved to New Jersey.

In the past 58 years there have two World Series victories in 1969 and 1986, one Super Bowl in January of 1969 and only two NBA Championships with the Knicks but four Stanley Cups with the New York Islanders in a span of four years! That is it!

It is natural for me to resign myself to one re-building year after another, to watch in envy as Yankee and Giant fans, along with even the Ranger fans winning year after year. Some nights I cry myself to sleep in a fetal position due to a fatal condition of the team of my interest at that time.

Each season is a season of tears, and I keep wondering why I torture myself as TLW (The little Woman) says. It is because I am stubborn, stupid and love to cry with great pain and refuse to give up on the bums. (The ‘Bums’ in this case is collective and you may choose any player on any of the teams as a bum.)

So today, as I write this on Sunday, September 8^th, I await the 1:10 pm kickoff of the New York Jets that will carry me until the end of the year, I am prepared to sob, call them S.O.B.s and naturally scream and yell and wave my hands in disgust, then read about the other team, the one I should be rooting for as they win like they should.

But I will honestly tell you this:

WAIT ‘TIL NEXT YEAR!

P.S. Well just like I didn't predict, the Jets won and the other team, the Giants lost!

           

With his lovely wife Kim

Happy birthday to my beautiful niece Kim Bradshaw Harrow, a soon to be Mom for the second time!