Sunday, the culminating day of our Storm of the Century (at least so far), was a series of perfect skiing moments. On the Cirque, on Longshot, on Free Fall, in the trees, I hit all the powder spots, nailed every turn, and called on nearly fifty years of practice, experience, and immersion.
Since the last time Snowmass/Aspen has seen this much snow all at once, in 1993, 21 years ago, many people skiing here, the locals who know all the spots and the powder lines found themselves floundering in an unfamiliar depth. One of the benefits of aging is, you’ve seen it before, and know how to handle it.
Some things, though, you can wait all your life, and still maybe never see. Imagine being a Chicago Cubs fan, for example. I grew up in Cincinnati, and became a Reds fan in 1956, Frank Robinson’s rookie year. They built a powerful team, full of home run hitters, clutch pitchers, and scrappy middle infielders. They made it to the World Series in 1961, but, like so many others in that era, fell to the New York Yankees – the Damn Yankees.
I left Cincinnati in 1966, coming back in the summers through 1970. I watched the team slowly build itself, starting with our hometown hero, Pete Rose, then adding Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, George Foster (one of the few to hit 50 homers in a season in that pre-steroids era), and Ken Griffey (Junior’s dad), who actually has a higher lifetime batting average than his son. They built themselves through the early 70s, getting to the World Series in ‘70 (losing to the Orioles), and ’72 (losing to the Athletics.) The puzzle finally came together, as the Big Red Machine, beating the Red Sox in ’75 and sweeping the Yankees 4-0 in ’76.
I felt fulfilled as a fan, seeing my home town team dominate over multiple seasons, as the stars of baseball for a time. But I had to admire from a distance, at the edge of the continent in Southern California.
In 1979, I moved to the Puget Sound, arriving to newspaper stories of the SuperSonics, who had just won the NBA title. I quickly became a fan. I’d always followed the local roundball teams, where ever I lived. Oscar Robertson and the Royals in Cincinnati. John Wooden’s UCLA teams, with the Lakers as a side dish, in LA, and now the Sonics in Seattle. WIthin a few years, I became a part-time season ticket holder, sharing seats with colleagues and friends, eventually working our way down to the 4th or 5th row, behind the basket, where we got the opportunity to hear the players, see them sweat, and admire the reckless speed and grit of Gary Payton, the sky dunks of Shawn Kemp, and the coaching wizardry of George Karl.
By 1993, they had become the winningest team in the league, seemingly destined for a trip to the Finals in June. For the first playoff series, against Denver, we finagled extra seats for the family. My son, Cody (the 12) had been watching a lot of the games with me, and was a die hard fan, as die hard as I had been with the Reds in the ‘60s. In the deciding 5th game, he was sitting with his sister at the very top of the stadium, while Cheryl and I were down front. When the game ended, the Sonics became the first top seeded team ever knocked out in the first round by the bottom seed. Denver’s 7’2” shot blocking, finger waggling center Dikembe Mutumbo writhed on the floor in front of us, cradling the ball, smiling, nearly hysterical. Cody was beside himself, crying uncontrollably with only Shaine to comfort him. BAM! Dreams of hometown heroics ripped away, exposing nothing but naked nerve endings.
Two years later, the local baseballers, the Mariners, led by Griffey, Jr, rookie Alex Rodriguez, a fireballing Randy Johnson, and the nonpareil Edgar Martinez, caught fire in August and kept winning, day after day, securing the pennant in a win-or-go-home single playoff game the day after the season ended. “Refuse to lose” was their motto, and it seemed nothing could stop them. After mauling the Yankees in the first round, they fell to Cleveland in the second. No World Series for them.
Six years later, their superstars all gone, they built a new team around Japanese stars Ichiro and Kazuhiro Suzuki, with a collection of second and third generation players -David Bell (Gus and Buddy), Bret Boone (Ray and Bob), and Stan Javier (Julian) – a local boy made good (John Olerud), and some remarkable role players, like Mark McLemore. They won 15 of their first 19 games, and Alex Rodriquez, by now with the Texas Rangers, said, maybe tongue in cheek, that they could win 115 to 120 games that year. Turns out they won 116, tying the record for most ever in a season. It seemed like their World Championship was just a matter of time.
While they did beat the Indians in the first round, they lost to (guess who) the Yankees in the second. Once again, fans’ hopes and dreams were bashed.
Then, in 2005, the local football Seahawks entered the playoffs behind their MVP running back Shaun Alexander as the #1 seed from the National Conference. Holding form (for once), they did make it to the Super Bowl, but seemed to lack sufficient vision, or karma, or the good graces of the officials. They lost to Pittsburgh Steelers; once again, the hometown boys and the dreams of a frustrated city were foiled.
But, 13 months ago, we started to see a light flicker and grow. Out of a last second defeat to the Atlanta Falcons, the Seahawks built themselves brick by brick, day by day, into a juggernaut. To those of us following them, it seemed obvious they had all the right tools. A coach with a vision and a plan. An owner with an unlimited checkbook. A boy wonder general manager who found hidden gems off the draft day radar screen. An boy scout undersized quarterback who spoke in cliches, but actually believed and lived them (“The separation is in the preparation”, “Why not us?”). A larcenous secondary who led the league in interceptions. A punishing running back who triggered seismic events whenever the hometown crowd cheered his touchdowns. A receiving corps (decimated by injuries to their two best pass catchers) with giant chips on their shoulders.
And those were just the obvious suspects. Really, the entire team, all 53 of them, had skills and drive and followed a coach who knew how to use them, how to fuse them, and gave a single goal – make every day a championship opportunity.
But we’d been fooled before, been let down one too many times, by a local professional sports teams which seemed to be destined for the stars, only to have those stars crossed and erased too soon.
So we, the 12th men, watched, and cheered, and waited, but suffered nonetheless from “Battered Fan Syndrome”. We spent the past 13 months expecting, anticipating a Perfect Moment, but holding back, remaining wary, unwilling to jump in with full emotional commitment. Even after Richard Sherman knocked the ball from Micheal Crabtree’s clutches in the end zone, to put his team in the Super Bowl, we still felt anxiety. Maybe even more so. Because we knew this team was the Real Deal. THIS team could be the team of the decade, like the Packers, the Steelers, the 49ers, the Cowboys, the Patriots had been in their decades. But to get to that exalted status, we still had to take the first step, the one Seattle teams had been slipping on for 35 years now.
Some days, when you’re singing, or swimming, or skiing, and maybe playing football, you find that all you’ve done before, everything you’ve learned and everything you’ve yearned for, gets crystalized and presented to the world in its final, perfect form, a platonic ideal rather than a shadow of a shadow. The background falls away, there is no longer a separation between actor and audience, between your body and the stage or field or pool or snow. There is no doubt this is what you were meant to do, at this time in this place, and it feels like forever.
43-8. The start of the Seahawks dynasty.