TERRY MOSHER
Life is full of the good, bad and ugly. I don’t know why God planned it that way, but I sometimes think life on Earth is the Hell He speaks of. Fortunately there is enough good to usually overshadow the bad and the ugly.
But that has not been the case of late.
Friends, including a brother-in-law, have been diagnosed with cancer and there have been unexpected deaths, most notably for me a nephew’s wife of a heart attack and just the other day another nephew’s son killed in a snowmobile accident.
All of this comes in the midst of the euphoria over the Seahawks playing in the Super Bowl. I guess you can’t have the ying without the yang.
Then in a couple weeks baseball’s spring training opens with the arrival at various camps in Florida and Arizona of pitchers and catchers. The pitchers need the one week head start ahead of position players to get their arms greased and ready to fire.
And as the cold and snow pound the interior of this country, we citizens wait like the fans of baseball that hope spring brings eternal for their teams and hop the sun will shine and warmth will return to the hearth, and heart.
I was reading something in Time Magazine the other day about how racism still exits, only now its culture racism. We define certain people of different cultures as being better than others for various reasons, although some of them come from countries where poverty is a way of life and there is no good reason for them to have more success than others once they get here.
India, I believe, was the target of that bias. Indians who migrate here seem to have the best success among all the difficult cultured people that reach our shores. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for it.
I don’t know why I bring that up. I’m just in a different mood today, throwing out thoughts that crowd my busy and sad mind as I walk through the Boneyard. If they don’t make sense to you, you are not alone. Words swirl around me and they crash against each other like clothes in a dryer and I sometimes can’t make sense of any of it.
In that regard, I have tried without a lot of success not to listen to the sports shock jocks on radio while I’m driving about. All the talk is the Seahawks and they constantly go over the same topics of the upcoming Super Bowl on Sunday without any thought that they are repeating themselves. But that is radio: you can’t have dead air time, so what we listeners get are dead thoughts.
My thoughts on the Super Bowl are pretty simple: it’s Peyton Manning against the Seahawks secondary. Manning has had an unbelievable year. He is, in my opinion, the best NFL quarterback of all time, although I’m guilty along with other current sportswriters and broadcasters and so-called experts of ignoring the past and guys like Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham and Sid Luckman.
It’s difficult to judge athletes from different eras, but we do injustice by ignoring the great one of the past like Baugh, Graham and Luckman and Bart Starr and Fran Tarkenton and Y.A Tittle and Bob Waterfield and Bobby Lane and Len Dawson and Roger Staubach, and Kenny “The Snake” Stabler and Terry Bradshaw.
I also think Jim Brown was the greatest running back I saw in the NFL. Gale Sayers was also a great running back whose brilliant career was cut shot because of knee injuries. But Brown was a man among boys. He didn’t make it easy on me or others to keep him on top because of his personal life, but, man, the guy was great. He was incredible athlete who competed in four sports at Syracuse. He was a two-time lacrosse All-American, an All-American in football, competed in track and field and played basketball for the Syracuse Orange.
Brown didn’t play basketball his senior year at Syracuse because the school had an unwritten rule three blacks could not start in basketball and the Orange already had two black starters. Most people believe if Brown had played his senior year the Orange would have won the NCAA National Championship.
One of my brothers – David – went to Syracuse at the same time as Brown. One day as my brother was shooting around in the gym (my brother was a terrific high school player who is still in the top 10 of career scoring at his high school, and he last played there in 1955) Brown joined in. The six-foot-two Brown, my brother told me, took the ball to the foul line, soared to the basket and dunked. My brother still shakes his head at the memory.
Brown one day competed in two sports for the Orange. He won the javelin and high jump and took second in the discus for the track and field team, then suited up for the school’s lacrosse team, leading it to victory in an undefeated season.
Back to my original thought on Sunday’s Super Bowl and the matchup between Manning and the Seahawks’ secondary. That battle will decide who wins the game. Slicing through all the BS surrounding the game, which is difficult with all the radio sports shock jocks and the 7,000 members of the Media who are back in New York to give you all the little details (Marshawn Lynch not talking much), it really comes down to destiny for me. Does Manning cement his legacy with a victory? Or does the Seahawk defense prove to be one of the great NFL defenses of all-time?
I think the game will be a blowout. But I’m not sure which way it will go. Some days it’s Manning and some days it the Seahawks’ defense. I would love to see the Seahawks get to Manning just to see if he can survive it and lead the Broncos to victory. If the Seahawks don’t put pressure on him, he may pick them apart.
So we will see, won’t we?
In the meantime, in the remaining days before Sunday, I’ll continue to be depressed by the deaths and the deadly illnesses that have invaded my personal space. I love to write, but I’m finding it more difficult to do so with all that is swirling about me. I hope to relax, get a couple Tony’s Pizzas and watch what promises to be one of the all-time Super Bowls among the 48 that will have been played.
God Bless.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.