There’s this Giants fan I know — and you know who you are, because I’m talking about all of you — who summed up his feelings about the coming football season in terms any sports fan can relate to.
“I expect five months of absolute fun,” he said, “interspersed regularly with periodic bouts of nausea.”
Really, that’s the optimum, isn’t it?
Think of where a Dodgers fan is right now. Think of the way that fan has devoured this baseball season, so many good times, so many great games, so many nights when the team looked unbeatable, so much … well, absolute fun.
And think about that fan looking ahead to October, to all the potential pitfalls and pratfalls, all the trap doors, all the ankles that can be sprained between now and then, all the hamstrings that can be strained, all the shoulders that can be impinged, all the slumps that could be lying in wait, all the things that can inspire … well, periodic bouts of nausea.
It’s the burden of the fan who roots for a good team.
And look: that’s really all you want as a fan, isn’t it? You don’t think your Jets-fan friends wouldn’t trade spots with you in an instant, a heartbeat, an eyeblink. You’re not that far removed from rooting for a team that started the season dead at 0-6. How much fun was that? Maybe that upset your stomach, but for all the wrong reasons.
No, this is better. This is best. Maybe the Giants aren’t the darlings of the whole league just yet — until further notice, those laurels hang around the Patriots’ neck. Maybe they aren’t even the smart money to emerge from the NFC — depending on the sports book, you’re going to find shorter odds for the Seahawks, Falcons, Cowboys and Packers.
But they are the darlings of New York City right now.
They enter the starting gate with a defense that was great last year and shows every indication it can be even better this year — and that’s always the foundation for any genuine thread of Giants optimism, whether you’re talking about Sam Huff and Andy Robustelli, Lawrence Taylor and Leonard Marshall, Michael Strahan and Justin Tuck.
They come to this season with so many weapons on offense you sometimes wonder if Eli Manning’s biggest concern will be spreading the ball around democratically, so everybody stays happy. And they come with Eli himself, with lots of tread on his tires but a unique muscle memory of how to pull a team from Preseason to Parade.
“There are some expectations on this football team,” second-year coach Ben McAdoo said earlier this summer. “And we welcome them. You don’t get into this business unless you want to compete for the highest honors and that’s what we intend to do, because we think we have a team that can compete with anybody.”
Those last four paragraphs? That’s the fun part. That’s what’s nourished you since the dreadful day in Green Bay last January when the Giants looked a step and a half slower than the Packers on just about every play, knowing this team would return most of its core, would only be stronger, deeper, better.
But you are a fan. You know better than to expect anything will be a smooth ride. Maybe you’re also a Mets fan, so you remember just how certain you felt about things in April, only to have the season happen. Only to have stuff happen.
Oh, yes. Stuff can happen, ever more so in a football season. Jets fans can tell you about “stuff” — like Vinny Testaverde snapping his Achillies on Opening Day 1999, instantly turning a contending season upside down. Hell, you can go chapter and verse on “stuff”: the 11-1 start in 2008 that fell off a cliff when Plaxico Burress walked into the Latin Quarter or any of the wasted seasons between 1986 and 1990 — the strike year, the Week-16-loss-to-the-Jets year, the Flipper Anderson year.
Stuff can be an offensive line that isn’t yet near the level of the skill players it is charged with protecting. Stuff can be a game that gets away in September that costs a home playoff date in January. Stuff can be — WARNING! Skip to the next paragraph if you’re easily made queasy — the laws of probability finally catching up with Manning and his streak of 211 consecutive starts, including playoff games.
Yeah. That’s the other part.
But you’ll live with that, of course. Seasons like this don’t come around all that often. The good and the bad, the sublime and the ridiculous, the happiness and the heaving — it’s all part and parcel with caring for a team worth caring about. You know who you are, because you’re the one who can’t wait for Sunday to hurry the hell up. All of you.