It’s kind of funny sometimes to be a sports fan, especially when the teams you follow are good.
Three of the teams I like very much have each won one championship in the 65 or so years I have been following them.
What’s extremely odd about it is that all three won their championship in a period of less than a year and a half.
The first one to win is actually the one that means the least to me. I have never been a huge hockey fan, and I don’t know if there was ever a team that disappointed its fans more than the Washington Capitals.
In their first season, 1974-75, the Capitals had a truly horrible record that will never be matched. In 80 games, they won eight, tied five and lost 67. They were almost perfectly awful playing on the road, winning one game and losing 39. The one time they won was one of the last games of the season.
But in 2017-18, they finally won the Stanley Cup. They haven’t come close since, but they have the wonderful Alex Ovechkin chasing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time scoring record.
As nice as it was to see the Caps win the Cup in 2018, the following year was doubly wonderful.
It started with Tony Bennett and his wonderful Virginia basketball team, which had a 35-3 record and won the NCAA basketball tournament for the first time. The Wahoos won close game after close game, including two that went to overtime.
There has never been a team I care more about, and there has never been a championship that made me happier.
The 2019 World Series came close, though.
The Washington Nationals had been good for seven years, although they always disappointed their fans in the playoffs. Finally in 2019, they beat Houston to win the Series in a way no team ever had done before. It was a Series in which the home team lost all seven games.
Truly wonderful, even if it never happens again.
Three wonderful things in less than 1 1/2 years.