A Braves' October win...just as magical as when I was a kid., page 1

I have been a Braves' fan basically my whole life. I was too young to realize that, even if they were the only team I could get on TV, you simply don't choose to root for the worst team in baseball. Had it not been for the years of watching them in the basement, I never would have experienced the worst to first miracle season in 1990. Amazingly, 20 years later and watching them win a postseason game still fills me with the same feeling it filled that 14 year old punk with way back then. I think it is impossible to explain to anyone who isn't a baseball fan and maybe is impossible to explain to 2/3rds of the people who are baseball fans.

The last 5 years of meaningless September hell were all washed away and made a distant memory tonight with one swing by Rick Ankiel. My 4 year old little boy sitting on my lap jumped up and celebrated with me, probably having no clue whatsoever why daddy was dancing around the familyroom, but knowing it sure looked like fun and was right up his alley. I know that sports, at least mainstream sports, aren't considered the most highbrow or intellectual of passtimes. I also know that professional sports take quite a beating from the self righteous crowd for everything from overinflated salaries to doping to (I read this some time back) "caveman behavior which often leads men at home to domestic abuse" (Huh?) But I'll tell you, for that brief moment which comes along every so often, when a team you grew up with, own jerseys and hats galore from, and feel like you know often better than you know your own self cranks out that special victory and makes a road team crowd of 45,000 screaming people shut up, sit down, and head for the exits with their hats in their hands, the feeling you get can't be matched by anything else on this planet.