The wonder of sports

I love sports and mostly have always. I enjoy watching, I enjoy fantasy sports and I enjoy playing them despite lugging around about 40 extra pounds of man.

Shannon and I play co-ed slow pitch softball and have off-and-on for years, mostly with the Deseret News team. This year the games were on Monday nights but the company is too poor to pay so individual players coughed up the cash.

As (bad) luck would have it, I missed many games and then showed up to two games that were rained out. For me it was a short season but I was able to be present for most of the playoff run.

The final day of the season the two best teams in the league were paired in one semifinal while we played a far inferior team in the other game. We played badly and squeezed out a win leaving us to face a very good team in the final.

If we played the team we met in the championship 10 times we might win two or three games but the final game was one of those, leaving us as the league champions with a solid 16-8 win. Our first basewoman is well into her 60s is literally unable to run. I credit our infield defense for more than solid play and we were both lucky and skilled with our bats, scoring enough runs to keep the pressure on the other team.

The wonder of sports is that the best team doesn't always win. It doesn't matter in championships or even just games which team is better, it matters who performs better right then. Utah beats Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, the Yankees don't win every World Series and Austin Peay beats Illinois in the NCAA basketball tournament. If you don't recall that win, it was in 1987 and outspoken announcer Dick Vitale famously said the best 64 teams should be in the tournament and that some great teams were left out and the Governors had no business being there and had no chance to beat Illinois. Vitale even said he would stand on his head if they won. He kept his promise. He has also changed his tune over the years, speaking in favor of teams that aren't in the biggest conferences but have great seasons having a chance to dance.

Locally, Weber State beat North Carolina in 1999 behind Harold Arceneaux and beat Michigan State in 1995.

Once upon a time a former D-league quarterback named Kurt Warner, after all the other guys got hurt, led the St. Louis Rams to the Superbowl. The best teams don't always win and that is what makes sports so fun.