Success breeds stress for this shaking sports scribe.
I love sports so much that, at times, I can’t stand to watch them.
Consider Game 7 of this year’s second-round NHL playoff series between the Winnipeg Jets and Nashville Predators.
“Enjoy the game,” someone told me on May 10, as the opening faceoff loomed.
“Yeah, right,” I snorted.
I knew far too well that the entire game was going to be a stressful exercise — something I would follow intently while sedentarily avoiding exercise.
It was supposed to be entertainment, yet throughout the contest I squirmed and sighed and screamed and spluttered and generally transformed myself into a blithering disaster.
During a commercial break, which felt like a respite, I asked myself why I simply couldn’t sit back and enjoy the game.
After all, the Jets had reached foreign territory while achieving a level of success that, for them, was unprecedented.
They were one win away from advancing to the third round of the NHL playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
The problem, though, is that they were one win away from advancing to the third round of the NHL playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
Gulp.
I went on Twitter, which is never advisable when you are a stressed-out mess, and informed my follower(s) that I had not been so nervous about a hockey game since Sept. 28, 1972.
It then occurred to me that a high percentage of the Twittersphere had not yet walked this Earth when Paul Henderson scored THE goal to give Canada a Summit-Seriesclinching victory over Russia.
Along the same lines, I wondered how many members of the Twitter flock were alive on Feb. 23, 1980, when I first saw the Jets in person at dear old Winnipeg Arena.
The verdict: Winnipeg Jets 3, Toronto Maple Leafs 9.
Double gulp.
In the years ahead, the Jets would win only two first-round series — in 1985 and 1987 — before being fed to Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers.
Beginning in 1996, the Jets were without an NHL team until 2011, when the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Winnipeg and all was right with the world once again.
Except, of course, for the new Jets’ troubling tendency toward mediocrity.
There was considerable solace to be derived from the mere, magical presence of an NHL team in Winnipeg, so the “just happy to be there” mindset prevailed.
Then came the 2017-18 season, and the heightened expectations — accompanied by elevated stress.
Everything peaked on May 10, when I was reminded of other games that I can enjoy only in retrospect.
The 1989 Grey Cup, in which the Saskatchewan Roughriders defeated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 43-40, was pure torture until Dave Ridgway’s game-winning field goal split the uprights. The first 59 minutes 58 seconds? Agony.
The Super Bowls of 1998 and 2016, won by the Denver Broncos, turned me into a drooling loony. (My old pick-up line: “Hi. My name is Rob. I’m a drooling loony. Want to go for dinner?”)
In both Super Bowls, the Broncos were widely regarded as the underdog, and I kept waiting ... waiting ... waiting for the overdog — the Green Bay Packers, and later the Carolina Panthers — to have its day.
The latter game, especially, was excruciating.
As a courtesy to mankind, I decided to watch the game alone. Anticipating a one-sided Carolina victory, I did not want to end up being divorced and/or disowned as the result of a Broncos loss.
My only contact with humanity during the NFL championship game of Feb. 7, 2016 was via text message. As I squirmed and contorted myself during each play, I exchanged comments with the learned and legendary Dr. Mark Anderson.
Mark kept trying to buoy my spirits by pointing out, repeatedly, that Denver’s dominant defence would overwhelm Cam Newton and the Panthers.
I typically countered with skepticism, pessimism and sheer irrationality, with some feelings of imminent doom and despondency thrown in for good measure.
The margin of error was zero. The Broncos’ offence, with 39-yearold quarterback Peyton Manning and his 139-year-old throwing arm at the controls, was rarely a factor. Ergo, I could not escape the feeling that one big play by the Carolina offence would be enough to change everything and force me to turn over my desk.
Therefore, I sweated and fretted for four hours. I did not allow myself to enjoy most of the game. And, when it finally became evident that Denver would win, I was too emotionally exhausted to do anything except warble “yay.”
I was reminded of an old sit-com — which one, I cannot recall — in which one of the characters was smoking a cigarette and coughing like crazy.
“Why do you keep smoking?” he was asked.
“Because,” he said, coughing once again, “I enjoy it so much ..."