My New Litmus Test for Sports Euphoria

Alright. Tonight is the start of Mavs season. And you know what? I am sick of the pent-up team pride and enthusiasm of their fans that the Mavs and the Cowboys squander each season. We have so much team pride that we start planning parades and shit two games into the finals. Dallas is like the Andrew W.K. of fans. We don't ask for much. We want to win shit and we want to party in celebration of winning shit. We don't care about having a perfect season or gaining respect. The Cowboys claim of the title of "America's Team" actually ensured that lots of football fans hate the Cowboys with a burning passion. You should google the words "hate" and "Josh Howard" or "hate" and "Mark Cuban" just for fun.

The World Series made me think. Mostly about my friend Joe Burns. I met him through the gaffer tape-filled world of touring. As long as I have known him, he has worn a Phillies baseball cap. Every picture I have ever seen of him, he is wearing a Phillies baseball cap. It was always kind of an "awwww, bless!" kind of thing since I pictured Joe sitting around his nursing home with the tattered remains of that baseball cap in his hands, cheering on the Phillies to maybe one day make the playoffs. I was cocky because I am from Dallas and my teams are famous and awesome and rich and stuff.

I'm not a baseball person but I have been sending every good vibe I have the Phillies way since the playoffs started because I just imagined my friend Joe in the happiest place possible with each win. He seriously wears that Phillies hat EVERYWHERE. At all times. And if a Philly team is gonna win something, it better not be the fucking Eagles.

Then the Phillies won the World Series. And at last count, according to the coverage on Deadspin, no fewer than 10 cars have been flipped. I saw video of a man humping a telephone pole with a crowd of thousands cheering him on. I saw a picture of a Phillies-loving hipster being pinned and arrested next to his courier-requisite bike. Apparently, it's still going. I read the comments from Phillies fans who have been drunk for more than 24 hours at this point. And I got a little misty-eyed.

I remember being 12 years old in 1993 and going to a Super Bowl watching party at our youth group leader's house in Lake Highlands. I remember the moment the game was over, we took our blue streamers to the street and stood on the side of Abrams waving streamers and screaming our Skittles-damaged brains out. Even the sound of distant celebratory (I think) gunfire didn't dampen our spirits. I begged my mom to let me skip school to go to the victory parade downtown. She vetoed that idea and I remember thinking that even the gang fighting was probably totally exciting.

I remember seeing Pantera playing the Stars fight song on a float at the Stars victory parade. I remember hugging total strangers at a sports bar in Denton called Dusty's when the Mavs beat the Suns and were headed for the Finals. I remember my best friend Chrissy (after several ill-advised game watching pina coladas) and I hugging like Dirk and Nash and me mouthing the words "Chrissy, is this real? Are we going to the Finals? It can't be real." Our enthusiasm even lead to us jumping in the back of the car with some friends from the bar to rush to Love Field to wave at an airplane.

So here's my new pocket guide to how I will celebrate each Dallas sports franchise milestone:

Mavericks ending up with more than 50 wins at the end of the regular season = metal drum trash can fire

Cowboys making the playoffs at all, even as a wild card = automatic handgun fire into the ceiling of my apartment

Mavericks getting past the first round of the playoffs = sitting in my car laying on the horn for half an hour, regardless of the time

Cowboys making it past the first round of the playoffs = minor, easily controlled arson of a stranger's residence

Mavericks or Cowboys making it to the Finals/Super Bowl = car flipping....lots of car flipping.....more arson

A championship title = Mutal Assured Destruction of any object or carbon-based life form that crosses my path