Re: 5 straight

["Caleb J. McArthur" <cmcarthu@umich.edu>]

On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Marc Lamphier wrote:

> >Someone please make me feel better by naming a city with more consecutive
> >losses in professional championships.  
> 
> I think you might do better by making a list of how many cities haven't had
> teams go to a championship game at all in the past ten years. Makes Boston
> look quite a bit better when viewed from this perspective. 

You don't get points for second place.  Winning truly is the only thing in
sports.  If the Pats feel happy with their simply getting to the
Superbowl, then they will never win it.  I hope they feel ten times as
miserable about this loss as any of their fans (I bet they do) and use
that feeling to get back and win the damn thing.  

The great ones refuse to be happy with anything less than a
championship, and not coincidentally, that attitude is essential for
winning a championship. 

Dave Cowens said it best when he said "losing is like death."  That is the
attitude that made me a Celtics fan in the first place, and I refuse to
start being happy with second best simply because we have less and less
people in Boston sports with that attitude.  I would rather have one of my
teams win a championship once every 7 years (as the Montreal Canadiens
have done for example -- and no I am not a Habs fan) than have all four of
my teams go frequently only to lose.  I would trade all 5 of our second
place seasons over the last 10.5 years for one championship in one sport
and losing seasons in all the other sports for the entire 10.5 years.