“Every team writes its own story.” – Martin Brodeur
Through the first 75 games of the 2000 Major League Baseball season, the New York Yankees were barely over .500 (39-36) and it looked like the two time champions would miss the playoffs after losing series to The White Sox, The Red Sox, The White Sox again, and then the Tigers. They finished the season with seven losses in a row and somehow still clinched the American League East with a record of 87-84. They squeaked by the Oakland A’s 3-2 in the first round, beat the Seattle Mariners 4-2 in the ALCS, and dominated the Mets 4-1 to win the Subway and World Series. Not pretty, but still a beautiful story with a happy ending in NY.
Young TR was a nerdy, scrawny asthmatic kid. His father told him “you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. I am giving you the tools, but it is up to you to make your body.” That boy went on to win a Congressional Medal of Honor, become a bestselling author for the story of the Rough Riders, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most active and dynamic Presidents in US history, and wrote his own epic story.
The 1980 US Hockey team really had no right to be on the ice with the Soviets in the Olympics after being demolished a few weeks earlier. Yet they pulled off the Miracle on Ice, won the Gold Medal, and wrote their legendary story.
No one in my father’s family had gone to college. He was the first to do so. Then a graduate degree too. My mom broke her back being thrown from a horse and was told she’s never have kids. She had six of us. I am continuing their love story.
As the Muppets sang: life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Write a story worth telling and live that life worth living.