It's Not Your Fault: An Open Letter to Arlen Specter

Dear Senator Specter,

It must be hard to be a sports fan in the city that booed Santa Claus. Trust me, I understand your pain. Boston may not be a loser city anymore, but up until 2001 the only playoff taste I'd ever known was the Yankees' backside. My Celtics were the joke of the NBA. My Patriots were "the Patsies." My Red Sox were mired in an eighty-some-odd year World Series drought that I'm sure you've heard too much about already. Even my high school teams were terrible. So trust me, I know your pain. And trust me when I say this, it will get better. You might feel like all hope is lost, and you might feel bitter enough to lead a witch hunt against the Patriots and neglect all your political duties in the process, but like Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want." The only thing you can do is accept your teams' failures and move on. Try to stay optimistic. It's the only way. Say it with me now. "It's not my fault."

Feels better doesn't it? "It's not my fault." I don't know where I first heard that phrase, but it has helped me get through the three biggest disappointments of my life.

The first time had nothing to do with sports. It was Christmas of 1996. I was ten. Vacation had started too late that year, with school going right up to December twenty-third. I woke up Christmas morning, greeted by the webbed frost hanging in the corners of my windows, the whistling, high-pitched whine from the radiator, and the last red link from my construction paper Christmas countdown chain. Finally, I'm getting a Nintendo 64, I thought, eagerly, about the video game console that I'd pined over during the many, many sleepless nights since Halloween.

Then I got some shirts, some baseball cards, some candy, and a book of scratch tickets. Thanks, but no Nintendo 64. I wanted (key word: wanted) to cry until my tears filled my bedroom and drowned me in my misery. Life just wasn't worth living without a Nintendo 64.

Now I know that the memory of Donovan McNabb doubled over in the huddle, exhausted, and trying to hold back the nervous regurgitate as he prepares to mount a game winning drive must make you sick to your stomach, but, "Take a tip from me..." as Brad Nowell says, "it all comes back to you, you bound to get what you deserve." Karma is a funny thing. That Christmas day when I didn't get what I wanted, did I complain to my parents and act ungrateful for everything else they got me? Of course not. If I had done that, I never would've gotten what I wanted. Besides, I knew they tried. It just wasn't in the cards for me to get a Nintendo 64 that day. And you know what? None of my friends got one either. There was nothing any of us could do. I said it then. "It's not my fault," and in doing so I embraced that truth, realizing that I wasn't alone in my misery. By the time spring came around, the rush on Nintendo 64s ended, and I finally got one.

The second great letdown was game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. As you may recall, the Red Sox led heading into the eighth inning, with the greatest pitcher of his generation going on the mound. This was it. We were going to win the World Series. It all seemed inevitable. I was watching it with my family. My 80 year-old grandmother beamed, grinning from ear to ear like she might actually live to see them win one. My father and his uncles gripped the necks of their beers so tightly that the glass should have shattered into their palms. My mother paced in the dining room, itching to watch the game but we wouldn't let her because the powers that be had determined she was bad luck whenever she entered the room.

Then Grady Little decided to leave his balls in the dugout. Three innings and a walk off Aaron #*%$ Boone home run later later, I was on the floor of my room, elbows hooked around my knees, telling myself, "It's not my fault."

I felt cheated. I wanted to strangle Grady Little, and then call the league and ask them to replay the game, this time without hayseed around to allow Pedro Martinez to finish the inning. The Yankees weren't supposed to win. 2003 was supposed to be the year that Nomar, Pedro and Manny ended the drought. Still I knew there was nothing I could do. The game was over. We lost. Just like the Eagles lost in 2003. There's no way you can change that. Sure, you can neglect your duty to the people of Pennsylvania and to the US senate, and pursue a witch hunt against the Patriots. What's the best case scenario you can hope for? Perhaps Roger Goodell sides with you, and takes away the Patriots' Super Bowl XXXIX Lombardi trophy in a noon press conference. He's still not going to give it to the Eagles. The game would simply be null and void, and the only thing you would have accomplished is making all of New England just as bitter as Philadelphia. Either way the Eagles don't win. The only thing you can do is let it go. That's what we all did here in 2003. The Red Sox fired Grady Little, and we let it go. Because it wasn't our fault. The next year is history.

The third great disappointment was a mere month ago. Call it karma for spygate (by the way, the link included is absolutely hilarious in its ridiculousness), or for running up the score if you will. Or call it a choke. The Patriots missed out on the chance to be called the one of the greatest teams in the history of sports. And while it's still too soon for me to reminisce without spite, I can tell you that the result of the game wasn't pretty. There I was slouched on the chaise nursing a bottle of Jim Beam, holding a joint in my other hand all the while trying to convince myself and my buddy Matt that it wasn't our fault, as he lay curled on the couch, whimpering both over the loss of perfection and the subsequent 2000 dollars worth of damage we caused to his apartment complex following the game.

It's obviously too soon for me to tell how this one will work out. All I can say is that at least it was a good ride while it lasted. I really don't have any parallels here for your situation. Instead, in this final part of the letter, I'd just like thank you for distracting the Patriots the day before the Super Bowl. You really didn't have to do that. You could easily have waited. What you did went above and beyond the senatorial call of duty. I commend you. Never again will we as sports fans ever have to worry about our teams losing games. Anytime our team is cheated, we know we can go to our sports senator and he will make it all better. Whether it's Roger Clemens' steroid use before the 2003 ALCS, or the Eagles illegally discussing a contract with Asante Samuel before the NFL free agency began, we can write to our sports senator and he will drop whatever he's doing, whether it has to do with the men and women dying in Iraq, the American housing crisis, or the stumbling US economy, and he will fight for us.

Oh yeah, and I can't forget to thank you Senator Specter, for giving me someone to blame for the Patriots' loss. I can finally say it now. "It's not my fault."

Yours truly,
Tom