The Chromosome
I’ve been doing a lot of writing each evening over the last few weeks. A lot of writing, but not a lot of blogging. There’s a difference. What I have been writing is currently a work in progress, and personal, but in passing I had to mention something about Buffalo Sports. Whether they be the Bills or Sabres – sports in the 716 is an intensely passionate affair. Much of the virulent intensity of that passion comes from the fact that the Bills and Sabres have never won their respective championships. That alone is stinging at times, but it is compounded by the fact that through much of their history both teams have resembled a Greek Tragedy. Some say the area is cursed. I say there is no such thing, but that isn’t to say there isn’t a problem. The truth, in this instance at least, is far worse than a curse. A curse, how absurd the supernatural phenomenon may sound, can be broken, but there’s something more insidious of something that goes beyond a curse. Something that’s hereditary. What if the actual problem lies deep within the chromosome make-up of the teams themselves?
So below is an excerpt from what I wrote recently attempting to explain “Wide Right I & II,” the Sabres’ “No goal,” and what it all means to comprehend Buffalo Sports.
To truly know Buffalo Sports is to know a Greek Tragedy. The younger a person’s age the more likely this significance will be brushed off with the notion, “That happened years ago,” or, “This time it’s different, they have an unbelievable team.” My response to all these statements is, It isn’t. Each generation has its own spectacular players, its own memories, but the lineage of the rust belt is a strong one where sports is concerned, and so even while players come and go and excite us and frustrate us and eventually retire, and a new generation takes their place, they cannot escape the hereditary. It’s not that there’s a curse – such notions are nonsensical, but rather the reality is more harsh than any curse could condemn. When something is hereditary it is deep within genes, the DNA, the building blocks of life, and nothing can be done to eradicate it. All one can do is cope with the deficiency. That is knowing Buffalo Sports. It is not that some ancient evil was committed by some ancestor that created some supernatural curse spanning generations – it is far from it. The problem is just chromosomal, and sometimes bad things happen to good people; not because they were specifically targeted by an unholy force.
Buffalo Sports can be likened in this regard.
The 716 has seen its share of bad luck – it doesn’t matter if it was miracle plays, poor officiating, or self-inflicted. Sometimes what happens, happens, and the trend line cannot be reversed. It is no one’s fault, and it certainly isn’t the result of hex that has been placed upon anyone or anything. Surely by now such a supernatural jinx would have expired by now. Even the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series.
I finished my passage on wondering what it would actually be like if either professional sports team won their respective championships. A Vince Lombardi? A Stanley Cup?
Sometimes I still wonder that, but now it is tempered with the knowledge that after so many losses by the Bills and Sabres it is all a composite of the same story – the same Greek Tragedy. There is no curse, but one is left to ponder if the entire story was written by Sophocles? Which is why when a person reaches middle-age they realize their generation is not different from the one that preceded them, and in turn the more vocal next generation needs to be schooled in history. To put it succinctly – it has happened before, and it’s going to happen again, it’s only the journey getting there that will be mildly different.
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night. – Steve Martin