!!!...

At some point last night, right about the stage where I think everyone in the bar was beginning to accept the inevitability of defeat, one of my friends said, "sometimes I wish I didn't like sports." "Me too," I said, wondering as I do all too frequently why I put myself through stuff like this. More often than not, the games that bring about that sort of sentiment end badly.

But there are those rare occasions, like last night, where despair becomes joyous surprise in a flash, and then before I've even had a chance to catch my breath and sit back down, there is more good fortune and the surreal shock that comes with it, and I'm hugging and high-fiving people I've never met.

Oh yeah. This is why.

[Photo: Getty Images]