Curses I have lived through

I've written about sports many times before on here. (Fitting, since the bulk of my professional career has been as a sportswriter and working for sports outlets.) Just in this newsletter, I've written about hockey and I've written about golf. I've written a lot about my favorite sport, baseball, even though my primary rooting interest, the San Francisco Giants, is now fully deal to me after they culminated the most abysmal, shitfucking season I've had to witness by trotting out a parade of hateful, bigoted pieces of shit in a completely uncompetitive loss on Pride Night. Good riddance to the Giants.

Thankfully, with the beginning of the World Cup this week and the exhilarating NBA Finals (and the high-octane Stanley Cup Final) wrapping up, there are much more positive and affirming things happening in sports right now.

I've spent the past 20-ish years marveling at how lucky I am to be a diehard sports fan at this particular point in history, and to have been able to witness the a simply staggering amount of curses coming to an end, and a fairly unparalleled age of parity across pretty much all of the major sports. I've written about curses in sports here before, but after the Knicks brought home their first Larry O'Brien Trophy in my lifetime, I wanted to run down just a partial list of the championships that I've been conscious of watching just in my lifetime.

I'll start with the big one (for my family, at last): the Giants themselves (RIP). In 2010, they won their first-ever title in San Francisco. They won titles in New York when my grandmother (the source of my fandom) was alive, but my dad lived and died without seeing them bring a title to the Bay. I got to see them win three. Incredible.

Here are some of the others:

• Red Sox (four times: 2004, 2007, 2013, 2018). 86-year drought
• Chicago Cubs (2016). 1o8-year drought
• New York Knicks (2026). 53-year drought
• Chicago White Sox (2005). 88-year drought
• Golden State Warriors (2015). 40-year drought
• Milwaukee Bucks (2021). 50-year drought
• Kansas City Chiefs (2020). 50-year drought
• Indianapolis Colts (2006). 36-year drought
• Green Bay Packers (1997). 29-year drought

Just in my lifetime, There have been twenty-four different World Series champions. And with the Padres, Rays and Rockies all having reached the World Series in my lifetime, that means I have witnessed every team in baseball except the Mariners playing in the World Series. Unbelievable! I've seen 18 different teams win the Super Bowl. I've seen 16 different teams win the NBA Finals. That's well over half the teams in both the NBA and NFL, winning titles in my lifetime. Good stuff!

And here are the first-time winners of championships in my lifetime!

• Texas Rangers
• Miami Marlins (twice!)
• Arizona Diamondbacks
• Houston Astros (twice!)
• Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos
• Toronto Blue Jays (twice!) (should be three times)
• Kansas City Royals (twice!)
• Anaheim Angels
• Detroit Pistons (three times!)
• Houston Rockets (twice!)
• Miami Heat (three times!)
• Denver Nuggets
• Dallas Mavericks
• Oklahoma City Thunder
• Toronto Raptors
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• Cleveland Cavaliers
• Anaheim Ducks
• Los Angeles Kings
• Washington Capitals
• St. Louis Blues
• Tampa Bay Lightning
• Florida Panthers
• New Jersey Devils
• Chicago Bears
• New York Giants
• St. Louis Rams AND Los Angeles Rams
• Baltimore Ravens
• Seattle Seahawks
• New Orleans Saints
• Philadelphia Eagles
• This shouldn't really count, but the Chicago Bulls (six times) and the New England Patriots (however many times)

What a time to have been alive and a sports fan. Whew.