Forewarned this is a long post; I know VolNation doesn’t care for those. So forgive me for my carthartic rambling. Preacherman hit an emotional chord that has been with me since the last out.
I am one of those between the dugout season-ticket holders. There was never a time this year that I didn’t make arrangements for my seats to be occupied when I could not be there. But I was mostly there, including some weekday games. I am retired and living in Nashville so I blessed to be able to do this. I am pleased to sit with a small group of loud never-say-die fans. Among the many reasons, this team will be in my memory forever as the best I’ve ever supported, all sports, is camaraderie of the team and coaching staff and how much I became identified with it. They loved to win together and they showed it in the way they did. That was their personality. I wouldn’t change it if I could; that is who they were. I was devastated when they lost not just because they lost but that I would never get to see this team play again and knew they would never get to play together as a team again. I wanted to hug them all including Coach V and to tell them not to despair. They are true champions. Moreover, they are even nicer people. Watched enough hours and heard them speak enough to know that.
The mind is a funny thing. People create fantasies about how things should go positively and and also about how things could fall apart. I suspect their were many people who had thought about what it be to lose and were silenced to see it happen. I don’t know if that is BVS or just human nature. I think UT fans often give themselves too much credit for being maligned. So while I looked around and saw life go out of many in the crowd, I kept yelling as did that small group around me. I’ve seen this before. You don’t attend 55 years of UT football without knowing how to gauge how a crowd will react. How many times have I criticized the “blue hairs” in the UT section of Neyland for sitting on their hands and watch the wave die or wane there all the damn time? Or be angry about being among the last few people remaining in my section? Or be laughed at for still cheering after others have quit? It was like witnessing a train wreck. It is the last thing you want to see. Take UT-Arkansas 1998. Truth be told, when Arkansas fumbled, not a lot of orange was still there. Two Sundays ago, I saw people leaving around me before the 9th inning not to mention those who were just sitting. These same people left during wins at about that time, too. Some of these people left after the GT 8th for goodness sakes. Some insanity I guess about beating traffic. Football me says there was no baseball traffic to beat. Why did you spend the money to be here in the first place and not to stay for the game? The team needs us now more than ever. Just no explaining people.
In my opinion, not all fans are the same. I think it takes people who have gone all out to participate in a sport or watch their kids participate to also go all out in support of their team for the duration of a game no matter what that outcome may be. My high school baseball team was one that went from mediocrity to respectability over my time there. You became a part of it. You lived and breathed it. You lived and died with it. Our championship team ended in a regional from a knuckleball that none of us could hit. I remember it like it was like yesterday.
Next year’s team will have a different collective personality. It will be different from 2021 or 2022 and we never saw 2020 fully develop which is a travesty in itself. I have the utmost faith in Coach V, Coach A, and Coach E, and the rest. I look forward to next season with great enthusiasm and to welcoming back all those who remain as well as all those who will be playing in orange for the first time. I look forward to seeing what becomes the personality of the 2023 team.
I won’t ever forget this 2022 team and hold them dear to me. Here over a week later I still think about it multiple times per day. But unlike many teams in the past that felt short of their ultimate goal, this one accomplished what no team had accomplished in almost 30 years and established some new records that will be hard for others to beat. We have to accept 2022 being one of the best all-time college baseball teams, insert qualifier, to have never won the CWS. Maybe some day, we will rattle off a list of CWS champs or not but regardless, I will mention 2022 with any of them.
It is great to be a Tennessee Vol. GBO!
