THE KARMA TRAIN – PART II

I guess I picked a pretty bad time to go on vacation, huh?

Clarkie resigns, Hitch gets fired, the Birds lose on a 62 yard field goal! The one bright side was that my Scarlet Knights keep on winning, with a 20-10 victory over the Pitt Panthers.

As for my vacation, Cabo is pretty damn nice. I highly recommend it, if you don’t mind traveling for 12 hours. Lots of cerveza, margaritas, and rest has my batteries recharged and ready to dive head first back into this blog. I hope I didn’t lose too many of you guys. Thanks for the concern from those that contacted me concerned about our safety due to the Tropical Storm that passed through the area. Thankfully, it was pretty much a lot to do about nothing. It rained pretty hard after we went to sleep on Tuesday and Wednesday was beautiful.

Surprisingly, I was able to catch both the Rutgers and Eagles game at a shitty little sports bar on the main strip of Cabo. During Saturday’s Rutgers game, I was surrounded by a bunch of Detroit Tigers fans getting ready to watch Game 1 of the World Series. They were pretty much shocked that anyone cared enough about Rutgers to waste part of their vacation. They had a point, but when your alma mater is 7-0 for the first time in 30 years, you have to savor every moment. Thankfully, the Scarlet Knights and Ray Rice did not disappoint.


On Sunday, the wife and I walked back into the same bar to watch the Birds and found it packed with Chargers and Steelers fans. I learned that Philly is pretty much the antithesis of “America’s Team” (or better yet “Mexico’s Team”) as the crowd took much pleasure in the Birds’ struggles. I heard comments like “I really can’t stand Philly teams and especially their fans”; “I hope they break Donovan’s leg”; “The Eagles are so overrated”. When Donovan wasted a scoring opportunity at the end of the first half for the umpteenth time in his career by throwing underneath to L.J. who was clearly not open and letting the first half clock run out, the guys at the bar laughed at my F Bomb laden tirade.

(As an aside, wouldn’t it make sense to just pull Donovan and bring in Garcia in this situation the next time it comes up? Foolishly, D Mac believes he is doing the right thing by trying to “make a play” instead of doing the safe thing under the constraints of the time clock. I’m tired of it. Maybe it’s time to bring in my favorite red headed Latino at QB for situations at the end of the half where time is of the essence and see if he can make the “safe” play. Or better yet, don’t even fool around next time. Take the ball out of Donovan’s hand and kick the field goal. Wouldn’t this be the common sense approach?)

Finally, two other Eagles fans showed up and we had partners in crime. We got really loud as the Eagles started their comeback and then got obnoxious after B West’s incredible TD catch and run with 33 seconds left. As we all know, things then crumbled very quickly, culminating in a 62 yard field goal by the immortal Matt Bryant. To my shock, the place erupted in cheers as if we were watching the game at a bar in Tampa. I just wanted to throw up. I was that distraught. To make matters worse, I couldn’t leave right away as we had to wait for the check from a waiter that had apparently disappeared to catch a siesta.

During my wait, a couple things happened that showed me that karma certainly doesn’t ignore events South of the Border. First, the Chargers lost to the Chiefs on a 53 yard field goal, which shut up all those Bolts fans who had shown so much glee when the Birds lost. The place went dead silent, except for my wife who stood and cheered, which reminded me why I married her. Next, the Steelers lost on a field goal in OT and those idiot fans who also cheered the Eagles’ misfortune got pretty silent as well. Again, the wife stood up and cheered. Karma is a bitch, ain’t it?

At that point, we started getting some looks and I realized we had angered the entire bar. Then, in a scene reminiscent of the end of Pulp Fiction when Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield hustled out of the diner after letting the thieves leave with everyone’s wallets, we hightailed it out of their and went back to the hotel pool.

I certainly learned my lesson that day. You won’t see me take so much joy in another team’s misfortune anytime soon.