Red Hooded Sweatshirt?

It isn't just an Adam Sandler song, dear reader. No, the headline refers to the great untold story of this past Sunday's game: New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick's ill-fated decision to wear a red hooded sweatshirt to Super Bowl XLII. What's wrong with this particular choice of attire, you ask? You see, as had been endlessly documented, the Patriots were 18-0 going into the Super Bowl, a historic single-season run that had never been matched (note that the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins went 17-0). Throughout this seemingly unstoppable march to history, Coach Belichick wore a garment that had taken on a life of its own--a gray hooded sweatshirt with manually cut off sleeves. One might presume, given the superstitious nature of the sporting world, that a man so very close to history would not tinker with what had gotten him there. Alas, one would be wrong.

Legendarily cantankerous, Coach Belichick opted to go with the bright red number shown on the right in a move that can perhaps be construed as an overt spitting in the collective face of the Sporting Gods. Indeed, perhaps the coach's supreme confidence in what some pundits were calling potentially the Greatest Team of All Time drove him to take on superstition itself, that one almighty and unassailable power that dwells within every missed field goal and every called third strike. Instead, this decision to stick a finger in superstition's eye (a decision that will forever be ruefully lamented in that most superstitious of sports towns, Boston) was Coach Belichick's Icarus moment, his own personal Operation Barbarossa. Perhaps we can never be sure why New England's offensive line picked February 3 to forget its blocking schemes, or why its offensive coaching staff chose that day to misplace its max protect formations. What we can be sure of, however, is this: Superstition is a mere phone call away from Fate.

Doubling Down

Rarity makes life special. That is why things may be exciting to children – flying on a plane or going to the top of a skyscraper – yet bore an adult that has become accustomed to “rarities.” As in life, rarity is what makes sports worth watching. Brett Favre would not be able to capture America’s heart if every team had a “Brett Favre” - i.e. good looking (or so the ladies tell me), down-to-earth, charismatic, humble, troubled, and honest player- at quarterback. There is, however, only one Brett Favre, and that is why America loves him. Recently I was reminded of the importance of rarity, when I was fortunate enough to witness the rarest of all events: the double down on twelve.

That may be a slight exaggeration. Some things are probably rarer than doubling down on twelve: an unassisted triple play; back-to-back no hitters; or a 100 point game in the NBA. Although those events are rare, I knew each of those events could happen, since they have before, even if I never expected to witness one during my lifetime. At not point in my life, however, had it occurred to me that I might see someone double down on twelve. Forget about wondering whether I thought I would see someone do it, I never thought someone would double down on twelve. Naively, I believed that everyone – blackjack players, the dealers, their respective mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, grandparents, from any nationality whatsoever– doubled down on eleven, and only eleven. Yet, at a Casino, recently, a friend of mine clearly stated to the dealer “double down,” with an illustrious face card and two showing. Not believing what she had heard, the player to his left attempted to grab the chips off the table before the dealer had even realized that he had placed another bet. Exclaiming, "he did not mean it!" Oddly enough, that’s not the type of thing a dealer misses, and he politely explained to the woman that the chips would remain right on the table. (That's actually what his eyes said, since he spoke Portugese, we could not understand a thing he said.) Fortunately, fate is just, and has a sense of humor, because the double downer received a two, and lost to the dealer. (The story would not be remotely as funny had he miraculously comeback to win, despite that mental error of Chris Webber-esque proportions.)

Oh, for those of you who ignore the "don't try this at home" warning, please, PLEASE, do not attempt to explain away the event to your friends by saying "I never claimed to be a Blackjack expert." If you had an infinite number of monkeys, with an infinite number of typewriters, one of them would write Shakespeare. None of them, however, would double down on twelve.