|
|
 |
 |   |
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
The sad truth about happy endings
Updated: Friday July 13, 2001 10:53 AM
Happy endings make us nervous. That is the sad, modern truth. We have seen too much. We know too much. Ray Bourque wins the Stanley Cup at last and we wonder if somehow the National Hockey League has instructed the officials to call the final game in Colorado a certain way, to sort of help out. Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins at Daytona, same place where his father died five months earlier, and we wonder if NASCAR somehow orchestrated the entire heartfelt moment. Cal Ripken hits a home run in his final All-Star Game. Was he served up a final cabbage to whack out of the ballpark? The cynic has replaced the child in most of us. We have looked behind the curtain too many times -- in politics and business and in the Inside Edition lives of the stars -- to believe what we see in front of our faces. Mark McGwire shatters a home run record and we wonder about what he eats. Marion Jones runs one of the fastest races in history and we study her fat-boy former husband. An unknown wins a golf tournament and we examine the ball that he used. The modern rule of thumb has become "If it's too good to be true, then maybe it isn't." Lance Armstrong, for example, leading man in the all-time athletic feel-good story, cancer ward to Tour de France championship, now is under the microscope of drug allegations. We watch. We listen. We cross our fingers and cringe. Happiness just makes us nervous. Too bad for us. Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
| |||||||||||||||||
