On Oct. 22, I was at Tropicana Field for the Tampa Bay Rays' first-ever World Series game. My friend, who generously offered his family's extra ticket to me, still pokes fun at me for the stupid grin I had on my face for the first eight innings of the game.
Sure, the Rays were on their way to a 3-2 loss, but I was just happy to be there - on that big of a stage, wondering how I even got there.
Fittingly, over the next week, I watched my team look just as happy to be there as I had been, and the Rays came away with their first-ever World Series defeat, a 4-1 romp at the hands of the Phillies.
Eight months later, as I watched Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers win Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Orlando Magic, it all felt a little too familiar.
Not because Phil Jackson won his record 10th championship, not because Kobe won his fourth ring &ndash celebrating it like Michael Jordan did, standing on stage and waving four fingers in the air&ndash and not because Adam Morrison probably cried at some point.
It was because my team just looked happy to be that deep into the postseason, and for the second time in a year, a central Florida team full of young talent fell 4-1 in a championship series.
Like Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria, who went hitless in the World Series until Game 5, Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis disappointed in the Finals.
Howard supposedly announced his presence as a superstar with his outstanding performance in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, when he did what all the great players have done: put his team on his back and carried it to victory. Although he led all players in rebounds in four out of Finals five games, he was his team's top scorer just once, matching Lewis' 21 points in Game 3, the Magic's only win in the Finals.
It was also the franchise's first championship victory, breaking the curse of Nick "the Brick" Anderson, whose four missed free throws against the Houston Rockets in Game 1 of the 1995 Finals forced Orlando to wait 14 more years for its first win in a championship series, a short eight months after the Rays got theirs.
And while the ultimate demise of the Rays and the Magic can be traced to a number of issues - a lack of experience, sub-par performances by their best players and key role players not stepping up, to name a few -both suffered from what I call a "championship moment in a non-championship game."
For the Rays, I thought it was rookie pitcher David Price stepping onto the mound to close out Game 7 of the ALCS against the Red Sox. When Akinori Iwamura stepped onto second base for the final out, the resulting celebration was like that of a world champion.
For the Magic, it was the six-game dethroning of King James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the conference finals, capped off by Howard's playoff career-high 40 points.
The best example of this concept was Ali Gardiner's walk-off grand slam against Alabama in the Women's College World Series semifinals. It was such an emotional moment, such a high point for the team and its fans. It was like the climax of a story.
Unfortunately for all three teams, the subsequent falling action was finishing as a national runner-up.
When the unprecedented, miraculous runs to the championship ended for the Magic and Rays, both immediately started to talk about next year. But with the Rays fighting to stay above .500 and the Magic potentially losing several key players to free agency, there's another similarity: They'll both be even happier to be there if they find themselves back in the title hunt in the near future.
