How Was Your Summer?

This story originally appeared in the Oct. 2, 2019 edition of the St. Louis Game Time paper. For more information or to subscribe, email gtbradlee@gmail.com

For me, it didn’t sink in until September 16 — three months and a day from the parade.

That was the first day of school here in Madrid, Spain, where I teach English. I was still jetlagged and dazed, so even when the most obvious question came, I was unprepared.

“How was your summer?”

Writers and speakers sometimes try to impress their audiences by using big, complicated words. Congenial when we mean pleasant. Irascible when we mean angry. But I was speaking to kids for whom English is a second language. They barely know that hockey exists, let alone what the St. Louis Blues or the Stanley Cup are. I had to speak slowly and use simple, concrete words.

“My favorite hockey team — a team I have loved all my life — won the championship for the first time.”

I found a YouTube video called “St. Louis Blues raise the Stanley Cup,” and projected my computer screen onto the whiteboard with 30 gangly teenagers gawking at me. They saw the Cup, probably for the first time ever (and were immediately impressed by how big and shiny it is).

They saw Gary Bettman yammering into his microphone. And as those fireworks went off, as Alex Pietrangelo put his hands on the Cup and then lifted it over his head, and as I tried feebly to explain why it was such a big deal, it hit me. I was not watching the digital, video game version of the Blues. It was no daydream. It really happened. Holy shit, y’all, it really happened.

Five thoughts on what was and what will be.

1. Another sobering moment: When I went too long without hearing Gloria.

It took until September for the Blues’ Cup win to sink in, but I realized in August that the magic and insanity and love and drama and everything were officially in the books. Gloria shuffled on and … what’s this? I’m a step behind on the lyrics?

I hadn’t forgotten them, of course, and never will. But I found myself needing Laura to provide the first word — “you’re,” for example — before “always on the run now.” Damn, I thought. The season really is over.

2. It’s a relief to hear the players say they’re done with Gloria. The in-game entertainment crew absolutely must follow suit.

A certain disgruntled, former member of the in-game staff predicted to me over the summer that “they’ll beat that dead horse into the ground because they always beat everything into the ground.” (See: Roads, Country.) But when the captain, the Conn Smythe winner, and longest-tenured player (Alexander Steen) all say it’s time to move on, you’d think they would move on.

Play Gloria! tonight, all night long, during every stoppage in play, on full blast, and then let it never be heard again in this building. Until the 10-year anniversary, anyway. Let Gloria live forever — and only — in the spring of 2019.

3. The spring of 2019 is when Let’s Go Blues became We Went Blues. That means no complaining about the team until at least the spring of 2024.

We all said we’d trade an arm, a kidney, a relative for the Cup. We burned for that thing with every breath for 10 years, for 20, some of us for 52. I refuse to live in a world where the joy of achieving a dream only brings happiness until the first back-to-back losses of the next season. What an irrational, cold world that would be.

Heretofore, the response to every injury, every loss, every bad trade or contract shall be: Well yeah, that’s a bummer, but they won the Cup!

4. Speaking of bad contracts … welcome, Justin Faulk.

In a weird way, to me, the trade and extension were the most important transactions the franchise has ever made. There will be plenty of time to dissect their hockey implications. But when I saw the news, I was actually, truly upset. And I was grateful to be upset. It meant that I still care.

5. How long can that care last?

No season will ever match 2018–19: worst to first, the Manitoba Miracle, overcoming the Hand Pass Game, all of it. No moment will ever match Petro hoisting the Cup (if they were to win it at home someday, maybe it would come close to coming close). So what’s the point of continuing to spend money on the team and attending, watching, and obsessing about games? For now, a repeat is a clear, worthy, awesome goal. After that, though, I think we’re gonna have to work really hard to create meaning.

If you enjoyed this story — and even if you didn’t — you should check out my book, Ticketless: How Sneaking Into The Super Bowl And Everything Else (Almost) Held My Life Together.