Morning came early today in Boston. Most mornings around here, day breaks on a sleeping city. Alarms bleep, sunlight creeps across the floor, a bird or two starts in outside the window, and Bostonians rumble reluctantly into the day. Most mornings, we’d all just as soon be asleep.

Not this morning.

On this Wednesday in June, dawn was, for Bruins fans, a mere formality. We were up already. Couldn’t sleep a wink last night. In fact, probably haven’t had a good night’s sleep all week.

Hyperbole? Not on your life. If you think missing a little sleep during Cup Week is hyperbolic, then you, my friend, were decidedly not at the Garden on Monday night.

You weren’t there before the game either, on the fourth floor of the Greatest Bar, in the Boston Room, barreling through a pile of Narragansetts as a black-and-gold sea roiled around you. You didn’t see a roomful of fans seethe at the televisions whenever Vancouver’s colors appeared. You didn’t see a father eating dinner with his son, the big man leaning over a table of wings and Diet Cokes to chat about the game with his young boy, didn’t see the smile on the father’s face or notice that his son’s wheelchair was painted yellow and black. You didn’t see ESPN’s Chris Berman sitting there at the end of the bar, his giant stomach smoothing the folds of a Hawaiian shirt, excited men ringing his stool. You weren’t accosted by a small, blonde woman who looked a little like Tim Thomas (same haircut, no beard) and who socked you repeatedly in the chest with her surprisingly powerful little fist, yelling “WHAT’S MY LAST NAME? WHAT’S MY LAST NAME?” until you yelled back, at her behest, “ORR! IT’S ORR! FOR GOD’S SAKE YOUR LAST NAME IS ORR!”

You didn’t climb on Monday to the last row of the Garden for the 40th or some-odd time in the last nine months, shaking hands and greeting friends you don’t know by name but have come to revere and respect as friends. You missed it when a fellow season ticket holder rose from his yellow seat before the anthem, his hat torn and drenched in beer, and implored the Bruins player taking the opening draw to “PUNCH THEM IN THE MOUTH BEFORE THE FACEOFF!” Then, when the anthem started, you didn’t cup your ears and strain to hear Rene Rancourt’s singing, its loudspeakered swell drowned out by the fans singing along. You definitely weren’t in the men’s room midway through the first period when, after Nathan Horton appeared on the video screen and the Garden began to hum and sway with screams, a small boy looked up at his father standing at the urinal next to him and said, “This is crazy, Dad.”

“I know,” the boy’s father replied. “I know it’s crazy. That’s why we’re here. If we were at home, Mom would’ve told us to be quiet.”

If you slept well this week, you probably aren’t one of the two fans I saw at Game 7 of the Canadiens series wearing white F*CK THE HABS t-shirts, both female, their hair freshly permed, neither one a day under 65.

If you slept well this week, you probably aren’t Cam Neely, the Bruins president, who played for two Stanley Cups but never won one. You probably aren’t Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli, who set his sights on a Cup at the February trade deadline and brought Tomas Kaberle, Rich Peverley and Chris Kelly on board. You probably aren’t Shawn Thornton, who lives in Charlestown, buys his steaks at a mom-and-pop shop in Medford, and has said that he’ll reside in Boston for the rest of his life. And you definitely aren’t Tim Thomas, the can’t-do, never-will, won’t-amount-to-nothin’, ’53 Hudson Hornet of a goalie who didn’t even start in the NHL until age 31 but has since won one – ah, make it two – Vezinas, the breathless praise of every lifelong puckhead with a pen or a microphone or a bar stool soapbox, and the chance, this very night, to Paul Bunyon his way to an audience with the Stanley Bleepin’ Cup.

In short, if you slept well this week you aren’t him, or me, or the homeless man I saw holding court this morning in his usual spot outside Border’s, his standard uniform of worn gray pants and a ratty green flannel accessorized today by a vintage Bruins jacket, frankly startling in its spotlessness, similar in style to the one the players award to each game’s MVP, the same one left hanging in Nathan Horton’s locker after he was felled by Aaron Rome in Game 3. Somehow, this gleaming, immaculate coat had found its way to this man’s shoulders, and he sported it proudly as he chatted animatedly about the game with three buddies, while all around him strolled people wearing Bruins t-shirts and jerseys and hats, kids and adults, butchers and businessmen, the young and the old. I didn’t recognize these people, don’t know any of them from Adam, but I know this: no matter what they call home, whether it’s an apartment in Southie, a rambling house in Weston, or a corner of curb in Downtown Crossing, none of them slept well last night, not a one, and they won’t sleep well tonight either, win or lose.

Do it for them, guys. Do it for fathers who eat dinner with their sons. Do it for grandmothers who want to see another Cup before the lights go out for good. Do it for kids in Natick who undoubtedly are at this very moment setting up street hockey goals at either end of a cul-de-sac and arguing over who gets to be Tim Thomas, or Milan Lucic, or Shawn Thornton. Do it for the babies at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital who with their tiny white Bruins hats deserve to nurse from Lord Stanley’s Cup. Do it for a city like ours, a city with fierce pride in its hockey history, a city which is, right now, right outside my window, thrumming with energy and excitement, a city full of people who care so much about the Bruins that they simply cannot fall asleep.

After the 2008-2009 Bruins season ended on a Scott Walker overtime goal, my mom sent me an email.

“Tom, I’m sorry the season ended for the Bruins last night,” she wrote. “Dad and I watched the game and thought of you being part of the live crowd. Glad the sun came out and hope that you have a good day. Love, Mom.” Seven months later, she passed away.

There’s a Game 7 tonight in Vancouver. One team will win, the other will lose, and tomorrow the sun will come out. But, man, it’ll sure shine a little bit brighter if the Bruins win, won’t it?

I don’t think I’d sleep for a week.

There’s a Game 7 tonight in Boston. Step outside for a minute: you can feel it. Go ahead – take a walk down Park Street, near the T stop and the Common. You’ll see them: Bruins fans, wearing Bruins hats and Bruins t-shirts and Bruins jackets, heads down, eyes nervous. One man – a man dressed otherwise for a board meeting, tan overcoat covering a suit and tie – walks quickly past Dunkin Donuts, hunched forward, bracing against the wind. He wears shiny black loafers, the kind with tassels on the top that swing back and forth with each step. On his face are expensive-looking glasses. On his wrists, silver cuff links. But on his head, looking completely out of place, as if it has fallen there by accident, the result of a joke played by the wind, sits a Bruins cap. And as he walks quickly down Winter Street, towards the financial district and another spreadsheet afternoon, the man tugs on the brim of his Bruins cap and you can tell his mind is elsewhere. I’ll bet he’s thinking about the game.

There’s a heavy tension in the city today. No one is talking much. There have been Game 7′s in Boston before, plenty of them, but this one feels different. There’s an edge to it, an edge we haven’t felt around here for a few years – since before 2004, really. Back then a Game 7 in Boston was life or death. You remember: a big playoff game meant everything else stopped – classes, dinner plans, conversations. The city coalesced around Game 7′s then. You couldn’t avoid it. Schoolteachers canceled homework. Grooms snuck away at weddings. Greater Boston ground to a halt. College kids in Maine missed final French exams, completely unaware they’d forgotten but not too worried about it, really, because, well, there was a game last night and this is the playoffs and, sorry, Professor, but you’ll just have to wait.

That’s how today feels.

We all know what has happened in this town since 2004. Somewhere along the line, the bad mojo started to seep out of our city and the floodgates of victory poured open. The Patriots won another title, and then won one more. The Sox won again in 2007. The Celtics broke through in ’08. Suddenly we started expecting victory. We felt entitled to it. We got complacent. For the Red Sox and the Patriots and the Celtics, big games weren’t life and death anymore. They were big games, sure, and the city rallied for them, but not like it once had. That gnawing fear of loss was gone. That throat-tightening anticipation was, for the most part, gone.  The curse, bless it’s black heart, was gone. And with it went a bit of our past, a bit of our collective history, a bit of this city’s power.

But not for the Boston Bruins. For the Boston Bruins and their fans, the Fear is alive and well. Tonight at the Garden, the Fear will be tangible and it will be hungry and it will be clear that for these fans it never went away. Last year’s loss to the Flyers, up 3 games to none with a 3-goal lead in Game 7, was as bad as anything the Sox ever suffered through. Sure, Sox fans can point to 1986 and 2003 and Mssrs. Buckner and Boone, but Bruins fans will call that bet and raise you a Scotty Walker and a 2010. Bruins fans will tug on their hats and point to their jerseys that bear names like Neely and Borque and (Joe) Thornton and say, Maybe you’ve forgotten what losing feels like but we sure haven’t, and then they’ll plunk down their beers and grit their teeth and head into the Garden to face that Fear all over again.

Don’t believe me? Go see for yourself. Stroll down by the Garden tonight and take a look around. You’ll see a bunch of rowdy fans, a bunch of ready fans, and they’ll be drinking and whooping and firing fists into the night sky, but somewhere in that Boston air, floating atop the cheers and the jeers and the “Habs suck!” chants, you’ll feel a cold edge. It’ll be subtle, but you’ll feel it. You might even recognize it. Maybe you’ll think back to an October game at Fenway, pre-2004, and you’ll feel that cold breeze in your chest and you’ll remember what it was like to watch a game and be truly afraid. Maybe it’ll be like hearing an old song or smelling an old cologne, and you’ll go back, if only for a second, and you’ll think, Hey, I know that feeling.

That’s what a Game 7 feels like.

Ohhh my poor ravaged heart, what a game.

I should’ve known it was going to be an interesting night when, right before the puck dropped, a quartet of Canadiens fans strode into Section 310 and plopped into the seats directly in front of ours.

These four stood out like a pack of Satanists in the first pew on Easter Sunday. One was strikingly tall and had a habit of never sitting down (a bad idea when in enemy territory). Another had a bowl haircut I haven’t seen since third grade. Can’t remember the third one. The last wore funny glasses. With their blood-red jerseys and frightened eyes, they looked like four ladybugs that had wandered into a beehive. On top of that, they were all speaking French! Needless to say, the loyal denizens of Section 310 were dubious.

“This is going to be the worst night of their lives,” someone in our row said. (It might’ve been me.)

But it’s a funny thing about rival fans: their presence – and the appropriate response to such – is frustratingly complex. When these four sat down, the veterans of Section 310 couldn’t decide whether to be pissed or pleased. On one hand, four Habs fans sitting in front of you at the Garden is highly offensive, on a nearly religious scale. But on the other, there is nothing quite as fun as spending two hours (and in Saturday’s case, four) whispering sweet nothings into pale Canadien ears. Truly, it warms the heart.

Unfortunately, early on in this game there wasn’t much to be said. The game was scoreless until 4:33 into the third, when Brad Marchand (and, according to Max Pacioretty’s Twitter feed, his unusually long nose) gave the Bruins their first lead of the game. It’s safe, I think, to say that the four Habs fans enjoyed his goal the least. The guy next to me – an older fellow who from the looks of things knew his way around a hockey arena – showered the tall one with peanut shells, while to their right a Bruins fan fired up a booming “USA” chant, which he delivered in a foghorn voice at close-range. Finally, from below came creative obscenity rarely heard outside of a whaling vessel.

Nine minutes later, Jeff Halpern pulled the Canadiens even and we quieted down a bit. Just a bit. I’m not sure you can say the Habs fans below us were at this point enjoying themselves, per se, but they’d at least crossed back from the ninth circle of hell and for that were visibly relieved. Their crooked smiles didn’t last long, unfortunately: during a bathroom break near the end of the third, I saw all four getting escorted, rather forcibly, out the arena doors. Must’ve been something they said. It was probably for the best – I’m not sure they would’ve survived one overtime, let alone both.

As the two teams skated deeper and deeper into the extra period, the vibe in Section 310 approached Cardiac Level. Cardiac Level is reserved for those sporting events which are so exciting – and for which the outcome is both catastrophically important and agonizingly unknown – that any shot of the puck, pass of the ball, or swing of the bat could result in a four-alarm heart attack. Watching Cardiac Level games is like scuba diving with a busted oxygen tank or leaving your wife with Tiger Woods. It’s excruciating. Later, if your team wins, it will seem like you had fun. You did not. And on this night, as the second overtime got underway, Section 310 displayed all the common symptoms of a Cardiac Level event: clenched fists; ravaged throats; squawked cheers; the use of irrational superstition; and ear-splitting, English-language-mangling, time-to-gather-up-the-kids-and-leave profanity.

The guy next to me seemed a specialist in all five. As the puck flew up and down the ice, so too did his arms. In one hand he gripped a black Bruins hat, which he employed throughout OT as a sort of wand, a conductor’s baton with which he could seemingly orchestrate the puck’s movement. When the puck skittered down the ice, his hat went up. When the puck traveled back towards Carey Price and Section 310, his hat went down. During stoppages, the hat hung limply in his hand, for the moment its magic gone. But then the puck would drop and back up the hat would fly, flopping all over the place like a hooked bass as the man’s face grew redder and redder. Near the end of the game, when Tim Thomas made his diving, sprawling, mind-bendingly impossible Save Of The Year, I thought this guy was going to throw that hat right onto the ice, if not jump down there himself. It’s a good thing Nathan Horton finally potted the winner, at 9:03 of the second overtime, because if the game had gone any longer I’m not sure this gentleman would’ve lived to see the end.

We didn’t stick around after Horton scored. I heard he gave his stick to a fan, but I can’t be sure. I was elbow-deep in a Coors Light by then. But as we piled out of the Garden, whooping and whipping our yellow Bruins towels, exhausted after a nearly four-hour Cardiac Contest of the highest intestine-twisting, blood-bubbling, knuckle-whitening order, I realized something:

It doesn’t get any better than this.

See you Tuesday.

So it looks like it’s baseball season again. And for the first time in several years, that really  means something to me.

Somewhere along the line I had a falling out with my favorite game. It was the steroids that did it, or at least that’s what I told myself. When I’d stop believing that for a second, I’d say it was the skyrocketing salaries that were souring the game game … but that wasn’t true either. Finally, I blamed it on the sabermetrics movement, those guerilla geeks storming the beaches of my beloved game waving their Bill James Abstracts like AK-47s and mowing down what was left of its magic.

(Actually I still think it’s partly their fault. There’s nothing inherently wrong with super-stats, and by nature baseball lends itself to statistical analysis, but when we’ve reached the point where I can’t have a discussion about the game without feeling like I need a PhD in math, well that’s when we’ve gone too far. And, by the way – we’ve definitely gone too far.)

But in those quiet moments when I’m being truly honest with myself, I know it’s not the steroids or the salaries or even the stat geeks that have driven me slowly and inexorably from the game.

It’s me. It’s my own fault.

Somewhere in the jumble of iPhones and the Internet and DVR, I lost sight of the game I loved. I’d flick on the Sox and not five minutes later I’d be fiddling with my phone or checking my laptop. Who has time for three hour games anymore?, I’d think, and flip to something else. Baseball just seemed so … slow.

And then one cold day this winter, somewhere between the third and 37th snow storm, with sleet whipping my living room window and the heat bill steadily climbing, I started thinking about baseball.

I put down my phone, turned off the TV, and I just sat there. Thinking.

Weird, I thought. I haven’t done this in a while.

That’s when it hit me like an Albert Pujols liner:

Baseball hasn’t changed. I have.

And it’s not just me. You’ve changed, too. We all have. The world has. Think about it: Am I any busier than, say, a steel worker in the 1940s?

Nope.

What about an advertising executive in the 60s?

Definitely not.

And yet they all had time for baseball. But somehow I don’t? Why is that? What am I doing that’s so important that it prevents me from enjoying the slow burn of an afternoon Sox game?

Nothing.

Actually, not nothing. I’m doing lots of stuff, all the time, but that’s just it: it’s stuff. Empty. Hollow. Stuff.

TV. Facebook. Surfing the iPad. YouTube. Twitter.

That stuff doesn’t make me busy, or diligent, it makes me distracted. And I’m not alone. At some point, we all came down with a case of Cultural ADD. We stopped talking to each other. We sunk ourselves into the Web like quicksand. We – young people in America – we all got distracted.

The funny thing is, it makes no sense: Our phones and our computers and our televisions got more efficient and somehow we all got busier. Weird, isn’t it?

Maybe you’re not like me. Not everyone is. Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, What is he talking about? But chances are you’re not.

Chances are you’ve thought, at least once or twice in the last few years, that baseball is slipping. That baseball games simply take too damn long. That perhaps football, with its flash and its violence and its sheer speed, is a little more representative of America in this electric Year of Our Lord, 2011.

And you’d be right. The Now Culture doesn’t leave a lot of time for four hour baseball games. But here, on this first (official) day of the baseball season, I offer up a challenge:

Make time.

Make time for baseball. If you truly love it, make time for Our Game. And it’s still Our Game, mind you, no matter what it says on Twitter – because baseball, bless it’s American heart, never really changes.

Sure, the players get bigger and the stadiums more lavish and everybody makes a helluva lot more money, but the sport stays relatively the same. It’s still nine guys on a green field playing a kid’s game.

And that’s exactly how I’m going to watch baseball this year – as a kid’s game. I’m going to remember the game for what it was when I was ten. We all should, because baseball is not about stats, or money, or high-profile perjury trials. Those things are part of the game, sure, but they aren’t the important part. The important part, the magical part, the Ray Kinsella part, is the feeling baseball gives you, the power it has to transport you to a simpler time.

At it’s core, baseball is a sandlot game. It’s a game of summer and sunburns and cold lemonade. It’s a lazy river. It’s the start of spring. Baseball is about rounding up a couple buddies and playing til it gets dark or mom calls you in for dinner, whichever comes first. It’s a game of sun and sweat and sneaking your first chew. It’s about acting like a big leaguer, and it’s about pretending you’re a kid again. Baseball is a game of heroes and tall tales and memories you thought you’d forgotten. It’s about living and life. It’s about history. It’s about love. That’s baseball.

Or at least that’s what it is for me. I can’t believe I’d forgotten.

Happy opening day.

Blane Youngblood: “You can learn to punch in the barn, but you gotta learn to survive on the ice.”

Youngblood is a classic 80s movie in every sense: It has booming synth music, dimly-lit montages, and Patrick Swayze. It might not be the most popular movie in the hockey catalogue, but I’ll be damned if we at Game 6 are going to sit here and pretend like it’s not wildly entertaining anyway.

The movie tells the story of 17-year-old American hockey prodigy Dean Youngblood, a kid who has mastered every conceivable hockey skill except the killer instinct it takes to actually survive on the ice. When he finds himself in the thuggish world of Canadian junior hockey, Youngblood quickly realizes he has to learn how to fight, and fight hard, or he’s not going to make it.

Complete with a Rocky-esque boxing montage set in a barn and a final fight scene in which hockey sticks are wielded like swords, Youngblood is anything but realistic, but man, is it awesome.

4. Mystery, Alaska (1999; Dir. by Jay Roach and starring Russell Crowe, Burt Reynolds and Hank Azaria)

Donnie Shulzhoffer: “This is hockey, okay? It’s not rocket surgery.”

When it was released in 1999, for whatever reason Mystery, Alaska slipped way under the Hollywood radar. You’d think with Russell Crowe in the lead role, Mystery would have had some power coming out of the gate, but it actually came out a year before Gladiator and two years before A Beautiful Mind and Crowe was far from the household name he would soon become. Perhaps its poor performance is also due to a general American indifference towards hockey, but whatever the reason, Mystery came and went without making much of an impact. Too bad, because it’s a damn good movie.

The basic story concerns a small town in rural Alaska which happens to have a serious hockey addiction. Each weekend, a group of guys – some former low-level pros, a high school phenom or two – gather for the “Saturday Game,” which has become a big time town event and is eventually profiled, along with its participants, in a Sports Illustrated feature. Upon reading about the town and its group of weekend warriors, the NHL brass decides to stage a PR-minded exhibition match in Mystery, pitting the ragtag townies against the New York Rangers. A classic underdog story ensues, and it’s a great one.

3. D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994; Dir. by Sam Weisman and starring Emilio Estevez and Joshua Jackson)

Lester Averman: “Iceland’s bigger! Stronger! Faster! They’ve got more facial hair!”

If you grew up in the 90s and love sports, chances are you’ve seen The Mighty Ducks. Hopefully, you’ve also seen D2 – because it’s better. It’s got the Bash Brothers, Julie “The Cat” Gaffney, knucklepucks, giant Icelandic nutjobs who make the 1980 Russian Olympic team look like a bunch of cupcakes, and, last but not least, Emilio Estevez as legendary coach Gordon Bombay. In 1994 this probably wasn’t that big of a deal, but it’s about 1000 times funnier now when you remember that Estevez is Charlie Sheen’s brother.

2. Miracle (2004; Dir. by Gavin O’Connor and starring Kurt Russell and Patricia Clarkson)

Jack O’Callahan: You know what Coxy, let me ask you a question. Why’d you wanna play college hockey?
Ralph Cox: Isn’t it obvious? For the girls.

A lot of people love Miracle because it’s one of the best hockey movies of all time, maybe even one of the best sports movies of all time. And that’s fine. It certainly is both of those things. But what too often goes unappreciated – and the real reason we here at Game 6 love Miracle so much – is that it is also one of the best Boston movies of all time.

Think about it: when people talk about the greatest Boston movies, they bring up names like Good Will Hunting, The Departed, Blown Away, and now, The Town. And they should – those are all great flicks. But somehow Miracle never gets mentioned, even though it absolutely should. Half of the main characters are Bostonians. You’ve got Mike Eruzione, Jimmy Craig, and Ralph Cox, not to mention Jackie O’Callahan, who has to factor into any discussion of the best Boston movie characters ever.

Best – and hardest – of all, the movie gets the accents right. No one ends up sounding like Kevin Costner in Thirteen Days (“We ah tahking about pahssible nucleah WAH”), because the casting is impeccable. Just look at Mike Mantenuto, who plays O’Callahan so convincingly: this is a kid who grew up in Hopkinton and played hockey for the University of Maine and UMASS-Boston. Doesn’t get any more authentic than that (sorry, Matt Damon). So if you like Boston movies, or hockey movies, or sports movies, or, hell, good movies, check it out. You won’t regret it.

1. Slap Shot (1977; Dir. by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman)

Jim Carr: “Oh this young man has had a very trying rookie season, with the litigation, the notoriety, his subsequent deportation to Canada and that country’s refusal to accept him, well, I guess that’s more than most 21-year-olds can handle… Ogie Ogilthorpe!”

Ah, Slap Shot. Unquestionably the greatest hockey movie ever (and anyone who tells you otherwise is either (a) confused, (b) 9 years old or (c) doesn’t like hockey) and quite possibly the best sports movie of all time.

Yeah, you read that right: Slap Shot is quite possibly the best sports movie of all time. It really is.

For starters, at its center is Reggie Dunlop (Newman), a pantheon sports movie character if there ever was one. I still think this is Newman’s greatest role, and that’s saying something. In any other movie, the presence of Dunlop alone would be enough to elevate it into the top-25, but then you add the Hansons and their toys, the ultimate goon Ogie Ogilthorpe, Dave “Killer” Carlson, probable pervert Morris Wanchuck, Tim “Dr. Hook” McCracken, Denis Lemieux, announcer Jim Carr, and we haven’t even mentioned the classic cameo from Clarence “Screaming Buffalo” Swamptown, who was known to refer to his hockey stick as the “Big Tomahawk,” and opposing players as “the little scalps.”

I could go on forever, but I won’t. There’s no need. Slap Shot is in the hall of fame. Enough said.

Now just go watch the damn thing, will ya? Do yourself some good. I don’t want to have to send the Hansons after you.

Francis Ouimet: “All I want is a chance.”

The golf movie catalogue is admittedly thin. Let’s just say The Greatest Game Ever Played won’t make Friday’s top-25. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable in its own right.

Starring Shia LeBeouf in a tailor-made role, TGGEP tells the story of Boston’s own Francis Ouimet, and his attempt to qualify for and compete in the 1913 U.S. Open held at The Country Club in Brookline, where Ouimet grew up caddying. The old-fashioned inspirational (and true) tale deals with themes of class and struggle and the ways in which golf tried, for years, to keep the lower class out. This is one of those movies where the less you know going in, the better, but I can tell you this: it’s a fun story, the role is right in LeBeouf’s wheelhouse, and it has some great golf scenes. If you haven’t seen it already, check it out.

4. The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000; Dir. by Robert Redford and starring Matt Damon, Will Smith, and Charlize Theron)

Bagger Vance: “I always felt a man’s grip on his club is just like a man’s grip on his world.”

Bagger Vance is a tough one. On paper, it looks like a slam dunk: a golf movie directed by Robert Redford starring Matt Damon, Will Smith, Charlize Theron (come on, people, Charlize Theron!) and Jack Lemmon in the last role before his death at age 76. Can’t-miss, right?

Well, sort of.

In telling the story of a two-day exhibition match between Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, and former-prodigy-but-burgeoning-drunk Rannulph Junuh (Damon), Redford has the framework of an old reliable underdog tale. But things get a little weird when Will Smith shows up as Bagger Vance, a mysterious and possibly mystical caddy who offers to carry Junuh’s bag and maybe, just maybe help him turn his life around. The movie quickly becomes a cheesier mash-up of Field of Dreams and Tin Cup and it emerges, unfortunately, a little worse for wear. But if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief for a couple of hours, it’s an enjoyable ride overall.

3. Happy Gilmore (1996; Dir. by Dennis Dugan and starring Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald, and Carl Weathers)

Happy Gilmore: “During high school, I played junior hockey and still hold two league records: most time spent in the penalty box, and I was the only guy to ever take off his skate and try and stab somebody.“

Happy Gilmore is great – so great, in fact, that really the only negative thing about the movie is its reminder that for some reason Adam Sandler no longer makes movies like it. From Shooter McGavin’s disgusted arrogance to Ben Stiller’s Nazi of a nursing home attendant to Chubbs Peterson and his crazy wooden arm, Happy Gilmore is just one classic scene after another.

I first saw it one summer right around the time I started getting interested in golf, and I swear I spent my next 20 rounds taking Happy Gilmore-style hacks from the tee box. A great majority of those shots ended up either lost in the woods or duck-hooking their way into oncoming traffic, but every last one of them was awesome.

As soon as it gets warm, here’s a recommendation: Pop in Happy Gilmore on a Saturday morning and head out afterwards to your local muni. I guarantee you’ll be at least seriously tempted to grip it and rip it Gilmore style, if only just once when no one’s looking. And if you’re like the 14-year-old version of me, you’ll decide to do it at a prestigious local country club, when everyone is looking. Looking back, that was probably a bad idea.

2. Tin Cup (1996; Dir. by Ron Shelton and starring Kevin Costner, Renee Russo, Don Johnson and Cheech Martin)

Roy McAvoy: “I hit it again because that shot was a defining moment, and when a defining moment comes along, you define the moment … or the moment defines you.“

And we come to our first agonizing decision. Tin Cup is more like a 1A than a #2 on this list. You’ll understand when you get to #1 that it was simply the only reasonable move, but that doesn’t make it any easier putting Tin Cup in the runner-up slot.

Cup has everything: hilarious quotes, great characters, and stellar golf scenes. It also has the greatest gift to sports fans the acting world has ever given: Kevin Costner. Costner is, without question, the most believable actor-athlete of all time. It’s not even close. Look at the guy’s resume: Field of Dreams, For Love of the Game, Tin Cup, Bull Durham … are you kidding me? Four of those five movies will likely land in Friday’s top-25 list. Costner’s just that good, and Cup is one of his best.

1. Caddyshack (1980; Dir. by Harold Ramis and starring Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, and Ted Knight)

Ty Webb: “I’m going to give you a little advice. There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.“

Every once in a while a movie comes along that for whatever reason is damn near perfect. The script is brilliant, the casting impeccable, and every actor is firing on all cylinders. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you know: Animal House, Dumb & Dumber, Jaws, The Godfather: Part II, Saving Private Ryan, Good Will Hunting – these are all examples. Some movies just hit every possible cue, kneed every last pressure point, and master all possible angles. When everything comes together like that, what you have is a flick that you can never watch too often, a movie you can never see too many times. Caddyshack is one of those movies.

Once upon a time, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray were three of the funniest guys on the planet. In the intervening years, each, for a variety of reasons, has fallen from the spotlight. Chase is on a middling sitcom and hasn’t opened a movie in years. Murray’s career is stuck somewhere between weird comedy (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) and odd drama (Lost in Translation). And Dangerfield, god rest his under-appreciated soul, is dead. But in 1980, all three were at the peak of their respective powers and somehow, someway Harold Ramis rounded up all of them in Illinois to make Caddyshack. The result is one of the funniest movies in history, and easily one of the greatest sports movies of all time.

If you haven’t seen it (and I can’t imagine anyone reading this who hasn’t) run – don’t walk – to the nearest Best Buy and get the DVD. It is spectacularly funny, filled with quotes that can be (and have been) usefully repeated in every conceivable social situation. There’s Chase’s absurd improvisations (Remember Danny – two wrongs don’t make a right, but three rights make a left) and Dangerfield’s brilliant one-liners (Oh this is your wife, huh? Lovely lady. Hey baby, you must’ve been something before electricity). There’s Ted Knight’s underrated performance as super-WASP Judge Smails (I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it. I felt I owed it to them). And last but certainly not least, there’s Bill Murray as assistant greenskeeper Carl Spackler.

Murray’s flower-busting play-by-play (This crowd has gone deadly silent, a Cinderella story outta’ nowhere. Former greenskeeper now about to become the masters champion) has been canonized in Hollywood history, and his Dalai Lama riff (So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice) is comedy legend. But it’s the lesser-discussed Spackler scenes, like the one where Murray and Chase share a cannonball and a “Bob Marley joint” in Spackler’s garage/home (Pool and a pond. Pond would be good for you though) that make Caddyshack what it is.

And what Caddyshack is … is immortal. And enlivened. And laugh-your-ass-off hilarious. So watch it, please, if you haven’t. And if you have, watch it again. And again and again, like I have.

It is, after all, the greatest golf movie ever made.

We here at Game 6 love to start arguments. There’s nothing like a good row to get the comments flowing. But as much as we enjoy starting arguments, we really love to settle ‘em – and I like to think we’ve done a pretty good job over the years. We’ve hit the hardwood – Jordan vs. LeBron (Jordan) – tackled tennis (cool) – and ranked the greatest sports video games of all time (NHL ’94 #1). This week, we take you to the movies, one sport at a time, in the Game 6 Guide to the Greatest Sports Movies, Ever.

But first, a quick primer: this isn’t some lame, pseudo-intellectual, let’s-see-how-much-obscure-movie-jargon-I-can-pack-into-each-sentence type of list. We here at Game 6 are not going to be Roger Ebert-ing around, talking about “art direction” and “mise-en-scene” and whether the actors “go for broke” or “chew the scenery” or “truly embody their characters.” No. There’s far, far too much of that out there already.

People who read these types of lists want to know three things:

They want to know whether the movies in question are a) enjoyable, b) entertaining, and c) re-watchable. That’s it.

They don’t care about boom mikes and key grips and bleepin’ method acting. Fans of sports movies are, first and foremost, sports fans. And what that really means, of course, is that they are fans of dramatic competition, public spectacle, and unrehearsed human emotion … because, after all, what are sports if not public, competitive spectacles which feature (and, in spectators, elicit) raw and spontaneous displays of human emotion?

Sports illustrate a desire in us for purity, for the ideal of the even playing field. That’s why steroids are such a big deal – they muddy the holy water of the game. And that’s why so many fans can love the rawness of sporting events while at the same time detesting the canned, ultra-processed press conferences held afterwards.

Knowing this, it logically follows that the films sports fans will most enjoy (and inevitably re-watch) are those that have a dash of three things: 1) drama or excitement; 2) a prominent display of skill or lack-there-of; and 3) some form of affect, whether it be glee, sympathy, empathy, hatred and rage, disgust or hilarity, joy or pain. The true sports fan wants always to feel, no matter the context. If a director’s brilliance or the virtuoso performance of an actor helps them do that, fine. If not, that’s fine, too. No one ever accused Adam Sandler of being a great actor, but that doesn’t mean Happy Gilmore isn’t funny as hell.

Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against sports movies, and for every Happy Gilmore there are seven Caddyshack II‘s. Here’s why: Sports movies are born out of an essential paradox – they are rehearsed vehicles which have the unfortunate task of re-creating the ultimate in spontaneity. It’s really, really difficult to do. Purity must be preserved.

This means, first of all, that any competition scenes must be realistic. For this, you need athletic actors (there aren’t many) and sports-knowledgeable directors (ditto). Then, you need meticulously-recreated environments on which to shoot: pristine, convincing stadiums, arenas, or tracks. Finally – and hardest of all to achieve – you need an authentic atmosphere. You need to create a baseball clubhouse that sounds, smells and feels like a baseball clubhouse. Your hockey players need to act like hockey players, your football coaches like football coaches, your golfers like golfers. This can present serious problems, especially for the Disneys of the world, because sports are, by and large, an R-rated medium. That’s just the way it is. So a high school football movie that doesn’t have a swaggering, swearing coach already has one strike against it. Any more than one strike can torpedo a film.

So, in short, when creating this list we here at Game 6 worked hard to keep the strikes to a minimum. We strove for the spontaneous. We tried to preserve the purity. Ultimately, we did the best that we could.

Okay, you get the idea. Here’s how it’s going to work:

Each day this week we will feature a top-5 or top-10 list of films (depending on the number of installments to choose from) from each of 6 major sports: golf, hockey, basketball, football, boxing, and baseball. Each list will be ranked in descending order, from least enjoyable to most, but know this: all of these movies are good, many of them great. Pop in any flick from these lists and it’ll leave you entertained. That’s a Game 6 guarantee.

We’re going to start today with golf and hockey, move tomorrow to basketball, hit football on Wednesday, boxing and baseball on Thursday, and wrap it all up on Friday with a very special – and no doubt painfully-executed – Game 6 Guide to the 25 Greatest Sports Movies, Ever. You have no idea how terrified I am to whittle down these lists. I mean, I am dreading it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the final list was more like 30 or 40 movies long. I just don’t see how I can possibly narrow it down to 25. You might have to pry the list from my mangled fingers over the weekend. Anyway, here it goes:

Without Freddy Adu, I present to you the first installment of Game 6′s Guide to the Greatest Sports Movies, Ever.

That’s right, baby. We’re back. In a big way. A sincere apology for being offline for so long – way too long, really – and many thanks to everybody who continued checking the site in the meantime. Your loyalty is much appreciated. And now we’re back, and we’re dancin’. Live. Let’s go!

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Strange, isn’t it – the level to which this once-glorified icon has sunk in a matter of weeks? From Thanksgiving through today, the life of Tiger Woods has taken more turns than an Augusta National green.

As the 6th and 7th – and now 11th and 12th – mistress popped out of Pandora’s Box, Woods morphed from the ultra-real, identifiable figure of the fallen husband into a complete and utter cartoon. It’s staggering just how far and how quickly he fell. Woods’ pristine image was in shambles a week ago. Today, it’s in danger of being forgotten forever.

Isn’t it?

Who in five or 10 years is going to look at Tiger Woods and remember the dorky, boy-next-door prodigy we all grew to love? Too much has come to pass, between the text message transcripts and the porn stars and the awkward, panicked voicemail. The life Eldrick has lived thus far is over. That much is clear.

But this, of course, begs the question — What happens next? Where does he go from here? Hell, where do we go from here?

A sit-down with Oprah, as Rick Reilly suggested? Nah, that’s no good. Who can take anything the guy says seriously now? And that’s not a shot at his infidelity, but simply a reference to the incomprehensible divide between his public and private realities.

How about a few more finely-worded statements, then?

Nope. No good. Presents the same problem as the Oprah interview. No scripted, PR wizardry is going to help him now.

So, what then? What should this guy do to recoup even a smidgen of his crumbling empire?

The answer is simple.

He should do exactly what he is doing: Nothing.

At this point, the 9-iron is so far out of the bag that Tiger’s best course of action is, frankly, to shut up and stay away. Sometimes the best PR is the also the easiest – ignore everything. That way, maybe soon – maybe much longer – we’ll all start feeling, well, a little bad about the whole situation.

Sure, right now you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who feels sorry for Tiger Woods. Clearly, the billionaire made his bed (or….something like that) and now he must lie in it. But – and this might be a leap – most of us are essentially reasonable people.

And isn’t it getting at least a little bit excruciating having a greenside seat to the continued airing of one man’s dirty laundry? Isn’t there some line here that we really don’t want to cross? The guy is an idiot – of course, that much is clear – but do we really want to dig his grave? Right here? Right now?

Maybe we should all stop for a second and think – as Tiger should have done – about his family. All this nonsense – every new picture, every new transcript, every new revelation – has to be just as embarrassing for his wife, Elin, as it is for him. Hasn’t she suffered enough? And anything he could say in the media would only add to the public flogging she’s taken already.

So that’s why Tiger should stay silent, and stay out of the public eye. Take care of things at home, and show up in the spring ready to go. Nothing he can say at this point will make this any better. But, if he just goes about his business – which is, lest we forget, being the greatest golfer in the world – then perhaps one day everyone might start to remember why we loved him in the first place.

Remember – Tiger Woods didn’t become Tiger Woods, global icon, by being some kind of Ward Cleaver, family-man superhero. He made a fortune – even from sponsors – because he was the greatest golfer any of us have ever seen. Don’t believe me? Think it had a little something to do with his airbrushed image? Wrong. Look at Ray Allen – by all accounts a devoted husband and loving father. He’s done very well for himself, but he’s no Tiger Woods. He doesn’t have a billion dollars in the bank. This is because, while he’s very, very good at what he does, he’s not the best.

Tiger Woods is the best.

And people would have purchased his razors regardless of his image. This is what all the media types, shouting from their soapbox about sponsors and ad revenue and all the youngsters whose hero is now a punchline …. this is what they’ve forgotten: Tiger Woods is a golfer. He’s not a sports messiah. He’s not Barack Obama. He’s not some kind of spiritual figurehead. He’s a guy who hits a little white ball a very long way and wins championships at a rate we’ve seldom seen before. Why he ever turned into this White Knight in the first place, I’ll never quite understand.

Many athletes are philanderers. In fact, many fantastically wealthy people, famous or otherwise, are too. It’s the nature of Having. When you Have as much as Tiger did, you can generally Have Whatever You Want. And, for many people, the temptation is impossible to resist. So, excuse me if I can’t understand why the Tiger story came as such a shock. All we ever knew about Tiger Woods was that he was really good at golf, exhibited an intense ultra-competitiveness on the course, hung out with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley off it, and was terrifically boring in the media. That’s it. He didn’t tell us anything else. So why the surprise that another manically-driven, mega-rich athlete had trouble navigating reality outside the tournament ropes?

Michael Jordan drew the blueprint for this type of behavior years ago, and Tiger simply followed suit. He brought things to another level, for sure, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. But, fortunately for Tiger Woods, Jordan also provided the blueprint for how to get out of such a bind when the curtain finally falls:

Keep winning.

Look at Kobe Bryant. He had it just as bad as Tiger in the summer of 2003. When he was accused of sexual assault, his sponsors trampled each other fleeing for the door. And that includes Nike. But here we are, just six years later, and Mr. Bryant is back on top, smiling with his family and peddling sneakers once again. Why? Because he kept winning and kept amazing us and kept giving us sports fans what we all really want in the end – an escape.

So yes – life, for Kobe Bryant, is once again very good. Hell, these days you can even catch him on TV, as a puppet, jabbering away for Nike in goofy commercials with Puppet Lebron. If Tiger is smart, he’ll take note:

That’s the kind of cartoon you want to be.

Pedro Martinez will be back where he belongs tonight:

On the mound, with the ball in his hand, in Yankee Stadium.

Sure, a few things have changed since the last time our Old Friend was in this position. He’s a lot older now, for one. He relies more on guile and precision these days, topping out at 91-92 mph on a good night. And Yankee Stadium looks a little different than it used to. It’s a little flashier, a lot newer, and there are empty seats everywhere.

But the general idea is still the same:

Pedro wants to win. Yankees fans desperately want him to lose.

Whether Martinez wants to win because he loves the Phillies or because he hates New York, however, isn’t totally clear. I tend to think he still has the best interests of Red Sox fans in mind:

““It wouldn’t surprise me at all,’’ Martinez said yesterday, when he was reminded that Sox fans are rooting for him. “I know they don’t like the Yankees to win, not even in Nintendo games. And knowing that I am part of Boston, I consider myself a Bostonian . . . I’m pretty sure that every Boston fan out there can feel proud that I’m going to try to beat the Yankees, and I’m going to give just the same effort I always did for them. They’re special fans, and they will always have my respect.’’

Doesn’t that sound like a guy who might be wearing the old gray No. 45 under his Phillies jersey?

It begs the question – why exactly wasn’t Pedro pitching for the Red Sox this season?

Theo Epstein rolled the dice with plenty of aging reclamation projects last winter. First there was Brad Penny – that didn’t work out. Then there was John Smoltz – hell, he’s 42! Would it have killed Theo to give 38-year-old Pedro a second shot at Boston glory?

I understand baseball is a ruthless business, but is there really zero room for good memories? Not even for karma’s sake?

But bringing back Pedro wouldn’t have been merely a nostalgia move. As we’ve seen this postseason, the guy can still pitch. He’s just more crafty today, unable to rely on upper-90′s heat. But the talent, the swagger, the unavoidable gift is still there. Sure, he’s been injured a lot, but that never stopped him before. Remember the ’99 ALDS against the Indians when an ailing Pedro shook off a back injury and threw six hitless relief innings, striking out 8 and walking 3? That game told us all we needed to know about whether an aging Martinez could still be effective. He was hard-pressed to hit 90 mph that night. But his brilliant performance served as the perfect blueprint for the pitching style he would have to adopt later in his career – a clever, artful technique based largely off his extensive knowledge of the game.

And he’s done it. He’ll do it again tonight.

But that’s neither here nor there now.

Pedro Martinez belongs to Philadelphia now, and tonight he’s hoping to help them towards their second World Series title in two years.

But, by acknowledging us, his old loyal fans, he’s also given Red Sox Nation a little more of a stake in tonight’s Game 6 in the Bronx.