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<\/a> never felt that to be an apt description.\u00c2\u00a0 While a marathoner has to have extreme endurance and courage to run a distance that most of us wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hesitate to drive, marathons are much more of an individual internal struggle.\u00c2\u00a0 I always saw the grueling 162-game season as an old school heavyweight fight.<\/p>\nTight pennant races always remind me more of two fighters rising from their stools in the fifteenth round, fueled only by adrenaline and will, than of some lanky Kenyan crossing a finish line in Central Park.\u00c2\u00a0 In boxing, like in baseball, the fight always goes to whoever wants it more.\u00c2\u00a0 Muhammad Ali said that champions \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have to have the skill and the will.\u00c2\u00a0 But the will must be stronger than the skill.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Nobody had more will than Ali.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what allowed him to lay up against the ropes and endure a brutal beating at the hands of George Foreman for almost 7 rounds in Zaire, only to drop Foreman in the eighth.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what pushed him to stand right back up after taking a Joe Frazier left hook to the jaw in their first meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody did that.<\/p>\n
In baseball, there are some games over the course of the season that just seem resonate more than others.\u00c2\u00a0 Bill Simmons believes very strongly that when the Red Sox lost a 15-inning affair to the Yankees in early August of 2009, it was akin to taking a devastating right to the solar plexus that sucked the will right out of them.<\/p>\n
In Monday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game, the Tampa Bay Rays smacked the Yankees in the mouth, staggering and bloodying the champs.\u00c2\u00a0 The Rays threw down the gauntlet and officially challenged the Yankees\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 status as the alpha dog of the American League.<\/p>\n Late in the lifespan of The Sopranos<\/em>, Tony worried that he was losing control of his guys.\u00c2\u00a0 While recovering from being shot by his dementia-stricken Uncle Junior, Tony had casually mentioned that he was not quite physically ready to lie with a woman in the Biblical sense, and could no longer bench as much as he once had.\u00c2\u00a0 He felt that his entourage no longer laughed as heartily at his jokes, and could see his position in the pack slipping away.\u00c2\u00a0 In response, The Sopranos<\/em> provided us with a great scene where Tony sizes up each of his lieutenants and hangers-on, and ultimately decides to pick a fight with the youngest one who also happens to be built like a professional wrestler.<\/p>\n In front of everyone, Tony brutally beats the kid down, rises up off of his victim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s limp body, says something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s equal parts vicious, tough, and witty, stumbles to the bathroom, and vomits blood.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, behind closed doors, Tony stares at himself in the mirror, maniacally self-satisfied. The message had been sent: Nobody challenges Tony Soprano.<\/p>\n Conversely, during the Christmas day fight held in the Soviet Union at the end of Rocky IV<\/em>, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a moment where Rocky breaks through the guard and cuts the bigger, stronger, and supposedly unbeatable Ivan Drago.\u00c2\u00a0 The announcers go crazy, Rocky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s corner eats it up, and the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153invincible\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Drago acts like he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just been I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t shake the feeling that, on Monday night, I saw more Ivan Drago in the 2010 Yankees than Tony Soprano.<\/p>\n The supposedly experienced veterans and hardened champions were faced with the challenge of the upstart Rays.\u00c2\u00a0 And the champions blinked.<\/p>\n With two outs in the tenth, Brett Gardner stood on second, representing the go-ahead run.\u00c2\u00a0 He ended the inning trying to steal third, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty sure is a crime punishable by death in Cooperstown.<\/p>\n Similarly, with Phil Hughes, Mariano Rivera, David Robertson, and Joba Chamberlain sitting in the bullpen and the game on the line, manager Joe Girardi opted to pitch Boone Logan, Chad Gaudin, and Sergio Mitre in the 10th<\/sup> and 11th<\/sup> innings.<\/p>\n When asked after the game why he would choose Gaudin and Mitre, whose stuff is far from electric, to pitch such critical innings, Girardi replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got an early tee time at the Tampa Palms tomorrow, and really wanted one of them to give up a walk-off homer and end the game.\u00c2\u00a0 A man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotta sleep.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n OK, he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really say that, but I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been surprised if he had.<\/p>\n<\/a>On May 19, 1998, when the Yankees rallied to defeat the Baltimore Orioles and rose from the dugout to defend first baseman, Tino Martinez, who had been beaned by reliever Armando Benitez, it was the equivalent of hitting their opponent with a staggering uppercut early in the fight.\u00c2\u00a0 At that moment, they knew that they couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fail.<\/p>\n<\/a> shot.\u00c2\u00a0 In that moment, his vulnerability and the chink in his armor are revealed.\u00c2\u00a0 Drago never sufficiently responds, and instead utters admiring facts about his opponent, describing Rocky as not human and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like iron.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately, Drago gets knocked out in the final round, Rocky gives his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if I can change and you can change speech,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the USSR falls a few short years later.\u00c2\u00a0 The message: Your alpha\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now an omega.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, and Communism doesn’t work.<\/p>\n