I’m not sure about the science, but it seems that after a build-up of pressure there will always be a letdown or an eruption. It was fitting that the one time the pressure on the Tigers in the last 37 years resulted in the latter and not the former it was built on a platform of pressure. And what an eruption.
As the siren sounded young Richo tackled me around the waist with the ferocity of Jacob Townsend. “We did it, Daddy! We did it.” I felt guilty for agreeing, but did nonetheless. It was us, and all the other usses around the city, and the various cities, that had made Richmond something else altogether.
Ramshackle amateurs, the scorn of sneering foes countrywide for decades, the next glorious minute the most potent and overbearing power in the land. It was the reckoning that our side had so long fought to witness, and the other had happily thought could never scourge the competition again. We had been too hopeless to turn it around. Even when we’d gotten better we’d found a way to stuff it up, to increase the pressure with yet more comical exits.