Easter weekend aside, resurrections plentiful this past year

Last weekend’s Easter holiday provided lots of excitement and happiness for Christians… Last weekend’s Easter holiday provided lots of excitement and happiness for Christians celebrating Jesus’ rising from the dead. But, the world’s population is somewhere around six billion at the moment, and I know all of them aren’t Christians. As a result, I’m sure there are a lot of people out there wishing they had a resurrection of their own to meditate on.

Fortunately, the ever-watching gods of sports know what the people need, and, as a result, have given us a veritable plethora of resurrections to choose from, ones that everybody can relate to. From those, here’s a select handful.

United States soccer: They’ve been dead as long as Caesar, but here they are ranked 10th in the world just seven years removed from an abysmal 32nd place at World Cup ’98. Yesterday’s loss to Mexico in Mexico City stinks, but don’t worry — the tricolores won’t forget that 2-0 thriller in South Korea any time soon.

The Cleveland Cavaliers: Two years ago, they won 17 games. Recent years saw them relying on a washed-up Shawn Kemp to bring fans to their games, and Ricky “I’ll Make My Own Rebound” Davis was killing team morale. Now they’re in playoff contention, LeBron James is living up to his hype, and Drew Gooden and Zydrunas Ilgauskas are solidifying a lineup that was very recently riddled with problems. The current skid wasn’t Paul Silas’s fault, but we’ll allow you this one mistake.

The Boston Red Sox: Down 3-0 to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, they end up winning the World Series. ‘Nuff said.

The outside jump shot: Let’s face it — today’s game is above the rim. Flashy dunks, blocks that end up a quarter of a mile away, and “alleys” with wicked “-oops” on the end get the flashbulbs popping. But displays like West Virginia’s sharp shooting last weekend are enough to make a guy forgive Pittsnogle’s tattoos. It’s good to see kids starting to remember that there’s more to the game than what you see in the NBA.

University of Maryland Basketball: Who didn’t see that special before the regional finals on Sunday? Nobody was fearing this turtle after Len Bias died and Lefty Drissell was all but forced to step down in Maryland’s desperate search for a person to blame. But Gary Williams turned everything around, slowly but surely, and before you knew it, Juan Dixon and the boys were cutting down nets in April. It’s easy to love these guys in a conference that has teams to hate like UNC and Duke — this story makes it even easier.

Baseball in Washington, D.C.: OK, so they’re still the Expos, but it’s nice to have a team back in the nation’s capital. After losing the Senators not once, but twice, the city deserves a team. And the Expos must be turning cartwheels to not be playing in Olympic Stadium, a primitive retractable-roof facility which former manager Whitey Herzog once described as a toilet bowl with a lid on it. Now, if we could just get them to play their games in Griffith Stadium, it’d be just like old times.

Tiger Woods: Don’t know why you changed that gorgeous swing, but apparently you’re finally getting back into the habit of things. People jumped off of the “Next Jack Nicklaus” bandwagon awfully quick, but you’ve won a couple of times already this year, and look like you’re back in solid form.

Jose Canseco: Not exactly pleasant, but the man is back from the dead. (Which reminds me, can somebody let the Hall of Fame voters know? I’m sure they haven’t been thinking of him.) Apparently that fly ball to the head that ended up over the fence wasn’t enough to finish him off, because here he is talking about juiced players. The man was having bankruptcy problems, and now he’s got a book that’s selling like Gutenburg’s Bible. That’s a resurrection, folks.

Last but not least, the NHL: They had a long lockout, but they realized that the game was more important than their own egos. So, both sides, players and owners, stepped up to the bargaining table, started hashing out details, and before we knew it there was a deal, and we had a season, and-

Oh, right…

Brian Weaver is a staff writer for The Pitt News. Resurrect your thoughts and e-mail them to him at bsw5@pitt.edu.