The Ultimate Sports Endurance Challenge.

It was a day most sports fans dream of. It’s a day that’s a test of endurance, requiring the stamina of a really long run, or a hard three hours of basketball. I always use exercise to convince myself I’m not sick, dead, or dying. If I can run 14 miles, I probably don’t have lung cancer. That sort of logic.

Well, Sunday was 12 hours, four pulled pork sandwiches, two hot dogs, a few beers, a few sodas, two free tickets, and about 10 miles of walking. If I could live through this, I definitely didn’t have Encephalitis. By the end of the day, some may have wondered if I had Tourette’s.

The day began at 10:00 am, with a drive in my neighbor’s company car. My neighbor is an insurance adjuster, so his company car resembles a NASCAR, loaded with advertisements. We loaded the cooler, the tray of pulled pork, and strategically placed 17 magnets on the Impala before leaving for the game.

I was ready. I had on my Rams shirt, and had packed my Cards gear so I could make the change. I had jackets for rain, for wind, for snow and for my wife.

There is nothing like tailgating before a football game. There is no other activity that features middle-aged men learning to use a crockpot. The pulled pork was fantastic. We spent an hour or so eating, drinking, and listening to Creed on the stereo of the truck parked 12 spaces away. Apparently, by the grace of God, they had the loudest sound system.

As game time approached, you could see the crowd suddenly start to buzz. I don’t mean energy, I mean alcohol. The line by the port-o-johnny’s got long, the average age of the people throwing the football around increased by 22 years, and the truck that had been playing Christian Rock switched to Eminem.

It was a stunning change in atmosphere, really. You felt like you were in a Hitchcock film, and completely at the mercy of a higher power. In this case, the power was Gus Busch, but no one was complaining.

I don’t go to many Pro-Football games. Neither, apparently, do many people from St. Louis. Rams fans need to take some lessons from Cleveland or Buffalo. Heck, we could even learn from Seattle.

In the first quarter, it was clear the crowd wanted to try to disrupt the game. In Seattle, the fans are famous for causing false start penalties. They have an open air stadium, and it’s always raining. We have a dome, and we could only cause one penalty. We barely tried after a quarter.

It was disappointing.

By the five minute mark, the majority of fans had left. I wondered if they were ever there. Fortunately, my neighbor doesn’t leave early. Watching Holt catch that amazing TD pass was incredible. The dome hadn’t been louder all day, and there were only 35,000 left. Of course, a minute and 35 seconds later, we were as deflated as you can be at a sporting event.

Football is an emotional sport. You work 349 days a year for 16 days of playing. Those 16 days are decided by a handful of plays. Bulger was sacked twice to be pushed out of field goal range. Seattle converted three 3rd downs with more than ten yards to go in their TD drives. Make a play. Just make a play. That keeps you in it.

Seattle made the plays when they needed to. The Rams didn't. Simple as that.

I told myself that the Rams game was less important than the Cards game, and started to buck up for the evening.

I had about 3 hours to kill before my wife, Jason and his wife showed for the baseball game. I killed time by wondering through Kiener Plaza picking up freebies. They were handing out red beads. Wow. Red beads. I think St. Louis is starting to get bored with the playoffs. I did manage to find something that lit up for my son. It’s a walking, glowing advertisement for Fox 2 News, but at least it looks like it cost a quarter to make.

I recapped the game below. The crowd at Busch tried to rise for every 2-strike pitch, but Reyes rarely threw a strike with two strikes, so we all sat, and tried the quieter approach. It didn't help. By inning four, my wife was resting her head on my shoulder, and we felt like we were waiting for something bad to happen.

Suffice to say by inning 6 I was out of gas. The first two innings took an hour and a half. Things didn’t bode well for my energy level. I thought about buying a Monster Energy Drink. It has a lot of stimulants I can’t spell. But I thought better of it. If I was going to survive, it would be all natural. No juice for me.

Delgado did in the fourth and fifth what Delgado does, and we decided to leave. Tired as I was, I wasn’t the reason. When two of the four in your party are expecting children, you make them as comfortable as possible. I didn't fight them. After my day, I knew I needed to sleep indoors. I wasn’t going to cross the wife.

Two games, two free tickets to the biggest football game of the season and a playoff game. My teams lost them both. Grrrrrrr. They say that would beat the best day working. I’m working today, and am tired. Very, very tired. But, I’m reasonably sure I’m going to live at least another week.