Most young boys grow up idolizing their favorite baseball or football star...not me. Most young boys idolize a player from their home town team...but not me. My childhood hero, sports idol, or whatever you may call it is someone special, someone different.
In an era where sports icons are nothing but rich and often greedy individuals looking to make their money and are most times in trouble with the law, my sport hero is someone I can truly be proud of.
I don't quite know how it started but at some point between the ages of 8 and 9 I became a fan of the Colorado Avalanche hockey franchise. Growing up in a state with a dominate and historic hockey franchise would lead most to become a fan of that team but I guess I have never really been someone to go along with the crowd.
Joe Sakic is an individual that any parent would be proud to have their son or daughter emulate, not only for his abilities and hard work ethic but also for the kind of human being he is. Now the real story of how I became not only an Avs fan but a fan of Joe Sakic is still a mystery to me to this day but I can't imagine changing a thing. The poetic explanation that my dad likes to give at family get togethers in the Detroit area to expalin 'what went wrong with me' is that the 1995-96 season was the first season I payed a great deal of attention to the NHL and my first Stanley Cup experience was seeing Joe Sakic lift the Cup over his head on a June night in Miami. That sounds like a storybook way of becoming a fan of anybody and may even have some truth to it but to be honest I think I needed to pick a favorite team and the Avs happened to win the Stanley Cup that year :-)
From that point until now I have rode the rollercoaster of emotion that comes with being a fan of the Avs through good times and bad but the one constant throughout that time has been Joe Sakic. And now on the night when his number 19 has been raised to the rafters of the Pepsi Center to hang there forever, I can honestly say for the first time in a very long time I don't quite know how to feel anymore about hockey. I would like to be more specific than that but the feeling I feel right now is a sense of numbness. I am not dissappointed or anything like that, if anything I feel appreciative and thankful for having the opportunity to see Joe Sakic play for so many years now. He has really been everything a young boy looks for in an idol. Growing up, all I wanted to do was be like Joe Sakic. Whether that meant pretending to be him while playing street hockey with my brother or signing my elementray school assignments with the name 'Joe Sakic' where my name should have gone.
Sakic is the definition of class, consistency, and professionalism. You would be hard pressed to find someone that would have a bad thing to say about Joe which is just another reason why I am so happy to have him as an idol.
To finish up here because I could honestly write about Joe for hours and the fact that the Avs game is on right now, I guess the one thing on my mind right now is how interesting it is to see Sakic have his number retired tonight. For me, this night is the end of a journey that started just over fourteen years ago. I really feel blessed to have started this journey as an eight year old kid looking up to his favorite sports star and now at age twenty-two I can honestly say that I could not be happier with the journey and more proud of my idol, Joe Sakic.
Joe Sakic, for me, goes beyond the title of sports hero or idol but to simply the title of hero or idol. He has given me an example of how to be a good person in this life and along with my parents has probably done the most to shape the kind of person I have become to this point and the person I will continue to be moving forward.
If I could say just one thing to my hero, and believe me it would be tough to limit it to one thing, would a simple thank you...thank you, thank you, thank you to the one and only 19 in my book, 'Super' Joe Sakic.
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