Anticipation just as sweet as title game

Let’s just freeze it right here, say, until the snow is gone.

Let’s savor this NCAA championship game from this side of it at least until it’s fit to play a baseball game in Presque Isle.

Timeout. Stop the clock. Hit the pause button. What was the line from the movie “Wall Street,” when the two yuppies gaze at their bountiful table and finally realize they have it all? It’s too perfect to eat. Let’s just look at it for awhile.

The University of Maine hockey team will play for the NCAA Championship Saturday night.

Maine will play in a National Championship contest.

It’s too perfect to play. Let’s just look at it for awhile.

There’s something indescribably sweet about moments like these, moments before the outcome is known. It is a time that fires the imagination. It is a time of possibility.

For the Maine players, it is a chance to play the game in the mind. Any one of them could still be the hero who scores the game-winning goal against Lake Superior State. Will their dreams ever be any sweeter than they were Friday night?

For Maine fans, it is a time to try on the mantle of a national champion state. This is part of the reason the state university plays intercollegiate sports. Morale. Hey, we might be poor. We might be overtaxed and undereducated. But at least there’s something we can do better than any other state in the union. How good would that feel?

We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Sports fans even in this cold and craggy corner of the country have on occasion invested emotionally in the all-or-nothing contest. It’s a scary thing to do.

Blame the Red Sox. Those guys have been the recipients of Maine’s reluctant sporting hearts the most. And, true to their nature, the Sox have invariably fumbled them into the dirt, then stepped on them.

Game seven, 1946…. Game seven, 1967…. Game seven, 1975…. Games six and seven, 1986. Painful experiences, all. But not painful enough to prevent us from picking our hearts up, dusting them off, and giving them again.

The Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots have all thrilled Maine or tortured it as adopted sons at one time or another.

We had Joan Benoit Samuelson to root for in the ’84 Olympics and she came through with the gold.

Merely winning championships hasn’t always been enough to grab Maine’s collective imagination, however.

The University of Southern Maine baseball team won the Division III national title in 1991. Joey Gamache in the ring…. Ricky Craven on the race track…. Michael Poulin on horseback…. Kevin Mahaney in a yacht. All made their mark on the national and international sporting scenes. But none really impacted outside their region of the state.

Contrary to popular belief, there have even been national champions from the University of Maine before.

Charles Akers won the NCAA cross country ski title in 1961.

Before Akers, there was the 1915 Black Bear men’s cross country team which won the IC4A, at that time the national championship event in that sport.

When you count it all up, Maine sports fans have had it pretty good down through the years.

Pretty good. But has it ever been this good?

None of those teams or individuals ever made the state’s pulse race like this hockey team.

In one jam-packed Bangor pub Thursday, grown professional men, men wearing jackets and ties, hugged and high-fived after Maine’s Lee Saunders slapped the puck behind Michigan goalie Steve Shields 1:36 into overtime in the NCAA semifinals. It was a scene repeated countless times in establishments and homes A call came into the NEWS Thursday night from the Bahamas, where a vacationing Mainer had to know the outcome. Calls continued into Friday from around the state and the nation. How did Maine make out? Who will they play?

A few hours from now, it will all be decided. One way or the other. One team will be National Champion. One team will be disappointed. Either way, the sweet anticipation will be over. Too soon.