Is The Dog Pile The Greatest Tradition In Sports?

After watching the Sacred Heart University baseball team capture their second straight conference championship this weekend, it brought me back to last year's game at the start of the bottom of the ninth inning. You have the lead and you're three outs away and you're getting that feeling in your chest of that dog pile coming on. You think you know what it's gonna feel like, but what you think and what you actually feel don't even compare. 

You put in all those hours in the weight room, on the field, in the cages doing shit that you hate doing but you know it's necessary all for that one moment when the last out is made, and when it finally comes all your emotion just jumps right out because you know that this is what you played your whole life for. For a chance to win a championship and sprint onto that field with your teammates in celebration. 

So is the dog pile the greatest tradition in sports? After the final out is made, or after the clock hits zero and you know you're a champion is that the greatest feeling in the world? When the dog pile is done right, I happen to believe that it's the greatest tradition in all of sports. It's a bond that you finally accomplished your ultimate goal. Maybe you were the favorite, maybe you were the underdog or maybe you were even the cinderella story. But no matter what you were, you beat the odds and accomplished that goal you all worked so hard for. And it's not just the starters who are in the dog pile, it's every player on the team, because without all those guys it couldn't have been done. And that is why it's the greatest tradition in sports. 

Sidenote: Enough of the sentimental bullshit check out the picture up top all the way to the right. Number 43 has a sweet hair do up there. The shaved mullet is just a lost art. He probably gets so much tang strictly based on the fact that he has enough balls to wear the shaved mullet.