Arroyo quarterback Steven Rivera
“Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.”
~Henry Austin Dobson
How do you like your movie to end?
Do you like happy endings with the bad guy dying, true love winning, and appropriate soliloquy?
Personally I like a harsher, truer ending. I like it when the romantic couple ends in heartache, when you read about John Milner being killed by drunk driver on New Year’s Eve in 1964, or the good guy getting whacked just after saving the day.
You ever see how Jim Brown gets it at the end of “The Dirty Dozen”? You see it and speak of it a thousand times hoping somehow the outcome will be different…but knowing deep down it is, what it is…No hope or magic can change it.
What should I say? I saw the end of an era last night.
I can’t say I was completely unhappy, because I was glad for the San Gabriel football family…but Arroyo quarterback Steven Rivera has been the hero of the local football story for the last four years.
Maybe he’ll still ride off into the sunset next June with his girl, maybe a great soliloquy will attach itself to him five, ten, 25 years down the road, but one truth is plain, clear, and can never be changed: The good guy, the hero of the story, didn’t walk away a champion in the way we measure champions.
(Spare the comment about him being a champion in life; of course he is, that is not what I am saying)
There will be no ceremony and no ring.
I’m not a sensitive guy…Like Crash Davis I am capable of howling at the moon, I can be silly, and am definitely guilty of having way too much fun in this job. I’ve written a thousand stories from soccer, to Little League, to Dodger baseball…I’ve covered everyone from the original Desmond Reed, to the Sumler brothers, to M-Town getting a crown…But what happened to me when I sat down to write my San Gabriel-Arroyo game story never happened before…I became a little verklempt, misty eyed, because I realized I was writing about Steven Rivera in the present tense of football for the very last time.
Odd feeling to know something is coming and to be unable to stop it…Something akin to Andy Guerrero and the San Gabriel offense when they are in “The Zone”.
I felt it coming and I tried to work my way around it but it was coming…I even extended my San Gabriel-Arroyo story beyond a thousand words because I didn’t want to deal with the last line.
Yet, as that last line produced from heart to thought, to nerve impulse, to keyboard, to screen, to my eyes and finally back to my heart it became inevitable and I cried a little bit.
Perhaps its because it was a four year run instead of two or three…But while time was winding down and I was happy for San Gabriel, I grew sadder at the thought of never seeing Rivera at Bergstrom again.
Never happened before…I don’t know if it will ever happen again…I never really interviewed Rivera for a feature (I can’t stand features), never had him on the show, never hung out with him, never met his mom…I only saw him play.
And here it is…He was special… (did you notice the use of the past-tense?)
I wanted this story to end perfectly but it didn’t…and I wish I could change it but I can’t.
It is true time stays, but we move on and the next generation moves in. There will be other stories, other fantastic players, other great moments, but not the same as this one.
I’m gonna miss this guy…because now, in terms of football, he belongs to the ages.
The Dude abides…
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Contact Joe at joe@midvalleysports.com
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