“Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.”
– Jesse Owens

It won’t surprise any of my DNVR cohorts to read this, but I tend to be an introvert to the nth degree. While I have friends dotting the sports media landscape (and beyond), I tend to hide in my hole a fair bit, and it’s rare that I am actually out and about for a game or a visit to a wonderfully full DNVR bar. And while this suits my cave dweller personality, it does often rob me of one of the great joys of watching sports, which is doing it with friends.

I have gotten to watch a Nuggets game or two with a couple of my DNVR Nuggets brethren, and it is delightful. I have been able to take in the Avalanche with both friends and family, and it’s truly electric. And even an introvert can delight in how raucous a Broncos game can be, especially with a buddy or three and a beer or three alongside. Even Rockies games are a joy with friends, and also have the added help (for we introverts) of no longer being especially well attended, so it’s usually easy to find seats that aren’t elbow-to-elbow with others. I see the delight in it all, and it is such an easy something to share and converse with your friendlies about.

But 99 times out of a hundred, I’m watching solo from the couch. Or at least I used to be.

A few years back, a fairly shy and quiet gentleman named Owen moved into my house. We seemed to have very similar needs for space and quiet, and our conversations were short, mostly because he is a dog. A rather persnickety Shiba Inu, to be exact. Owen came into my life after a surgery robbed him of his ability to conquer the stairs in his previous home, and I had found myself to be unexpectedly alone. We were a solid match.

Except when I watched sports. Though I am loud and curse-tinged at a live sporting event, I triple down on those habits when watching alone, and my new shy and quiet buddy would look for the far end of the house when I’d get to yelling about a Broncos touchdown or the way the refs were screwing the Nuggets. We quickly tried to find a happier medium, where I’d bite my tongue a fair bit more, and he figured out a lot of the noise that was coming out of my face was joyful. Slowly, we started to find a common language. One summer night during a Rockies game, he decided to hop up onto the couch next to me, for all of an inning and a half. Given the way that game was going, I was surprised he stuck around that long.

Almost a year later, right about the time the Nuggets started their playoff march toward a championship, Owen had decided that sports was our thing. Suddenly I had a buddy to watch sports with again. I could hoot and holler, and Owen was there for the excitement and the odd piece of popcorn. I never had a half-baked opinion he disagreed with, and we renamed our seat the Boys Couch. When the Nuggets finally won the Championship that June, we were both stunned to silence. I planned to get him a Jokic jersey to wear during games.

As I am sometimes wont to do, I’d still not gotten around to that jersey, and now won’t get to. It might not have fit as well of late, as Owen started having some gut issues about six months back, and kept getting skinnier and skinnier. Try as we might to get him right, things kept sliding downhill. This last month, he mostly slept his days away, occasionally cracking an eye open when I’d holler extra loud at something sportsy. Late Wednesday afternoon, my sports buddy passed on to a place that we can only hope has a Nuggets championship every year. That’s heaven, right?

Watching the Nuggets first game of Summer League on Thursday night as I type this, there’s an empty space on the couch beside me, and an empty spot in my chest that hasn’t had me feeling much like yelling along to the game. Who would have ever expected Chris Marlowe saying, “since Hector was a pup” would make me cry instead of rolling my eyes?

Thanks for being such a good sports-watching friend, dear Owen. I love you. I miss you already. My wish would be that every Denver fan have a co-watcher so patient and happy and agreeable. It was truly a pleasure. Save a spot on that Boys Couch for me. I’ll come watch another game with you somewhere down the road.