Perfectly Imperfect

“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”

– Vince Lombardi

Standing in line at the Hunger Games, I mean, Costco the other day, I overheard a conversation in which a gentleman had decided to purchase a brand new printer primarily because it cost him less than it would to replace the ink in the printer he currently had at home. Astoundingly, the printer he was purchasing was made by the same manufacturer as the one he currently owned. I pondered the difference between that and a concept I’d originally learned staring in the window of a pottery shop that carried Japanese kintsugi. You’ve probably seen it before, even if you didn’t know what it was called:

I was entranced with what I was seeing in the window, and was beckoned in by the owner. He told me more about his home, and why the Japanese had come to value keeping things and objects for as long as they possibly could. It makes sense when you think of their culture coming to be while alone on a island with centuries of wars and disputes around or involving them. In a place like that, you came to value a thing, even if it was broken. Broken didn’t mean it had to be replaced, it meant it had to be repaired. Embracing those imperfections is a study unto itself in Japan, and the art of taking something that is broken and turning it into something more beautiful emanates from that desire. Kintsugi became such a popular art form in Japan when it came into being in the 15th Century, that many people were eventually purposefully breaking their pottery simply to have it put back together more beautifully.

Such a view can be much more a rarity in sports, where it’s often the pieces that stay intact that are lifted up and glamorized. Whether the team or individual, it’s the folks that make it all the way to the end that are the ones in the spotlight. Always.

Well, almost always. There are examples in many sports of players that transcended their championship series to a degree that they simply couldn’t be ignored in being named the most valuable player of the series. In the NHL, players are voted the MVP of the entire playoffs, and so players who can make massive differences throughout will be named the best player of the playoffs. To date, four goaltenders from squads that lost the Stanley Cup have hoisted the Conn Smythe. In Major League Baseball, the NFL, and NBA, only one player has ever accomplished the feat of losing a championship, and being named the MVP. The New York Yankees Bobby Richardson tortured the Pittsburgh Pirates through seven games enough to win it in a losing effort, the Dallas Cowboys Chuck Howley snagged three turnovers singlehandedly in a loss to the Baltimore Colts in 1971, and the Logo himself, Mr. Jerry West won the NBA Finals MVP award in 1969 after a seven game series loss to the Boston Celtics in which he averaged 38 points.

And none of them may have been any more stupefying than a high school hockey goalie from my hometown who stood on his head forever the other night.

Fort Collins High School is unsurprisingly the oldest high school in the city, with over 120 years of history under their purple and gold belts. Two of my grandparents graduated FCHS  in 1917 and 1918, with their kids coming through the system as well. Though my sister and I graduated from a crosstown rival, several of my dearest friends were and are Lambkins, and they have a long list of victories and state records in sports, amongst many other things. I love and am proud of my hometown, and follow it religiously via several methods and means. Which made me a little frustrated with myself that I first learned about the glory of Sam Simon via Sports Illustrated. If you hadn’t seen the story you may have been sleeping under the same rock I was, as Simon’s performance also earned him notice in other state and national media. Against a much deeper Valor Christian squad, Simon lifted his team to five overtimes by blanking the Eagles for 84 shots in a row. Eighty. Four.

To put that into context, the NHL record for saves in a game is 80. And that goalie also lost because he faced 83 shots. This happened in 1941. No goalie has even come close to facing that number before or since. The number of blanks Simon threw back boggles the mind. After his record-tying performance, the only thing on Simon’s mind was how easy it should have been to stop the one that got by him.

I’d somehow missed out on Simon until that game, which was my fault, as his hometown paper has been singing his praises for a while. I won’t be making that mistake twice. His insanely impressive Finals was no miracle on ice, as of the 211 shots he faced through the entirety of the playoffs, only five slid by him. Take a moment to enjoy your performance, Sam. It was a thing of beauty. And take a deep breath while you still can, Colorado High School hockey, as Simon was only a junior this last year, and seems to feel he’s still got something to prove.

If we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. There was a tiny crack in the beautiful work that Sam pitched the other night, and he’s already filling it with gold.