No more hunting for goodwill

Published 7:00 pm Friday, January 19, 2018

I’m pretty sure that this Earth has careened irrevocably off its ever-loving rocker with most of the sports world in tow.

Hang on. This is going to be one crazy, nutty year. Where it stops, nobody knows.

But we’re not done with January yet and already there are blatant acts of kindness in evidence, spiked by all manner of sportsmanship breaking out in the most unlikeliest of places, most of it sprinkled with peace, goodwill and even sympathy toward fellow man.

It suddenly makes you feel so good about America that it almost seems like an elaborate setup.

Encouraging as they are, I know I’m eyeing these optimistic developments with the furrowed brow of healthy suspicion.

Yeah, OK, but when does the other shoe fall? Where’s the punch line? Yeah, sure, but tell us what you really think.

And just wait until the shock wears off. Then we’ll see.

This all started, best anybody can tell, on Sunday when the Saints blew a playoff game to the Vikings that their loyal Who Dats, even those hardened by last-second disasters past, had every right to expect was safely packed away.

Not only that, but there was an obvious, singular villain — and never mind that rookie safety Marcus Williams, it turns out, is a fine young man who stood up gamely afterward to face the music and take full blame.

I know what I thought even before they could show the instant replay — oh, the repercussions from this are not going to be pretty … batten down the hatches.

Hell surely hath no fury like a sports fan denied his rightful chest bump.

Anybody could see that Williams’ “Whiff Six” of some sort of attempted tackle was a lame, bone-headed play at the worst possible time.

We all know how that ends — eternal damnation.

Oh, sure, the Saints themselves predictably rallied around Williams in the aftermath. That’s what good locker rooms do — outwardly — even in a meltdown crisis.

There was even a small gathering of Saints’ fans to greet the team at the New Orleans airport when they returned at 1 a.m. OK, every team has a few blind loyalists.

By the looks of it, they didn’t even have to go through metal detectors.

But shouldn’t Williams have been receiving threats by now? They’re usually cranks, but isn’t that the predictable next step?

Williams and his “Whiff Six” are either the Saints’ version of Bill Buckner or Steve Bartman. Take your pick.

It’s the rest of the story you always read later that helps kick in the sympathy vote for a notable game goat.

Yet … not a whimper. Where’s the outrage? The immaturity? The predictable scorned rite of blowing a sporting event totally out of proportion?

The best Saints’ fans could do was bust up a few flat screens.

Frustrated Saints fans were too busy putting up billboards around New Orleans that read:

• Dat’s OK, Marcus 
• We Love Our Saints 

Williams is too talented not to have a future in the NFL. But Sunday night I was convinced it could never be in New Orleans.

Yeah, right.

At this rate he may end up King of Bacchus.

And if you think Saints fans are going soft …

What’s up with the Vikings faithful?

Just before the greatest, most unlikely play in Vikings history, their fans watched Saints’ head coach Sean Payton do a sarcastic, Skol Chant — apparently mocking the Vikings fans’ version of Who Dat?!

Those fans were so outraged, so eager to taunt and rub the sudden twist of fate in the visitors’ faces, that they ran right out of U.S. Bank Stadium and immediately starting throwing money at the Saints’ punter’s favorite charity.

No, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Sports fans of old would boo the cure for cancer, but these Vikings fans anted up for Thomas Morstead’s What You Give Will Grow, the punter’s foundation that raises money for children’s cancer research.

“A little something for effort,” sounds good in theory, but rarely comes with opponents of delirious fans. 

Apparently they noticed that Morestead played most of the game — OK, he punted -— in obvious pain after tearing cartilage in his rib cage from the inconvenience of making an early tackle.

The fans were apparently even more impressed that, when a handful of Saints were summoned back from the dressing room for the NFL-mandated meaningless extra point after time expired, Morestead volunteered to play nose guard in a rag-tag defensive alignment (the Vikings took a knee so there was no further combat involved).

But the Vikings fans somehow got word of Morestead’s personal charity and started flooding it with money. 

No telling how much it tops out at. It rises like the stock market of late, but at last glance Thursday there was more than $150,000.

So Morestead will return to Minneapolis the week the city hosts the Super Bowl — with or without the Vikings — where on behalf of his foundation he will present the big check to the Child Life program at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.

Strange times, indeed.