The Cup and the Whiskey

Last night was an odd sort of an event for me and for the Green and White Army here in Portland.

Understand that our beloved Timbers have been dire this season. There has been heartbreak, there have been losses so foul that all memory of them should be buried at the bottom of a well at midnight, never to be recalled out of pure human dignity.

Our well-liked character of an original coach is gone, fallen to those same troubles. Any hopes for glory in the league or the Open Cup vanished far back in midsummer.

So for the little group that gathered at Portland's Rose and Thistle last night the expectations weren't high. Our team was playing on the road, where we had not won since LAST season, and against the Whitecaps of Vancouver B.C. who were playing for a spot in the postseason.

My own hope was that we would not disgrace ourselves as we had the previous match against Seattle.

But incredibly, improbably, on a screaming golazo from captain Jack Jewsbury, the Portland Timbers won at B.C. Place and won the 2012 Cascadia Cup, the local derby for bragging rights among the Pacific Northwest soccer clubs.

We will win nothing more. Next week we play the Western conference champions and then the Boys will go home for the season as our rivals, the clubs we defeated for Cascadia go on to play for the league championship. My team has a long and difficult winter to try and shake off the demons of this season and try and find a way forward for the next.

But that is for tomorrow, and sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.

Today is just for pure, unexpected, ridiculous joy.

The Portland Timbers have won the Cascadia Cup, and I sit here in the predawn darkness with a silly grin still pasted on my face breathing in the whiskey-scented air of serendipitous Glory.