00:00You know, I always say sports is the great equalizer in America.
00:03Sports proves that people from different backgrounds,
00:07whether that be racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds,
00:10national backgrounds, that sports brings us all together when it's at its best.
00:14And you go into a locker room in college or high school or the pros,
00:18and you'll see black guys and white guys and Jews and Catholics and Christians and Muslims
00:24all getting along together, and we don't see any differences in each other
00:27because, you know, we're part of a team.
00:30And it's one of the great things that I love about sports,
00:32and it proves that, you know, in the right environment,
00:35we're very much more alike than we are different, right?
00:38Regardless of where we come from, there's a common goal.
00:42We're on a team.
00:43You know, you don't see me as a white guy.
00:45I don't see you as a black guy.
00:46We're teammates, right?
00:48Well, the other thing sports does for us, it also helps us heal.
00:52We know that, obviously, Fowell, you know, after the Kennedy assassination
00:56all the way back in 1963 and the decision to play football.
01:00We know it after the vicious attacks here on our own soil on 9-11,
01:04after taking one week off when the NFL did come back,
01:07and we had all those memorable moments of teammates from both sides of the stadium,
01:15arm in arm as brothers, enjoying being Americans, right?
01:19We obviously have seen it, you know, in baseball.
01:23I'll never forget, you know, the Atlanta Braves against the New York Mets.
01:26And Mike Piazza hit a home run that by every other metric was meaningless.
01:32But, you know, 45,000 people chills down their bodies because it was post 9-11,
01:38and it gave us the ability to cheer again, and it was okay to stand and clap, right?
01:43To that point, I was working in Philly at the time, so we hate the Mets in theory.
01:46We played that home run 20 times that year.
01:49I'm sure.
01:49I'll do you one better, and I'll do you another one.
01:52When we got Osama Bin Laden, all right, the New York Mets were in Philadelphia,
01:58Mets versus Phillies.
01:59These are hated rivals, as you guys all know.
02:03And I remember Harry Rose, the great Harry Rose, the longtime Mets radio,
02:07a play-by-play guy, did one of the great play-by-play calls I've ever heard,
02:11and it had nothing at all to do with baseball.
02:14And what happened was Mets are in Philadelphia.
02:18Word starts disseminating through cell phones that we've gotten Bin Laden.
02:22I have chills actually just recanting the story now.
02:25And all of a sudden, you had 40,000 people who on any other day disliked each other.
02:32Big time.
02:32With a passion.
02:33Yeah, maybe.
02:34I met fans in Yankees and Phillies fans.
02:35Maybe a fist fight any other time.
02:37Any other time, and all of a sudden, you started hearing chants of USA
02:43and Phillies fans hugging Mets fans and Mets fans high-fiving Phillies fans.
02:48And if you have a chance today to go back and look for the Harry Rose,
02:53I'm sure Philly did a great job also.
02:55I just don't remember it off the top of my head.
02:57I think you should do it because he was awesome.
03:01And for that one fleeting moment, man, it wasn't Mets-Phillies.
03:05We were all the same.
03:06Now, why do I bring that up?
03:08I bring that up because you guys all remember about two weeks ago,
03:12there was that awful shooting inside a high school hockey arena and rink
03:18where a transgender dad who had mental health issues decided to go into that arena
03:25with not one but two handguns and try to kill his entire family.
03:29And he killed his estranged wife.
03:31He killed one of his sons.
03:34And he killed his father-in-law, I believe it was.
03:37And three people lost their lives because this guy was obviously having a mental health breakdown.
03:43But one and one people in his family, one person survived.
03:46And one of his sons, a kid named Colin Dorgan, survived the shooting.
03:50Now, imagine for a moment being a high school kid and in the course of two minutes,
03:56you lost your mother, you lost your brother, you lost your grandfather,
04:02all at the hands of your own father who tried to kill you too.
04:07Right.
04:08All right?
04:08And you basically have lost him too because he's never getting out of prison.
04:11Right.
04:11So you've lost your father as well.
04:13And what do you do in that spot?
04:15Well, Colin Dorgan decided to put himself knee-deep into his hockey team.
04:20And he's a very good hockey player.
04:22And his high school apparently is a very good high school hockey team.
04:26Yes.
04:27All right?
04:27So they're in the semifinals of the local high school state tournament.
04:33All right?
04:34In Rhode Island.
04:34In Rhode Island.
04:35I apologize.
04:37And sometimes you've got to believe there's a higher power out there.
04:41I'm not suggesting you have to.
04:43I do.
04:44And these are one of those moments.
04:45I'm going to show you a video.
04:47The setup of this video is double overtime, semifinal high school hockey game up in Rhode Island.
04:56And you're going to see a kid start a breakaway.
04:58The kid on the breakaway is Colin Dorgan, who two weeks ago buried his mother.
05:05His brother and his grandfather at the hands of his dad, who will spend the rest of his life in
05:12prison.
05:12And watch what happened.
05:17There's the pass.
05:18This is Colin Dorgan, one-on-one, game-winning goal in double overtime.
05:24And he doesn't even look like he knows what to do.
05:26But look at his teammates.
05:27He's emotional.
05:28And they just marveled.
05:30And look at everybody against the glass.
05:32Look at everybody against the glass.
05:33We can't play the audio because I think there's some cursing in it.
05:35Yeah.
05:36And there's a couple different views of it.
05:37But boom in the five holes.
05:38And it's just like awesome.
05:40He doesn't know what to do.
05:41You can tell he does it.
05:43That's not really a celebration.
05:44I don't think he knows what to do.
05:46He did have to.
05:46So there's another video we're not showing to you right now where he takes off the helmet.
05:50And he's kind of pumping his chest to the crowd.
05:54Yeah.
05:54And everybody's crying and everyone's chanting his name.
05:58And I know it's a morbid story.
06:00I know the story, the overview of the story is horrendous, obviously.
06:03But that's why we love sports right there.
06:06That's why sports is our salvation.
06:09That's why sports is so important to us.
06:12Because whatever problems we're having, and that kid sadly is going through something,
06:17knock on wood, none of us could ever possibly imagine.
06:20And hopefully we never go through anything close to that.
06:22And what did that kid do?
06:24He turned to his teammates.
06:26He turned to the sport that he loves.
06:28And that became his safe place.
06:30And that became his salvation.
06:33And if someone ever says to you, someone in your life,
06:36why do you care so much about the Phillies, the Jets, the Knicks, the Eagles?
06:41That's why, man.
06:42Because it's a break from all the really serious crap we have going on in our lives.
06:47And I can watch that video a thousand more times.
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