““I recall that in the immediate aftermath of those losses at Candlestick, I lost all healthy perspective, my ordinarily sober and sensible outlook cast to the wind like the hot dog wrappers forever swirling above the ballpark's stands. I am not proud of this. Frankly, it is embarrassing (as a graying, 48-year-old father of two, and as someone from Afghanistan, an impoverished nation unraveled by three decades of violence and human suffering) to describe the depth of emotional sting inflicted on me by those Candlestick heartbreaks. Disappointment is too bland a word, too feeble to capture the helpless despair of watching the opponent kneel in victory, the long, long offseason looming suddenly and cruelly premature.””
