Mark Shapiro

We shed tears of joy, tears of sadness, but we had unbelievable moments.

Grandparents to grandkids, parents to kids, brothers and sisters, friends.

We kept phone lines open.

We'll never forget the memories that were made.

Please thank the team.

Thank everyone for us.

And it's unbelievable how uniform they were.

And it spoke to the power that when you think about giving your life to working in sports, you do so for the moments that you think you might be able to lift a community.

But you never imagine what it could mean to lift a community coast to coast, not just to raise spirits, but to unite people.

Not just to give people a reason to cheer, but to give people a reason to feel better about everything going on in the world right now.

And for a period of time, you know, it was an affirmation of every reason you work in sports.

And then even better to me is when you read deeper in those emails or listen to the comments walking along the street.

It was what people recognized about this team.

Because I can tell you, having been involved with winning teams or having friends at work in a variety of sports, fans cheer winning regardless of who's on the field.

They like to win.

Everybody likes to win.

But when you hear...

Everyone uniformly pointing out the same attributes and characteristics and traits that we work so hard as an organization to instill.

When they notice how authentically a group of teammates love and care for each other.

When they notice how genuinely those players want for the fans to win.