You’ve seen the images. You’ve heard the stories. No need to get knee-deep in the muck today, but we all know it’s been a tough couple of years for downtown Portland. I’m hoping an afternoon of soccer does what it’s supposed to do today.

You know, make us believe.

Let us escape.

You can’t think “Timbers” without also tacking on, “Portland.” Our city’s Major League Soccer operation has done a terrific job of branding and positioning itself. It’s not just a sports entity that set up and launched a business downtown. Providence Park has become the city’s the left lung. Today, with the country watching, I’m hoping the thing inflates with oxygen, allows us all to take a deep breath, and allows our city lose itself in some old-fashioned sports euphoria.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”

Maybe Ernie needed to stand for a couple of hours with the Timbers Army. Then again, this season has felt a little bit like fighting a bull from a sports car that was driving up a mountain. The Timbers lost 6-2 to Seattle and got thumped twice by an expansion team. The season felt cooked right up until it wasn’t anymore.

Give credit to coach Giovanni Savarese today. He engineered a remarkable turnaround. The No. 4-seed in the Western Conference woke up and outscored the opposition 14-2 on the current six-game win streak. His players believed. With one more victory the entire country will do it, too.

It’s New York City FC vs. Portland for the league title today. “The city that doesn’t sleep,” against one that badly needed to wake from a nap. It’s why I’m not only hoping the Timbers deliver with a title but that they do it in a manner that reminds us all that good endings aren’t just for storybooks.

How about Diego Valeri with a free-kick game winner?

Cue the sunset, if so. And roll the credits. Anyone know if Valeri knows how to ride a horse? If so, have one saddled up for the guy and let him ride it right out of the stadium and up SW Morrison Street. Because seeing a player who means so much and has given so much to a city provide one final shining moment would be exactly what Portland needs.

Not just the soccer franchise — I’m talking about Portland — the city.

You’ll take a win any way it comes, though, I’ll bet. Because our city’s brand has taken a beating in the last couple of years. The images on national television on Saturday won’t be about rioting or violence. It won’t feature boarded up buildings and graffiti or even a homelessness problem that needs attention. You won’t have friends and family who text to ask, “Watching Portland on TV… are you guys OK?!”

Nope.

Instead, they’ll say, “Watching Portland on TV… what a time to be alive!”

The Blazers won an NBA championship in 1977. The city threw a parade that people still talk about. Maybe the novelty of that summer day will never be matched. The Thorns have won the NWSL a couple of times and the Timbers won a title in 2015. Those were wonderful feats. But given the events of the last couple of years I’m convinced winning today would signal so much more than a title for the franchise.

A city would stand a little taller. Leadership might dream a little bigger. Citizens would feel a little prouder. All of it brought to you by a soccer franchise led by an owner in Merritt Paulson who dared to plant a MLS franchise in downtown Portland when everyone told him it would never get done.

MLS commissioner Don Garber told me this week, “There are a handful of place that are shining stars for our league, where they matter. It certainly is that case in Portland… in many ways it’s a model of what soccer in America can be.”

I paused after he said it.

Portland? A model?

More of that please.

—

Email: John@JohnCanzano.com

Subscribe to the John Canzano weekly email newsletter.

Tweet me: @JohnCanzanoBFT and find me on Facebook: BaldFacedTruth