Remember The Alamo BFG’s

The best stories are always about the impossible odds and how they are overcome. That’s why I’m such a big fan of 5 foot 8 Thomas Cruise Mapother the 4th’s who’s always running after, or away from enemies in order to save the world in 8 different Mission Impossible movies. The action sequences were great, the double crossing mask reveals are great, but I always signed up for how in the world Mr. Cruise was going to overcome impossible odds put in his way to prevent him from saving the world.

It’s why I’m so fascinated by my son. In the beginning, he had almost impossible odds of surviving. Whenever he gets mad at us, we like to remind him that he is lucky to be alive and it’s because of us. We will always be forever grateful for his biological mother’s decision to allow us to adopt him, but she never would have been able to keep him alive by herself. He had some rough medical issues very early in life that kept him at only 6 pounds 4 months into his life. And at the age of three of four, he had another brush with death when he got into his grandmother’s pills. We thought we had lost him and we did for a few moments, but he made the choice to come back to us.

While I don’t think I was as close to death as he was, I had an incident where I could very easily have died myself. When I was a missionary for my church, four of us went on a drive through a canyon in Northern Utah, and got to a dead end. We were bored so we decided to explore a little further. We reached the end of the dirt road that lead to a forked road down to the canyon floor. We ended up driving to the bottom, where there was a river. We weren’t very good at thinking ahead, because we spent an hour figuring out how to cross the river, but not what would happen after we crossed. The dirt path turned to a snow path and eventually, we couldn’t go any further in the car. So of course, not thinking ahead again, two of us decided to get out and walk. It was 1994, so cell phones and GPS didn’t exist. It was May, so I was wearing shorts, and a light winter coat. It was about 6 pm by the time we started hiking in earnest, and we ended up walking all night, through 10 foot snow drifts, sticks, and sagebrush tearing through my naked legs. Long story short, we finally found civilization at 4 am in the morning. During and after that, I kept thinking it was a miracle that freezing temperatures, a bear attack, or a bad fall didn’t kill one of us. Though I don’t think I was ever truly in danger, I remember thinking the odds of me surviving that night were close to impossible.

At some point in US History, having Texas, and later much of the west including New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, California seemed impossible. The Alamo was an impossible mission. In 1836, a small group of frontierman and women moved to the Alamo, a small Catholic Mission. A Mexican army of between 1,500 and 6,000 soldiers didn’t like that, so for 13 days they attacked the 150-250 citizens of the Alamo. Impossible odds against a much bigger army. Yes, almost all of them died defending the Alamo, but because they stood up so strongly against the army, 6 weeks later, Sam Houston and his army took out the Mexican Army and took independence of Texas with it.

Without Texas, and most of the rest of the West, the US looks considerably different.

The image in my mind of the Alamo is small group of brave men and women, frontiersman and women, who weren’t trained for battle, using an impossibly small Catholic mission as a fortress against an overwhelming army. Most militaries that saw them would just use their might and numbers to overwhelm the amateurs in the Alamo and take them down with intimidation. The Alamoians were huddling inside, nerves frayed, thinking that there was nothing in the world they could do against the massive Mexican army, and thinking that they should just surrender.

But they didn’t surrender. They fought. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, and my son, and I did the same. When Tom was betrayed by his whole team, he didn’t give up, he found a small group of loyal friends and saved the world without the help of an organization. When my son swallowed some pills, and was left for dead, he didn’t give up, he fought to survive. When I got stuck smack dab in the middle of the wilderness with some shorts, a winter coat potentially dangerous forest, I just kept walking.

The modern day defenders of the Alamo, The San Antonio Spurs basketball are in a much less dangerous, but parallel situation as their predecessors. Similar to the defenders of the Alamo whose backs were against the wall, the Spurs are in the NBA’s version of their backs being against the wall. They are in a spot where they have to go on a three game winning streak to win the NBA Finals in seven games. They are against a Mighty Knick army who is trying to storm the Frost Bank Center after having just overcome the biggest ever deficit in the NBA Finals game against the Spurs. Most basketball experts are saying the Spurs are already dead. They all think that San Antonio is too young, too inexperienced, and too mistake prone and don’t have the will to comeback and win this series, let alone another game.

I even thought that was the dagger two days ago. But that was before I remembered…the Alamo. The city of San Antonio was built on a citizenry of people that are used to having their backs against the wall. They or the Spurs don’t run from overwhelming odds. They fight to the end. The Spurs are young and inexperienced and may not be equipped with all the tools just like those defenders of the Alamo. They are facing a much more experienced army of basketball players and mobsters from New York. But the Spurs are ready to fight. The defenders of the Alamo did so for 13 days. If the Spurs want to win the title they will have to last 17 or 18 days. But they get days off for travel, nice hotels and private planes. If the Alamoans could last 13, the Spurs can certainly last 18 days. Especially when their best defender is 7’5.

Spurs in Seven.

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