Within five minutes in early September, the Ravens showed me the magnitude of what I was covering on my first year on the beat.
Back when the season was, at least mostly, about football, the team was booed off the field at halftime after a scoreless 30 minutes in the season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Things opened up in the second half, and with the game hanging in the balance, Joe Flacco found Steve Smith for an 80-yard touchdown pass to give the Ravens their first lead of the season.
It was bedlam.
I watched from a distance as the Ravens won the Super Bowl, and a month after this football game, I saw playoff baseball take hold of the city.
But everything that went into that play in the Ravens' opener — a scrambling Flacco, a wide-open Smith allowing a defender to catch up just so he could throw him to the ground, the high stakes — combined to show me the fervor this city was capable of and the heights the Ravens could go to reach it.
Of course, Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green matched it with a 77-yard score of his own, and the ensuing silence was thick. I've felt that pain before as a fan but never experienced it on such a grand scale.
Sports are affecting, and that's why we love them. Few moments this year capture the highs, the lows, and the razor-thin margin in between like that three-play sequence.