Angels in Arizona

For the fourth time this millennium, the New England Patriots are Super Bowl champions. They survived the Seattle Seahawks and finished the job. But New England nearly lost Super Bowl XLIX, and probably would have were it not for the miraculous interception by fifth cornerback Malcolm Butler that stopped Seattle's game-winning drive dead in its tracks.

It all started with the Seahawks staging one last wild rally. Trailing 28-24 with two minutes remaining, they needed an 80-yard touchdown drive. In the NFC championship game two weeks before, the Hawks managed to claw back from a similarly dire situation and overtake the Green Bay Packers on their final possession. Now they'd have to do the same against New England.

Before long, Seattle was poised to pull off another crazy comeback. The Seahawks stormed downfield, spurred by Russell Wilson's 33-yard bomb to Jermaine Kearse, who made the most unbelievable catch I've ever seen. Kearse gathered the ball while lying flat on his back, after bobbling it off every part of his body, after Malcolm Butler tipped the original pass. The pigskin must have changed direction at least half a dozen times, and somehow Kearse corralled it. It was the helmet catch all over again.

Following a four-yard rush by Marshawn Lynch that brought Seattle to within spitting distance of the end zone, New England was the one in need of a miracle. The Pats were up against their own goal line, backs to the wall, on the verge of letting another Super Bowl slip away. All the Seahawks had to do was advance five feet and the championship would be theirs.

You know what happened next. Wilson inexplicably threw the ball on second-and-goal rather than handing it off to Lynch -- probably the best running back in the NFL -- or punching it in himself. An alert Butler reflexively slid in front of Wilson's screaming pass and intercepted it, sealing Seattle's defeat. If the undrafted rookie reacts one second later, intended target Ricardo Lockette makes the catch and the game is over. To put Butler's play in perspective, it marked the first and only time that a pass from the one-yard line got picked off this season.

What Kearse and Butler did was incredible. Absolutely incredible. Two stunning acts of freak athleticism; one almost won the Super Bowl, and the other clinched it.

We sports fans spend so much of our lives waiting, praying, and hoping for moments like these. It's kind of silly, actually. We plead for desperation threes to go in, for Hail Mary passes to succeed and for pinch-hitters to come through with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. We wish for opponents to brick free throws, fumble in the red zone and boot easy grounders.

More often than not, however, our teams let us down. They miss the shot, shank the field goal and strike out to end the game. Rarely do they defy the odds, leaving our prayers unanswered, our hopes and dreams dashed.

But sometimes miracles do happen, and when they do it's positively magical. The Red Sox came back after going down 3-0 to the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS. The Celtics erased a 24-point deficit against the Lakers in the 2008 NBA Finals. Tom Brady, David Ortiz and Paul Pierce have done things throughout their playoff careers that shouldn't be humanly possible.

Referring to the legendary Ted Williams, John Updike once wrote that "gods do not answer letters." Maybe not, but Malcolm Butler probably does.