My friend, Shelly's last show on the Second City Mainstage. She's been hired to write for Saturday Night Live.

I was lucky enough to get to perform with Shelly for a couple years on the (now-retired) improv team Otis.

The show was great and Shelly was great in it. Sharp and funny and challenging.

At the closing of the farewell set at the end of the show, she ended her thank you speach with a story about her first Second City show, which her family came to see, and how she had thought it had gone badly, and that she had been bad in it. She talked about how she was visibly upset and how, on the car ride home, she refused to let any of her family members make her feel better. As she was unlocking the front door to her apartment building, though, her father rolled down his window and yelled out, "But you're in the game! When I was in high school I was on the team for four years and I suited up for every game and never got off the bench. Not once! But you're doing it! You're in the game!"

I'm not sure why sports metaphors always seem to work so well on improvisers, a group that is often not the most sports-savvy (or even sports-interested), but they do. And it looked to me like that story every performer on that stage well up a little. It got me too.