The Leap of Faith: Slack Jawed Dribbling

Current Editorial

I've taken alot of heat on the mailing lists, the bulletin boards and even in my real life at work for the way I approach the GAME... the sort of fan I am and what being a fan means to me. I've been called "irrational", "uncritical", "biased", "cheerleaderesque", and "blatantly homer" (whatever that means)... among a bounty of other colorful if not altogether flattering monikers. It all centers around the basic philosophical underpinnings of how I approach the GAME, the TEAM, and the PLAYERS. I owe alot of credit for my current gameview to a man that is well known to Rams fans everywhere, the remarkable, remakeable, and constantly reconstituted Rabid Rob. Rabid is the father of the revolutionary school of fandom which we of the cloth refer to proudly as Slack Jawed Dribbling. It has at its core, the philosophical theory of Pragmatism, a system of beliefs according to which TRUTH becomes relative, and truths are evaluated on the basis of what WORKS as opposed to according to any external standard. I could hazard an attempt at a description of what being an SJD is all about, but to do so would a priori weaken the phenomenon, which is actually more like a state of consciousness than a theory, by stooping to the base language of the self-proclaimed "realist", the Pseudo-Rational Fan. What I shall do instead is repost a letter that I wrote to Rabid many months ago in a state of advanced slack-jawedness... Enjoy:) .................... I BELIEVE in all things Blue and Gold... if commitment to a leap of faith is what you want then I assure you I made that leap long ago and have not fallen an inch, rather each year of unexpected challenges and unfulfilled promise serves only to lift me higher on my desperate wave of belief...� � Doubt and second guesswork are the evil that spreads... the bile that churns and eats out the pristine fleshy heart of a champion... leaving smoky black cancer and runny sludge in place of the wet definition of life.� In this I am with you... 13-3, 14-2... its all the same to me. All that matters is the belief itself, the certainty of hope and and the loyalty to the cause... the knowledge that if the champion does not believe in itself at all times, then championship is hopeless... ...And WE ARE a part of that champion, each and every one of us works inside the heart of that champion and carrys the oxygen to breathe life into its body, the air beneath its wings.� We are there every Sunday, some of us, lifting our men in the trenches with our voices, with our massive mass feeling... 65,000 people feeling like one, screaming and clapping not in rhythm but in a single unified motion, a single EMOTION... Can anyone say that that can't move mountains?� Can they say that can't beat down the Rockies themselves in a blazing fire of destruction and death... burning the bridge and the bay itself and leaving former victors destitute, old... vanquished... Oh and the rest of us are there as well... many more of us than just those 65,000... we are in Canada and Virginia and New York... tuning in on our 13 inch black and white tubes at the local sports tap where we are outcast for our beliefs, for our hopes and our allegiance to a misunderstood and seemingly hopeless cause. We defy the powers that be to balance our satellite dishes on our urban balconies in foreign lands, biting and scraping, clawing to get at our obsession thru some means, thru any medium, begging and pleading with the radio stations to broadcast games on the web, calling the talk shows, writing the papers... do you think our guys can't read? We are in amidst the cornfields of central Illinois, braving the sweltering heat and suffocating humidity alongside our heroes, fawning for sweat soaked autographs. We are spread out thru the hub of THE ENEMY itself... in the evil empire by the bay.... spying, flashing our true colors and then slipping back underground... We are Rams fans the world over... is it possible that our immense mass consciousness is without effect?� Is it possible that that which drives us to the point of hashing and rehashing, drafts and free-agency, franchise tags and unknown prospects from prairies and inner cities across the country, that which drives us to the point of such desperation that the less geographically fortunate of us on every fall Sunday we log onto our circuit boxes in hopes of hearing tell of the fortunes of our obsession from fellow technologically gifted brethren secondhand and sometimes thirdhand... can any of that be without meaning? Can all of it be without effect? I think not. I pledge allegiance to that feeling... the feeling of invincibilty... the refusal to doubt... the unreserved acceptance of one being, one emotion... the cathartic communal experience of being face to face with the beauty of belonging to a cause that is bigger than any one of us or all of us put together... � I have a close friend who I shared seats with at a few of the Rams games in their inaugural season in St.louis... he probably knows more about football than anyone I know.� He can recite a virtual glossary of sports information at the drop of a hat. But he is not a FAN... he is a GAMBLER... he sat in his seat week after week paying closer attention to the scoreboards that encircled us from above than the GAME that unfurled below us. Ever glued to the stats and the scores, rooting not for a cause much less for a team , but rather for a point spread... He was empty, feeling nothing as I erupted in passion, victory and violence 65,000 strong... Last year, I got 5-11 and he got rich... why is it I felt like the lucky one? Peace, FastEddie HOME