 "My First Ram Game--Such Stuff as Dreams
are Made On ...Postlude- A Time of Healing"- By Rammed for Life(12/22) Part 4
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Yesterday, we drove home and
I started this post. This morning, I sat down to finish it. In the end, I am in awe of the whole thing. There is a kind of mystery to it all, something endemic to the human spirit. After all, it's just a football game, a kind of absurd exercise. Once, when Chris was in 5th grade, I was driving him home from a travelling basketball tournament. His team had won a very emotional, come-from-behind game. As the emotion of that moment drained away, I said to him, "Isn't it strange that we can be this moved by the fact that a round ball fell through one hoop one more time than it did through the other?" He looked at me--a pretty demanding philosophical remark to ask a 5th grader to comprehend. Yet, being pretty sharp, he got what I meant right away, that ironical, self-reflective angle by which sometimes we glimpse the absurdity that constitutes so much of who we are. Something of that absurdity always amazes me about this whole thing of being a Ram fan--or a fan of any team. For 30 years, I was a closet fan, harboring my secret passion by myself and wondering if I wasn't being a fool to care so much about numbers on a scoreboard hundreds of miles away. Then I found this board. I met you people. And as we have touched each other and forged those special bonds of loyalty not only with the team but with each other, the whole business of being a Ram fan has flowered in a dozen new dimensions. Yes, caring about a football game is absurd. But it touches something very deep in the human heart, something also absurd, but something connected with the deepest hopes and fears with which each of us confronts the incertitudes of our personal destinies. This team gives us a reason to connect with each other, to belong to something larger than we are. It gives us a chance to roll our emotional dice with a chance at glory, to borrow from Fitzgerald, with something "commensurate with our capacity for wonder." Speaking for myself, I must say that this last 14 months have in an odd way redeemed my passion for the NFL. Instead of bitterly harboring my secret love and hate, I find myself opening up to people, communicating, building new relationships. I find my hatreds of the Whiners and the Vikings lessening, losing their force, and that is very encouraging. Rather than fearing losses, I find myself confidently enjoying an outpouring of joy. Winning has something to do with all that. A skeptic would saying winning has EVERYTHING to do with that. Perhaps. I can't deny that winning is liberating. Yet I tell you that I understand the fact that the winning won't last. I am starting to believe that it will last out this season, and I think we will be a factor for a good time to come. Yet things won't always work out so well as they are doing this year. I know that. I even know that the ring may not come. But I don't fear that any more. I don't even fear the Vikings getting their rings as much as I used to do. (I would NOT be happy. But I think I have begun to escape the prison of bitterness that would have made such an event intolerable.) In my usual long-winded way, I am trying to get at the heart of what this weekend was about. And in the end, it was about people. It was about meeting people from Southern California, Missouri, and South-Eastern Illinois, people I have come to know on-line, and shaking their hands and looking into their eyes. There was ScRam, who had grown up loving the Rams as I did, far from any other Ram fans. There was Ram 66 and Fishhead Ram, faithful fans who had refused to succumb to Hap's false path of bitterness when Georgia stole their team and were now healing themselves in the joy of a Ram game. There was Old Hacker, who had faced his own moment of temptation when Billy Bidwell stole his precious Cardinals. In many ways, Old Hacker is the very heart and soul of this board--especially a Rams board. At the end of every post--I truly do envy his gift for brevity!--Hack appends a simple post script: "Go Rams!!!!!!!!" (The number of exclamation points tends to vary!) I have seen those words cap posts of triumph and posts of despair. It never matters. Whether he was foreseeing the worst after the 5 players missed the meeting last year or proudly proclaiming the invincibility of this year's team, his proclamation of faith rings out: "Go Rams!!!!!!!!" A couple of times, Sunday, I tried to buy Old Hack a beer. He wouldn't let me. I was his guest, a visitor to his home town. And Hack's loyalty is supreme. That's why I imagine that the Rams arrival caused him to confront a difficult dilemma: remain faithful to the red bird or adopt the golden horns? Each team had broken the hearts of a city. Each team's owner had shabbily treated loyal fans. In a sense, neither organization "deserved" loyalty. Well, Old Hacker made his choice, and once made, he never looked back. I can imagine him having hung on with the Cardinals as many of our So Cal brothers have hung on with the Rams. But he chose the Rams. And once he made that choice, to stay with his city, his choice was whole and without reservation. Once, more than a year ago, Old Hacker wrote the single most profound post I have ever seen on this board. Ex-St. Loo was foully cavorting in his usual contortions of bitterness and malice. Old Hack said something very simple. He said, as close as I can recall, "To me, someone who is an Ex-fan is nothing. You can be a Cardinal fan. Or you can be a Ram fan. But to be an Ex-fan is to be nothing at all." If there is a reason why this board is as good as it is, it lies, perhaps, in that vein. Hacker immediately saw that, tempting as bitterness is, it leads to the death of the spirit. Here, on this board, we gather, those of us who have faced the temptation of bitterness. Fans of 2 cities which lost their teams. Nomads like me who were drawn to something stronger than ordinary home-town conventions. Fans who have known greatness unrecognized by the "Madding Crowd." The vast majority of us have faced the temptation to walk the road Happy 4 LA has taken, the way of bitterness, fear, and loathing. And each of us has made a firm decision to walk instead the path of joy. A little ways down, Ram 23 opens up more than he habitually does. That's his theme, too, the years of hanging around the golf club flying his Ram colors, patiently enduring his marginalized status as fan of a hopelessly inept team. 23 doesn't even begin to listen to that temptation to bitterness. Year after year, post after post, he proclaims his faith. Faith. Hope. Love. That's what my weekend was about. It was merely football, an absurd contest of no genuine significance in the wide world of public affairs. But it was about faith redeemed, hope fulfilled, and the gracious touch of human beings partaking by virtue of the absurd in the grand dance of love. Last night, I was working on this post, and my son came up to me. "Dad, he said, thanks for taking me to St. Louis for that game. I really enjoyed it." With apologies to the beer commercial writers, it really doesn't get any better than that! |
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