So I wasn’t raised in a sports family. We weren’t fans. No. We didn’t play sports, either. We were the reading sort of family, the classical music types, the church-going, crossword-puzzling, public television station sort of family.
It suited me Just Fine.
In fact, when we moved back to the US from Japan just as I was closing in on my eighth birthday, I was only vaguely aware of what a football player looked like in his uniform. I knew more about sumo than I did baseball. I think I had heard of the Yankees, and the Dodgers. I had seen Bad News Bears. But I had never heard of the Pirates before, or the Steelers.
Then we moved to Pittsburgh.
I remember coming home from church of a Sunday evening (we went to church twice on Sundays), all set for our evening ritual: soup and sandwiches in front of the television, like as not a fire in the fireplace, all ready to watch C.H.i.P.s. Yes. “California Highway Patrol,” that show with Ponch and John. We were Big Fans.
We’d turn the t.v. on and there it would be: The Game. The football game. We didn’t know what game; we didn’t care who was playing. “Look,” we would comfort each other. “It’s all right. It will be over soon. There’s only twelve minutes left in the game.”
It didn’t take us long to figure out– though it did astound us on a fairly continual basis– that twelve minutes in football is the equivalent of forty-five, if you’re lucky. Invariably, Ponch and John were preempted by the Steelers, and we finished our soup bored and clueless, unable to make heads or tails of the drama unfolding by the yard on our television screen.
Then, by sheer luck, I landed myself a football-playing boyfriend in high school. He was, in fact, the quarterback for his school team, and he taught me everything I really needed to know about football. My parents and I attended every one of his games, equipped with an honest appreciation for yardage gained, the relief of another first down, and heavy coats for those Pittsburgh Friday nights. Yes, I learned a lot about football from him– baseball, too– and I am grateful to him to this day.
Still, real pleasure in the game has eluded me. Oh, I love those glorious moments: the hurtling pass plucked out of midair, the miraculous run, the holes that open between the linebackers, the athletic leaping over men of impossible size, the plunge into the end zone. Yes, football is a great game. But the thing is that you have to wait for moments like these. You have to be watching. You have to attend to the game itself.
For my part, I’d Rather Not. No. I’d like to be reading (preferably with some classical music in the background and, if you please, a fire in the fireplace), or writing letters, or Writing. I don’t want to be glued to the screen to watch those men in all that padding pace the field. I don’t want to watch the play eclipsed by a yellow flag, or see no yardage gained. That doesn’t interest me.
In fact, greater than the pleasure I have in watching the game is the pleasure I take in watching people watch it. The focus. The concentration. The emotional pits and peaks, the gathering tension in the torso, the cry of exaltation or, sadly, disappointment.
And I’ve always been amused by these football films they show from time to time. You know the ones I mean: the documentaries made of football games in all their glory. They shoot them with grainy film so that you feel like you’re watching a game that took place back in ’72, only to find out that it occurred toward the end of last season. And they play such dramatic music, full of brass instruments and vigorous strings. And the narration is always done by the same powerfully-voiced man, his tones ringing with strength and import. It is really–always–quite stirring. And a little, well, weird.
But tonight it was different. Tonight, somehow, Bill found a film just like this: a documentary about a football game. But it wasn’t just any game. It was the Superbowl, 1979. The Steelers vs. the Cowboys.
I remember that game. I think I had never heard of the Superbowl before that January, but there was no escaping it in Pittsburgh in January of 1979. The Terrible Towel hung in every window. The city was draped in black and gold. And in Johnston Elementary School, we celebrated. On a specified day (I’m guessing now it was the Friday before the Superbowl) we all wore our Steelers garb and, in my fourth grade classroom, we stood together and sang the Steelers fight song, which was a rendition of the Pennsylvania Polka. I still remember some of the words: “We’re from the town with the Superbowl team. We are the Pittsburgh Steelers…” da da da da…. “It’s been many years in coming. Let’s keep that Steeler machinery humming….” Not kidding.
I didn’t have any Steelers paraphernalia (you’re surprised?), but my mother made us each a Steelers pin. She did. She cut each of us a 3-inch circle of foam and glued gold construction paper to one side, then stitched around the outside of the circle with black yarn. And in the middle: “Go Steelers!” or something to that effect.
I wish I still had that pin.
So tonight, Bill and William and Everett were watching this documentary, and I’m walking back and forth through the room the way I do. Laundry, getting Emma Grace’s nightgown, getting Emma Grace out of the tub. And I stop for a minute and look at the television. The guy being interviewed: Joe Greene. Oh, I think to myself: Mean Joe Greene. And suddenly I’m remembering the commercial with the Coke and the little boy thanking Mean Joe. And on the television they’re talking about Terry Bradshaw and Rocky Bleier and there’s Lynn Swann making an incredibly graceful catch and suddenly I’m remembering how my mother met Lynn Swann once in the grocery store and shook his hand and that he was buying chicken. There’s Chuck Noll and they’re talking about L.C. Greenwood and Franco Harris and now it’s like I’ve had a mini-reunion of sorts right in my very own living room: their names are so familiar; they were, once upon a time, in the air around me and the center of so much conversation; and I’m finding myself wondering how in the world they are and what they’ve been up to and why on earth it’s been so long since I’ve heard from any of them at all.
Sometimes I Really Wish I Still Lived In Pittsburgh.
I’m not a football fan. Not an avid one, anyway. I like to know that the Steelers are playing and, when they do play, I love to watch for those wonderful views of the city itself– the glimpses they sometimes give you just before or after a commercial break. But I don’t keep up with the scores, the records, the statistics.
No, I’m not a fan. But if we moved back to Pittsburgh, I think maybe I would be.
