Being A Fan

The Baltimore Ravens (long drawn out, infinite sigh).
I had season tickets in their first year back when they played at Memorial Stadium on 33rd St. It was 1996 and NFL football was finally back in Baltimore. My seats were in the corner of the end zone about 13 rows above the field. Right below me was the former Orioles dugout which the Ravens players used to come on and off the field. I couldn't believe my eyes at the size of Jonathan Ogden the first time I saw him up close. This was the year when they drafted Ogden and Ray Lewis. VinnieTestaverde was the quarterback and Ted Marchibroda was head coach. It felt great to finally have a team but it was bittersweet in that we acquired the team in sort of the same way we lost a team (the Colts). It wasn't exactly the same but I felt bad towards Cleveland Browns fans because I knew what they were going through and no matter how you spin it, it sucks to have your beloved team leave town, no matter the reason.
That first game was a powerful experience. Before game time they had a ceremony where they marched out a bunch of the ex- Colts who had played in this stadium. It was emotional for me because my dad has just died that June and he would have loved to been there. It was through him that I found my love of sports, especially Orioles baseball, Colts football and Clippers hockey. That was one of those moments where missing my dad was pretty hard.
The Ravens played and beat the dreaded Oakland Raiders. The emotion in the stadium was beyond intense. I hadn't been to a pro football game since the early 80's and went to tons of baseball games. I wasn't prepared for the intensity of a crowd that finally got an NFL team after years of anguish and add to it a crowd who was severely liquored up. I had stopped all drug and alcohol use 6 years prior. It wasn't like I'd lived my life in a seminary, far from it. But these people were going nuts. Especially as the team was coming off the field where I was sitting. It seemed like all those years of pent up frustration and anger had all come to a head in one bright and shining moment. I looked at my friend and said, "we got to get the heck out of here". Fights were breaking out everywhere you looked. The sense of violence and danger was palatable. I'm a Dundalk boy who wasn't big on fighting but I'd been in a round or two. Usually these kinds of scenes weren't an issue for me. But as we got to the ramp going down from the seats I look above me and someone has another person held up in the air getting ready to throw said person over the railing right on top of us. Everyone was squeezed together and you could just sense that everyone was going to flip out and just start throwing punches. I seen some stuff go on at Oriole games but nothing like this.
But we made it out alive. And we made it through about 4 really bad seasons of football. I would watch the Ravens at 1:00 p.m. and then watch a "real" NFL team play at 4:00. That's what it felt like. But they were our team, we loved them and we rooted all the way. Finally that 2000 season arrived. Every Ravens fan knows what that was like. Watching your team have such a crazy season (5 games without an offensive touchdown, a defense that was primal) and then go into the playoffs the way they did was incredible. I'll never forget that first playoff game at home against the Denver Broncos. I had watched every game of the season and knew the defense was something really special but this defense on this field on this day played like they were possessed. They had ratcheted up their intensity to a level I had never seen anyone play at. I knew that if they could keep this level of intensity up that no one could beat them. And thats what happened.
This town basked in the afterglow of that for a few years. Even after the Elvis Grbac debacle the team stayed pretty much competitive. Then came Kyle Boller. Could this be the franchise quarterback? Their still looking for some of the balls he fumbled. Then came an old advesary who had beat them in the playoffs, Steve McNair. The team stayed competitive but still couldn't get it done. They had went 13-3 in 2006 but the next year went 5-11. One of the biggest problems seemed to be consistency. at times they would look like the real deal and other times like that team that played here in the first 4 years.
And then came two rookies; one at head coach and another at quarterback: John Harbaugh and Joe Flacco. One was a special teams coach and the other from the University of Delaware. Once again the question lingered in the air, "could this be..."?
I write this after watching yesterdays game at Seattle. A week after watching them at Pittsburgh. Two totally different games. And what seems like two totally different teams. I'm not talking about the opponents.
Here's my problem. The question remains the same question. Granted nothing in pro football can be predicted or taken for granted. Ask the Philadelphia Eagles. Granted, so many teams this year have jumped from mediocrity to brilliance back to mediocrity. And some have gone straight from brilliance to horrible and have stayed there. Only one team has been brilliantly consistent (Green Bay). So maybe I'm asking or wanting too much. Maybe the lockout really did cause some of what were seeing league wide, I don't know. All I know is that I don't know if I can take much more of this. This is nerve wracking. One week it seems like this team is the legitimate real deal and then the next against a scrub team they become the scrub team. I imagine it's got all of them at One Winning Drive banging their heads against the wall too.
Sports is a weird thing. I remember a guy I worked with years ago who could care less about football and the Ravens. When the rest of us were sitting around disecting the teams performances and being better coaches than the real coaches my work mate would say, "well, one teams gonna win and one teams gonna lose". As much as he used to frustrate me, he was obviously right. I know what he said was a given but it kind of rang true with some kind of profound enlightenment.
Because no matter what happens on that field, it's really only football.
As much as it evokes something in me that connects me to my dad and a different time, it's still just a game. We get pretty darned caught up in it but it helps to have someone around who puts it all in perspective.
Especially after a game like yesterday's.