Sunday, January 23, 2005
Embracing the pain of being a long suffering Eagles fan
I have watched, on average, one Eagles game a year for the last 16 years.The score: Eagles wins: 3. Losses 13.
In other words, my eyeballs on a game is a more potent force than the best coaching or quarterbacking or defense.
For the last few years I've toyed with the idea of adopting a more local team, the 49ers. Result... well, SFians know the result... I'm really, really sorry, ok?
The power of my mere intent to watch an Eagles game is equally impressive - I intended, for the last 3 championship games, to go to a bar and watch them. In fact I did get to a bar in time once, but they were showing something of more interest to californians at the time - the sewing channel.
Still, the score was: Wins: 0. Losses 3. Cross-stitches: 8.
This year, I'm hoping that by Tivoing the game and thus breaking the bounds of time and space - whatever cosmological quasi-mystical link between my eyeballs and the Eagle's performance will be broken.
I've thought seriously about just not paying attention, at all, until after the superbowl, as sort of a shrodinger's cat sort of way of coping with the situation.
In fact, in way of pre-apology to fellow suffering Eagles fans everywhere, I swear to never watch them again if they lose today... but:
Conditions are just right, with a foot of snow and 18 degree temp - for some impossible screwup of enormous magnitude - something bigger than the infamous Fog Bowl - and I can't help myself - it's in my genes - that endless hope born from not knowing the ending of all the Rocky movies I grew up on - I gotta watch it because I'll always, damn it, have (an admittedly confused) soft place in my heart for the Eagles and though I've moved 3000 miles away I can't ever give up hope for them and I can't ever lose my perverse curiousity as to how they might miss the mark again...
Doctor, it hurts when they do this:
- "Do you, Mayor Franklin, take the Atlanta Falcons as your team of choice for the rest of your life?" a city council member asked during a mock wedding ceremony.
"Yes!" she yelled. "Falcons all the way. I have lived in Atlanta for 32 years. That [her Philly roots] is yesterday's news."
Fine.
And Mayor, we have no doubt all 53 members of your favorite team will be gentle on your wedding night.
¶ 11:06 AM
