Confessions of a Packer Fan

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I try not to mention it too often on this blog, but I am a Green Bay Packers fan.

I have been a Cheesehead since I was a child — when I lived in central Arkansas, the only TV my family had was a rather small black–and–white number that my grandparents gave us and a guy named Lombardi was on the Green Bay sideline.

Through most of my life, a statement like "I am a Green Bay Packers fan" was kind of like one of those confessions people make at 12–step meetings. But not really. I mean, such meetings usually are about some kind of addiction over which a person is powerless, like an addiction to alcohol or tobacco. Other times, they are about an addiction to some other kind of destructive behavior, like kleptomania.

In the early years of my life, being a Packer fan was rarely about gratification — although I guess a case could be made for the cumulative destructive impact on one's psyche and self–esteem from all those losing seasons.

("My name is David, and I'm a Packerholic ...")

For awhile, I wore it as a badge of honor. When I was about 12 or 13, I had a Packers jacket — designed like those letterman jackets that jocks have been wearing since the dawn of time — that I wore almost defiantly everywhere I went.

It was a small club. I had a few friends who liked the Packers, too, and most of my friends wore similar NFL jackets, but the logos on their jackets were for the winners. I tended to see most of my peers as either fair–weather fans who followed whichever team was winning (they were the ones who liked Don Shula's Dolphins or Chuck Noll's Steelers) or were susceptible to regional influences (mostly Cowboys fans).

I considered myself special because my allegiance was not based on either factor.

Green Bay must be several hundred miles from my hometown, and the Packers rarely had winning seasons when I was growing up. It's hard to make a convincing case that someone jumped on a team's bandwagon when the team in question routinely loses at least two–thirds of its games — unless the fan is a glutton for punishment, which I am not.

(At least, I don't think I am.)

But, as I got older, I started to think that being a Packer fan was something shameful so I stopped sharing it with new acquaintances, and I became selective about the old friends with whom I would discuss it. In that sense, perhaps I was sort of like an alcoholic, indulging in my addiction within a select circle of friends — or (shudder!) when I was by myself.

Most of the time, it was easier just to not say anything when I was with a group of Cowboys fans or fans of the latest powerhouse.

Drinking alone would have been far more satisfying than sitting through the Packers' often lopsided losses. Fortunately, I guess, I rarely saw a Packers game on TV in those days. They weren't winning so there was little interest in them outside their home region.

Occasionally, I might get to see them on a Sunday (if they were playing someone in my region, like the Cowboys or the Chiefs or the Cardinals when they were still in St. Louis) or in a Monday night game. But, most of the time, I was spared the pain of watching them being subjected to a severe beating — which, inevitably, they were.

In spite of it all, I remained loyal to the Packers — through all those 2–, 3– and 4–win seasons. I assured myself that things would turn around eventually. I just didn't know if I would live to see it.

But I did.

I guess all those losing seasons really conditioned me because, even after the Packers turned things around, I still kept expecting them to revert to their old ways. In my formative years — after Lombardi left Green Bay — success was fleeting. Winning seasons didn't come in bunches.

I must admit, I was often envious of the people I knew whose favorite teams were always in the playoffs. For me, if my favorite team was in the playoffs, that alone was cause for celebration. Who knew when it might happen again?

Because of that mindset, it's kind of like an out–of–body experience — or maybe an alternate reality experience — to read Richard Rothschild's suggestion in Sports Illustrated that today's Packers might be better than Lombardi's teams of the 1960s.

Well, actually, Rothschild didn't suggest it — members of the 1961 team that won the first of five NFL championships in seven years suggested it — but Rothschild made a good statistical case supporting it.

God help me, I think I'm starting to believe it.

In my experience, things started to turn around in the 1990s, when Brett Favre came to Green Bay and started leading the Packers to the playoffs on a regular basis. Before he left Green Bay, Favre set all kinds of records and took the Packers to two consecutive Super Bowls, matching Bart Starr's achievement in my childhood, but he couldn't win both.

But even with all his success, even with three consecutive MVPs in the 1990s, Favre didn't take the Packers to the dizzying heights that were reached in the 1960s. Starr is still the only quarterback to lead the Packers to two straight Super Bowl victories.

But Aaron Rodgers, Favre's successor, has the opportunity to match Starr in that category if he wins this year's Super Bowl, and the Packers appear to be talented enough to turn this decade into a repeat of the decade of Starr and Lombardi.

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But who should be standing in their way this weekend but the New York Giants ... the very team that came to Lambeau Field four years ago and beat Favre in his final game in a Packer uniform, the NFC Championship game that most observers thought would propel him to his third Super Bowl.

That would have been a first for a Packer signal caller. Instead, it was the end of an era, and I am sure I wasn't the only Packer fan who worried that the team might slip back into mediocrity.

The Packers did slump to that all–too–familiar sub–.500 territory in Rodgers' first season as Green Bay's starting quarterback, but he had them back in the playoffs the next year. And he won the Super Bowl the year after that.

The NFC Championship is not on the line this weekend. It won't be the first time these teams have played each other since that game in January 2008. They've met twice, both times in Green Bay, and the Packers have won both.

But those were regular–season games. There's an appealing symmetry to the idea that Rodgers — who launched a 19–game winning streak with a lopsided victory over the Giants in December 2010 — can avenge that playoff loss Sunday.

Wanna talk symmetry? The Giants were the first team the Packers of the 1960s beat in an NFL championship game back in December 1961. On Sunday afternoon, they will be back at Lambeau Field.

In spite of myself, I'm starting to think pro football history might be about to repeat itself.

When Reality Intrudes

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I've heard this said in other ways — more eloquent ways — so please forgive my feeble and wholly inadequate paraphrase:

People watch sports in part to escape from reality.

They may wish to get away from any one of several kinds of realities, and sports events are diversions. They're almost like fiction, like a movie or a TV show, a drama that people watch for a few hours before returning to their lives and whatever it was they wished to escape.

Sports events are the way we wish our lives could be. Someone wins and someone loses. No one wins all the time. But athletes learn from their failures, and they know that tomorrow is another day — a new day. No mistake, no miscalculation is final. Redemption is always possible.

Sure, sometimes there are tears in the losing locker room after a particularly hard fought athletic contest. But deep down, most athletes know — even if they have just lost a championship — that they will have another opportunity. The sun will come up tomorrow. The slate will be wiped clean.

Perhaps one of my favorite journalists of all time, sportswriter Red Smith, once wrote that people go to athletic events to have fun — and then they pick up the newspaper the next day to read about it and have fun all over again.

And, nearly every time that people have gathered for sports events in human history, it has been fun.

But what happened last night at a Texas Rangers baseball game in Arlington, Texas, definitely was not fun, particularly for the folks sitting in an upper section of the Ballpark. A man was reaching over a railing, trying to catch a ball, and he fell head first to his death after he apparently lost his balance.

The Dallas Morning News quotes a witness as saying that "[i]t looked awful because you knew there was no way he was going to land on his feet."

The man's young son was with him and, presumably, saw the whole thing.

Since I heard about this tragic story, I've been thinking about the (admittedly few) times that I have gone to professional baseball games.

Most of the time, I've attended minor league games in small, intimate ballparks where virtually all the seats were on the ground level — so such a tragedy was not really possible.

But there have been times when I have attended major league games in their palatial stadiums, and I have sat in upper decks — although never on the front row behind a railing.

Nevertheless, from time to time, it did cross my mind, as I ascended each level, that the farther up we went, the greater the chance of something bad happening.

But something bad never did happen. It was just my imagination running away with me. The fantasy was safe.

That fantasy has been shattered now for a young boy — and countless others, too, although his loss is clearly the greatest.

I presume that his father, like most of the men who live in Texas, was a sports fan who would have wanted to pass on his love of sports to his son.

But, after watching his father die, I can only wonder if such a thing is possible for that young boy now.

Will he ever be able to watch a baseball game — or any sports event — without seeing his father tumbling over the railing in Rangers Ballpark?

Will he ever be able to erase the memory of seeing his father on the pavement below, his head apparently bleeding profusely?

I have loved sports since I was small. It was a passion my father passed along to me. Dad was never much for "having a catch," as Kevin Costner put it in "Field of Dreams," but he has always loved the drama of athletic competition and admired the skill it takes to excel.

And, if I outlive my father, one of the ways I will honor his memory is by watching and savoring athletic contests.

I hope that young boy will be able to do the same.