I can’t generate any passion for today’s Super Bowl.
I’ve studiously avoided reading any stories about the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers over the last two weeks, which might explain my indifference to the game. As a NY Giants fan, I really can’t get too worked up about the championship contest tonight.
Oh sure, I guess I could be anti-Green Bay because the Packers beat the Giants late in the season and kept them out of the playoffs by winning the following week against the Chicago Bears. But I hold no animosity against the Pack. The Giants really didn’t deserve a better fate considering how haphazardly they played this season.
As for the Steelers, I give them some points for knocking off the despised NY Jets, but is there any reason to embrace a team led by a quarterback who can’t control his testosterone and a linebacker who revels in injuring his foes with helmet-first tackles?
I’ll probably watch the game, and commercials, but it matters little to me who wins the Lombardi Trophy. For the record, I predict Pittsburgh will bring home the hardware in a tightly fought 21-17 game, with Green Bay thwarted on a last minute drive within 20 yards of a winning touchdown.
What the Packers and the Steelers do evoke are memories of my emergence as a football fan. I had been vaguely aware of football in the late 1950s, but didn’t really get into the game until I was 12, when Y.A. Tittle joined the Giants as their quarterback in 1961. I think I rooted for Tittle because he was mostly bald. He looked like my father, and since Dad was in no way an athlete, or shared any rooting passion for any sport with me, Tittle provided a small measure of transmutation. It didn’t hurt that Tittle was a very good quarterback on a successful, winning team.
The Giants played the Packers for the NFL championship in 1961 and 1962, losing both times in bitter cold, first in Green Bay and then at Yankee Stadium. I was able to watch the Packers demolish the Giants 37-0 in Green Bay, but the following year’s 16-7 loss was blacked out in New York. It was the custom back then that even if a game sold out, the NFL imposed a 90-mile blackout on any TV transmissions. My 17-year-old brother Bernie, (a Giants fan at the time, now a Washington Redskins fanatic) and his friends traveled to Philadelphia to view the game. It was a sad ride home, made all the more unbearable, Bernie reports, because the car’s heater stopped working.
After playing the championship game again in 1963, this time losing to the Chicago Bears 14-10 in another frigid contest, the Giants began a protracted period of ineptitude. From three straight trips to the ultimate game, their record tumbled to 2-10-2 in 1964. They wouldn’t make it to the championship game, now dubbed the Super Bowl, until 1986 (they won, their first of three Super Bowl titles).
Tittle retired after the 1964 season, but not before losing a heartbreaker—and body breaker—game in Pittsburgh, 27-24. Late in the game, he was hit as he threw by Steeler defensive end John Baker. The pass was intercepted and run back for a touchdown. A dazed Tittle, helmet off, sat on his knees near the end zone, his hands on his thighs, blood streaming down the left side of his face. He had suffered a concussion and a broken sternum. The picture of the defeated Tittle is considered one of the iconic sports photos of all time (http://store.post-gazette.com/divinity-cart/item/P265/Y.A.-Tittle-Photo/1.html).
Showing posts with label Pittsburgh Steelers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pittsburgh Steelers. Show all posts
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Parental Reflections
Millions of Africans and Southeast Asians believe the Buffalo Bills are one of the most successful National Football League teams in history. How could they not think so, when they are clothed in T-shirts from 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994 proclaiming the Bills Super Bowl champions of those respective years?
Of course, Buffalo lost the penultimate game in each of those years, but by a long-standing practice of the novelty souvenir business, manufacturers produce “winning” merchandise for both teams prior to each championship game. To the victors go the spoils, the saying goes, meaning merchandise with the winning team’s logos sells like hotcakes. Meanwhile, merchandise proclaiming the losing team as champion quickly is bundled up and shipped overseas for distribution by charity and relief organizations.
I bring this to your attention because of the dominance of news reports these last few days about the sell-through of NY Jets merchandise at New York area sporting goods shops. It seems retailers couldn’t get enough green and white jerseys in the run-up to this evening’s American Football Conference title game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Thirty years ago my father got caught up in the frenzy of sports memorabilia. Football was never part of his Americanization. He could barely master the intricacies of baseball. But, as my brother Bernie recalled, in late December 1979, Dad, an independent apparel manufacturer, surprised him by saying he was rooting for Philadelphia to win its next game. Bernie asked if he knew whether the team was playing football, basketball or hockey. “I don’t know, or care,” he replied. “I only know that if Philadelphia wins and plays next week, then I have an order for 10,000 green T-shirts with white sleeves!”
It was the Philadelphia Eagles football team. They played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a divisional playoff game. Philadelphia lost, 24-17. More importantly for Jets fans, the eventual winner of the Super Bowl that season was the Pittsburgh Steelers!
Zsa Zsa Gabor is back home after having her right leg amputated on January 14. For those not familiar with the 93-year-old Hungarian-born celebrity, Zsa Zsa and her sisters Magda and Eva, along with her mother Jolie, were the Kardashians of the post-World War II era. Zsa Zsa was an actress of questionable talent, but she and the other Gabors were always in the gossip pages—Zsa Zsa, alone, has had nine husbands. Eva wound up outshining her in front of the cameras when she starred with Eddie Albert in the CBS situation comedy Green Acres in the late 1960s.
Zsa Zsa Gabor makes me think of my mother. Like Zsa Zsa, she was born in Easter Europe in 1917. Like Zsa Zsa, my mother had her lower leg amputated. Already frail from smoking too much and diabetic, Mom’s life became even more sedentary. My parents had to give up their homes in Brooklyn and Miami Beach as they weren’t wheelchair compatible. They moved into an independent care facility near Bernie, in Rockville, MD.
As her blood circulation deteriorated even more, she was scheduled for an operation to amputate her other leg when she died of a heart attack. One week from tonight I’ll light a memorial candle to commemorate her passing in 1996.
Of course, Buffalo lost the penultimate game in each of those years, but by a long-standing practice of the novelty souvenir business, manufacturers produce “winning” merchandise for both teams prior to each championship game. To the victors go the spoils, the saying goes, meaning merchandise with the winning team’s logos sells like hotcakes. Meanwhile, merchandise proclaiming the losing team as champion quickly is bundled up and shipped overseas for distribution by charity and relief organizations.
I bring this to your attention because of the dominance of news reports these last few days about the sell-through of NY Jets merchandise at New York area sporting goods shops. It seems retailers couldn’t get enough green and white jerseys in the run-up to this evening’s American Football Conference title game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Thirty years ago my father got caught up in the frenzy of sports memorabilia. Football was never part of his Americanization. He could barely master the intricacies of baseball. But, as my brother Bernie recalled, in late December 1979, Dad, an independent apparel manufacturer, surprised him by saying he was rooting for Philadelphia to win its next game. Bernie asked if he knew whether the team was playing football, basketball or hockey. “I don’t know, or care,” he replied. “I only know that if Philadelphia wins and plays next week, then I have an order for 10,000 green T-shirts with white sleeves!”
It was the Philadelphia Eagles football team. They played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a divisional playoff game. Philadelphia lost, 24-17. More importantly for Jets fans, the eventual winner of the Super Bowl that season was the Pittsburgh Steelers!
Zsa Zsa Gabor is back home after having her right leg amputated on January 14. For those not familiar with the 93-year-old Hungarian-born celebrity, Zsa Zsa and her sisters Magda and Eva, along with her mother Jolie, were the Kardashians of the post-World War II era. Zsa Zsa was an actress of questionable talent, but she and the other Gabors were always in the gossip pages—Zsa Zsa, alone, has had nine husbands. Eva wound up outshining her in front of the cameras when she starred with Eddie Albert in the CBS situation comedy Green Acres in the late 1960s.
Zsa Zsa Gabor makes me think of my mother. Like Zsa Zsa, she was born in Easter Europe in 1917. Like Zsa Zsa, my mother had her lower leg amputated. Already frail from smoking too much and diabetic, Mom’s life became even more sedentary. My parents had to give up their homes in Brooklyn and Miami Beach as they weren’t wheelchair compatible. They moved into an independent care facility near Bernie, in Rockville, MD.
As her blood circulation deteriorated even more, she was scheduled for an operation to amputate her other leg when she died of a heart attack. One week from tonight I’ll light a memorial candle to commemorate her passing in 1996.
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