It Hurts...

I haven't felt this bad since that girl left me for another dude. The Packers defeat is not something I take lightly. they are a metaphor for hope triumphant, for the underdog, for the little guy, for the flawed and human among us beings. When the season began, I was different man in a different place with a different set of realities. Somehow these things are linked together.

Many "evolved" types disparage sports. Bob was one such person. So was that girl. For the life of them they fail to see the attraction to rooting on a men "acting like boys." It's too "middle class," and for some people, anything "middle class" is synonymous to kryptonite.

Rooting for football, rolling the dice in a game of craps, winning a battle, getting the girl or the guy, seeing an investment in the market turn profitable---this is the stuff of gamblers and lovers, this is the stuff of joys and sorrows. Letting it ride. Putting your faith in a team, allocating to the "team" or to the "community" a large measure of your individual pride and esteem, with the idea that it will pay-off handsomely.

And it does. There are few investments that pay-off as well as a big "victory" in a "big" game. Throughout the beautiful agony of this game, every pass was a personal metaphor for hope and fear, for success and failure. Every home-team first down was chance to reverse the setbacks of the past, a chance to forget the thousand personal humiliations we all experience in our ordinary, non-Lambeau lives.

And then it's over.

it's a week-long vacation to Mudsville. It' s a pit in the throat, an aching heart, it's the lacerating insult you can't take back, it's seeing your father cry for the first time; it's a matter of philosophical questioning: is it better to have loved a team and lost than to never cheer at all?

Without question #4 on the Green Bay Packers has earned a special place in the hearts of millions of fans. Somehow watching a man throw an oblong ball to other men can produce countless moments of undeniable happiness. I never saw Secretariat win the '73 Triple Crown at Belmont by 33 1/2 lengths, and I never saw Jack Nicklaus conquer the '86 Masters, and I missed Larry Bird steal the ball from Isaiah Thomas in the '87 conference finals, and what I would give to have seen Bobby Plump hit the game winning shot for Milan high school in the '54 Indiana State High School Basketball Championship. And I never saw Springsteen play the Bottom Line in '75. But I've seen #4.



Until then,

The Wombury