This was a great moment, a moment when I let out my barbaric yawp…but it wasn’t enough. Hard to imagine anything ever being enough.
Kick it!
“That is what “to the pain” means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery, forever.”— Westley (AKA: The Dread Pirate Roberts)
Above describes best what it was like to be a Los Angeles Rams fan in the 1970’s. Every loss was a cut, every playoff loss was a scar left on the soul. You were laughed at and humiliated by bandwagoning Cowboy fans.
Don’t believe me? Is that overly dramatic? Prior to free agency in the NFL (and in all sports for that matter) you grew up with your team. You met them when they were rookies at 22 and if you were lucky you had them for about six to seven years before change came. Before age cost them their starting spot or injury cost them their career, and occasionally they were traded.
They may have been 22 years old when they put on Rams gear, but you were eight or nine. And if they played those six to seven years then they were with you through the mid-point of your high school career.
Hall of Fame defensive end Jack Youngblood was drafted in 1971. I became a Rams fan in 1972 and he played through 1984. This means from age eight through age 20 Youngblood was part of my life.
You put away your toys, your soldiers, your G.I. Joes’, you may even put away your dreams of playing in the NFL, but once a team of players get hold of you it becomes part of you. You love it. You love them.
When they would show old films of Brooklyn fans weeping as the Dodgers left for Los Angeles and then watching Ebbets Field being torn down, even as a kid I could understand what they were feeling.
On a street without fathers, those guys were our fathers. Our heroes. You can keep the Fonz, I was far more partial to John Hadl going long to Harold Jackson.
So when they hurt, you hurt. When they won, you won. And it was family first. If one of the players of the family left for another team, painful as it was, it was always family first. Hence when Harold Jackson went to the New England Patriots, it was God Bless you Harold but I’m still rooting for the Rams. When James Harris was rudely sent to the San Diego Chargers, I was still a Rams fan.
But there was pain that never goes away. Wounds that never truly heal.
In 1973 when Rams safety Steve Preece went for the interception instead of the hit on Drew Pearson in Dallas and Pearson ended up going the distance in the Cowboys 27-16 playoff victory…I was sick.
In 1974 when the Rams lost the NFC championship game in Minnesota, 14-10, I went to the back room of our now silent house and cried…And prayed curses on Chuck Foreman and Fran Tarkenton.
In 1975 at the NFC championship game at the Coliseum I had a seat in the closed end of the stadium to see the Cowboys Preston Pearson score three touchdowns in the Cowboys 37-7 victory. We road the bus all the way back to El Monte in sickness.
In 1976 back in Minnesota for the NFC championship game I sat in front of the television at my Dad’s house in Santa Clara…having officially turned down invitations by some local teenagers to go with them to visit a nude beach…and watched the Rams move inside the Vikings one on the opening drive. I watched Ron Jessie, in a crazy Chuck Knox moment, get into the endzone on a reverse only to be called down short of the goal line. Then I saw Tom Dempsey’s field goal kick blocked and returned 99-yards by Bobby Bryant. Later I saw Bryant pick off a Pat Haden pass to end a Rams comeback….That night I was mocked repeatedly about the glories of the nude beach I missed, but all I could think about was Merlin Olsen never getting to a Super Bowl.
In 1977 I listened to the mud bowl against the Vikings on the radio…and like everyone else kept waiting for Knox to replace Haden with Joe Namath…it never happened.
In 1978 I saw the Rams lose the NFC championship game at home 28-0 to the Cowboys…and I cussed up a storm. Jim Jodat is not welcome, ever, in my house.
In 1979…There was the victory in Dallas (just as there had been in 1976)…that still feels like Christmas…There was the 9-0 win over Tampa Bay to go to the Super Bowl…and it was this sense of glory. The team we had been with for seven years…the guys that we had seen go from young to veteran players they were finally, we were finally going to a Super Bowl…
Except that dirt bag Eddie Brown, that inter-loper from the Washington Redskins, the only thing I will never forgive George Allen for, does not drop back in coverage in the fourth quarter, with the Rams leading the Steelers, and hangs Rod Perry out to dry.
Thirty-three years later it is a misery, I cannot shake.
The victory in Super Bowl 34, 1999, isn’t tainted because the team was in St. Louis or that Georgia Frontiere was wicked to her core…It was a great win, joyous, I shed a tear, but it wasn’t enough to over come the freakish misery many of us suffer with in being a Rams fan.
I tried to divorce them…I like the Redskins, I like the Chiefs…but not happening. The Rams will always be a part of me.
I wish you all peace, love, charity, and joy watching this coming Super Bowl and all coming Super Bowls…
Except the Dallas Cowboys…may they rot and lie stinking in the earth…
The Dude abides…
504
1 Corinthians 13:11
Contact Joe at joe@midvalleysports.com
Follow him on Twitter at @joet13b
Leave a Reply