In search of heroes Jan. 27, 1986

 

  

Super Bowl Sunday is over and the haze of it fades like a bad dream, whose details didn’t matter to me in the first place since football is not my sport – except maybe in the early 1970s when cigar-chomping Cecil (Pauly’s father) constantly bitched about how bad the New York Giants were, and me, Pauly, Alf, Garrick and others played our own sad version of the game.

In play, I was practically thrown over some hedges. In another, I deliberately tripped Alf and he got so peeved he threatened to kill me.

The day after each of these “games,” I was so sore I vowed never to do it again, but always did.

The last time we played, I was in better shape. But Pauly had an issue with Stevie’s boa constrictor which shit on Pauly’s foot. There was always some comic relief when it came to these sporting disasters, even when only three of us showed up.

Pauly like his father had the NY Giants in his blood. This year it was infectious, so even I caught a bit of the hype. I actually watched the game last night, cheering on the underdog, hoping it had enough of whatever it took to live up to the hype.

It did not.

It took me a while to realize just how phony it all was, pumped up by television, so that the bookies in Las Vegas could make their killing.

I recall the pervious time I made the mistake of getting wrapped up in the game, back in the mid-1970s when I rooted for Denver.

Back then, it was Cliff who got me into the game – a fellow worker at the cosmetic company who had played football for the University of Pittsburg before a knee injury ruined his chances of becoming a pro.

I remember meeting him at the Club House Bar on Route 46. I got drunk – a depressing drunk, full of guilt over having sent my mother into exile down the shore with her brother, and at a time in my life when everything seemed to go wrong and needed sports heroes to make me feel better. Only I’m a baseball guy, who followed the box scores from spring training to the world series, and then limped along without anything in the off season, and so, let Cliff convince me that Super Bowl was a good idea, when it really wasn’t.

I felt a little bit like that yesterday as well, looking to get something out of the game which just wasn’t there, having no serious relationship in my life and having no prospects except a cheap hard on at the strip club on Friday nights.

Ultimately, I find these kinds of moments less painful than being thrown over hedges or having my foot shit on by a snake.

 

1986 Menu


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