Monday, January 19, 2009

Baltimore football

Was home from yesterday's recording session in time to watch the AFC championship game on the DVR; barely got caught up to watch the end of the game live. The good news is that I won't be shelling out money for crab meat to make crab cakes on Super Bowl Sunday, but then, that's pretty much the bad news, too, since McGahee is ok. My team had a better year than we had any right to expect.

I try to not be too outspoken as a Ravens fan living in Ohio. Even this close to Cincinnati, I know quite a few Browns fans. It isn't that I'm cowed by them, but that I understand their feelings. Most of them become more accepting of my allegiance when I mention that I refused to support the new Baltimore team until Cleveland had their own team again, and point out that at least they're still rooting for the Browns. I wish the elder Irsay would've at least handled things the same way. After all, what do the people of Indianapolis care about Raymond Berry, Lenny Moore, Gino Marchetti, Artie Donovan, Alan Ameche, John Mackey, Alex Sandusky (as a kid, I used to bowl in his bowling alley in Riviera Beach, MD; duckpin bowling, baby!), the late Johnny U., or even Steve Myhra? These guys are all Baltimore legends! And I love that eHow still lists the old lyrics to the team's fight song, even though they haven't fit the circumstances in decades.

I wonder if folks in L.A. have similar feelings about the Rams? I don't have the same sympathy for them re: the Raiders, though; they never should have left Oakland in the first place.

One ironic thing: the city of Baltimore's collective memory would be almost as incomplete without those Mayflower moving trucks as if Myhra had missed that field goal in '58. Here's another neat article about that game. In the past 6 weeks, with all the coverage that game has received, I've gained a fresh understanding of just how 2-bit Baltimore was considered before the Colts came to town and subsequently won that championship.

2 comments:

  1. How do we feel about football? Well, the thugs like the Raiders. The rest of us don't know what football is. I really haven't paid much attention to it Georgia stole the team in 1995. I tried to follow the Chargers one year but I couldn't do it. Too many years of Roman Gabriel, Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Rosey Grier, Eric Dickerson, Henry Ellard, et al. I do watch the Big Game but only to eat the food and watch the commercials!

    Studio recording, now, huh? Look who's gone Hollywood! That must be pretty special.

    Things are good out here. It's been a real warm winter so far. Of course, compared to you guys, it's always warm, huh?

    Be good!

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  2. With the size of your market, I'm as mystified as everyone else that no team has landed there as of yet.

    Yeah, I'm trying not to let the studio thing go to my head. I should have a humbling experience when I go in to lay down this one guitar track on Thursday night.

    And considering we were the coldest spot in the country (including Alaska - we were 10°F colder than Barrow; at least the sun was shining here!) one day last week, yeah, you're in a weather paradise!

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