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| Gotta love my teams! |
I became a sports fan at a young age. When I was eight, I happened
upon a Mets game on Memorial Day while my father was outside
barbecuing.
The Mets defeated the Phillies in that 1981 game by the
final score of 13-3, with Mookie Wilson running wild on the bases. I
became a fan of Mookie and the Mets that day. The Mets were a terrible
team when I became a fan and continued to be so until 1984, when they
posted their first winning season since 1976. Two years later, in my
sixth season of fandom, I was rewarded with a World Series championship.
My football interests began quite differently than my baseball
interests. Although I’ve always been a New Yorker, I never rooted for
the Jets or Giants. I would watch their games (more Jets because they
played their home games at Shea Stadium) just because they were on TV,
but I didn’t get emotionally involved with either team. That lasted
until 1983, for on December 24 of that year, I found the team that
would soon become “my team”.
Before the days of DirecTV and the NFL package, if you were an
11-year-old kid wanting to watch football, you just had your local
teams and whoever was playing on Monday Night Football. Of course, I
couldn’t watch Monday Night Football at that age because the games were
on too late and I had to go to school the following day. So basically
if I wanted to see a team that wasn’t a New York team, I had to wait
until the playoffs to do so. On Christmas Eve 1983, I did just that.
The Seattle Seahawks were hosting the Denver Broncos in a wild card
playoff game and I decided to watch the game. At the time the Broncos
had a young rookie quarterback named John Elway and a top running back
in Sammy Winder. The Seahawks shut both of them down, blowing out the
Broncos at the Kingdome, 31-7. I was so impressed by how the Seahawks
played that I watched them the following week, actively rooting for
them to defeat the Miami Dolphins in South Florida.
The year before, I remember watching the Dolphins defeat the Jets in
the AFC Championship Game, 14-0, with the Dolphins’ A.J. Duhe
intercepting Jets quarterback Richard Todd three times on a rainy day
that created a ridiculously muddy field. Since most of my NFL viewing
at the time was restricted to Jets games, I did not like Miami at the
time. The fact that they were playing this Seahawks team that I
enjoyed watching the previous week made it easier to pull for Seattle
in the New Year’s Eve game. I knew that like Denver, Miami also had a
dynamic rookie quarterback in Dan Marino. But Seahawks quarterback
Dave Krieg had a weapon of his own in wide receiver Steve Largent. A
huge 40-yard completion to Largent late in the game helped set up the
go-ahead touchdown for Seattle in the fourth quarter. The Seahawks
tacked on a field goal and upset the heavily-favored Dolphins on the
road, 27-20.
I was completely hooked.
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| Hall of Famer Steve Largent |
Although the Seahawks lost the AFC Championship game to the Raiders,
30-14, I had become a fan. I later found out that this was the first
time the Seahawks had made the playoffs in their eight-year existence
and felt even better about my choice to become a fan. I guess you
could say I became a bandwagon Seahawks fan during their first-ever
playoff run in 1983 without realizing it. Seattle made the playoffs
again in 1984 after finishing the regular season with a
then-franchise-best 12-4 record. But this time, they defeated the
Raiders in the wild card game (Denver had won the AFC West with a 13-3
record after Seattle lost its final two games of the regular season)
and lost the divisional game to the Dolphins.
In 1986, the team that shared Shea Stadium with the Mets in my
pre-Seahawks fan days was now playing its home game in New Jersey. The
Jets, who I kinda sorta rooted for prior to December 24, 1983, got off
to a team-record 10-1 start that year while the Seahawks slogged
through their schedule with a 5-6 record through their first 11 games.
After not making the playoffs in 1985, it appeared as if the Seahawks
were going to miss the playoffs for a second consecutive season. I had
only been a fan (or a “12”, as Seahawks fans are known) for four
seasons, but the team I expected to be competitive annually after their
1983 and 1984 playoff runs was testing my loyalty. “I could have been
a fan of the AFC-best Jets, but I decided to root for this team in
Seattle who I can’t even see on TV every week”, I would say to myself.
It wasn’t easy being a Seahawks fan in New York in 1986, especially
after the Mets had won the World Series and the Jets looked like they
were on their way to the Super Bowl. But a funny thing happened on the
way to the playoffs.
The Jets lost their last five games to finish 10-6 and the Seahawks won
their final five games to go 10-6 as well. There was only one
problem. The Jets had defeated the Seahawks during their 10-out-of-11
streak early in the season. That meant they owned the tiebreaker over
Seattle. The Jets made the playoffs. The Seahawks made vacation plans.
I hated the Jets then.
Seattle eventually made the playoffs in 1987 (losing the wild card game
in overtime to the Houston Oilers) and finally won its first AFC West
title in 1988 (losing the divisional playoff game to Cincinnati – damn
you, Norm Johnson, for killing the rally by missing an extra point!).
So that was four playoff appearances in six years. Things were looking
up for the Seahawks. And then everything went downhill.
From 1989 through 1998, the Seahawks failed to make the playoffs every
year. The 1992 team finished the year with a franchise-record 14
losses, but even when they were bad, they weren’t bad enough. New
England got the No. 1 pick in the draft, while Seattle got No. 2. The
Patriots drafted All-Pro quarterback Drew Bledsoe with the top overall
pick. The Seahawks took quarterback Rick Mirer. Needless to say, New
England got the better deal.
I was now entering my second decade as a Seahawks fan. I had made it
through the Tom Flores and Dennis Erickson eras and I even survived
Brian Bosworth (even if the Boz couldn’t survive
the schooling given to him by Bo Jackson in an infamous Monday Night Football game). As a Mets fan, I
was used to losing seasons, as the team had gone through six straight
of those from 1991 to 1996. But it was hard to say “I’m a Seahawks
fan” for a full decade and having people respond with a blunt “why?”.
Of course, being a fan means hanging with your team through the highs
and lows. I was a 12. And mediocrity was not going to stop me from
continuing to be a 12.
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| Brian Bosworth couldn't stop Bo Jackson, nor could he prevent me from abandoning my loyalty to the Seahawks. |
My patience was finally rewarded in 1999 in the form of a second AFC
West title. I had waited 11 years for the Seahawks to play in January
again, just like I had for the Mets, who by coincidence ended an
11-year playoff drought in 1999 as well. Seattle played Miami at the
Kingdome in their first home playoff game since 1984, but lost a
heartbreaker to Dan Marino and the Dolphins, 20-17. It would be
Marino’s last win as an NFL quarterback. It would also continue
Seattle’s streak of not winning a playoff game to 15 years.
Seattle didn’t make the playoffs again for another four years. When
they did, heartbreak followed. They lost in Green Bay in overtime
after the 2003 season. Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck told America during
the coin flip that “we want the ball and we’re gonna score”, then
proceeded to get the ball into the hands of the Packers’ Al Harris, who
returned the interception for a season-ending touchdown. The following
year, Hasselbeck kept the ball out of the hands of his opponents during
a last-minute drive in the wild card round. But he couldn’t put the
game-tying touchdown in the hands of his own receiver, as Bobby Engram
dropped a pass in the end zone on fourth down, giving the St. Louis
Rams an unexpected victory in Seattle.
It had now been over two decades since I became a 12. And after the
1984 season, all I had seen was playoff loss after playoff loss. Then
came the 2005 season. And 22 years of fandom were finally rewarded.
First, Seattle finished the regular season with a team-record 13 wins.
Then they ended their 21-year winless drought in the playoffs by defeating the
Washington Redskins and Carolina Panthers. The latter win, a 34-14
thrashing, put Seattle in its first Super Bowl.
I had rooted for this team for more than half my life. And I was
finally going to see them play in the ultimate game. But all my
superstitions (standing up for the entire game, makeshift voodoo doll
of Ben Roethlisberger, etc.) failed to help the Seahawks win the Super
Bowl. Perhaps I should have sent the referees a box of chocolates
instead. That way, they wouldn’t have bumbled their way through bad
call after bad call. The Seahawks lost Super Bowl XL to the Pittsburgh
Steelers, 21-10, and it was back to the drawing board for Seattle and
this New-York based 12.
Seattle won division titles in 2006 and 2007, but could only win one
playoff game each year, falling to Chicago and Green Bay,
respectively. The team then posted four consecutive losing records
(although the 2010 team made the playoffs with a 7-9 mark, then set off
seismometers with an unlikely playoff victory over the defending Super
Bowl champion New Orleans Saints) and it looked like the early 1990s
all over again.
Until a man named Russell Wilson was selected in the third round of the 2012 draft.
Through shrewd drafting and a will to win that was instilled by head
coach Pete Carroll, the Seahawks started the 2012 season with a 5-4
record heading into their game with the Jets. Yeah, those Jets. The
same Jets that kept the Seahawks out of the playoffs in 1986. And the
same Jets that also screwed the ‘Hawks in 1998, when Vinny Testaverde
scored a “phantom touchdown” by getting his helmet into the end zone in
a December game against Seattle but failing to push the ball over the
plane of the goal line. But there was one difference between this game
and previous games against the Jets.
It was November 11, 2012, and I was going to this game.
You see, I was turning 40 that week, and my wife decided it would make
a fine birthday present for me to finally attend a Seahawks game in
person. We had never been to Seattle and we decided to make a long
weekend out of it. Oh, here’s another factoid about that Seahawks-Jets
game. Did you know my wife was a Jets fan at the time? Did you also
notice how I said “was”? She stopped being one after the game. The
Seahawks won the game and her heart that day. Seattle didn’t stop
winning until the middle of January.
After we attended the Seahawks-Jets game at CenturyLink Field in 2012, my wife traded in her Jets green for Seahawks blue.
Although the team was knocked out of the playoffs on a last-second
field goal in Atlanta, they accomplished a number of things in 2012:
- They
ended a streak of four straight sub-.500 seasons, finishing with 11
wins – the third highest win total in franchise history.
- They won their first playoff game on the road
since December 31, 1983, which, if you recall, was the first game in
which I actively rooted for the Seahawks to win.
- They won over a new fan in my wife, making it easier for me to be a Seahawks fan in New York.
- They planted the seeds for greater success in 2013.
With a little Seattle rain, those seeds grew into the season I waited
30 years for. Three decades after deciding I was going to root for
this team from the Pacific Northwest, they reminded me why I became a
fan in the first place. I went through early success as a fan in the
mid-to-late 1980s. Then I remained a fan through a decade of
mediocrity. Through all the lean years, I never wavered and I never
gave up hope that someday I would be rewarded with a Super Bowl title.
I came close to feeling that unbridled joy eight years ago. I finally
got to experience it this past Sunday.
I watched my first Seahawks game on December 24, 1983. I rooted for
the team for the first time a week later. I waited over 30 years to
taste the nectar of victory. And on February 2, 2014, I finally got
that taste. It was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted.
I became a Mets fan when the team was not very good, but it only took
six seasons before they gave me a championship. I became a Seahawks
fan when the team was having its first bout with success. It took a
lot longer to climb to the top of the mountain with them.
It isn’t easy being a 12 in New York. But it sure is a lot of fun. And it’s even
more fun now that the team has finally won a Super Bowl. I’ve never
been more proud of this team. Go Hawks – today, tomorrow and forever.
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| We are the champions, my friend! (Photo by Ted S. Warren/AP) |
