Sports Fans

Pittsburgh is a city of sports fans. When we moved here we were warned, in clear and prophetic terms, that to live in Pittsburgh was to align one's karmic energy with the fortunes of the Steelers, and although we had our doubts, the facts soon spoke for themselves: the ubiquitous bumper stickers declaring that "Pittsburgh is a drinking town with a football problem;" the Terrible Towel (a $5 dish rag with the team's logo) placed conspicuously in every sitting room; the plague of black-and-gold jerseys that flood the streets on game days, names like Roethlisberger, Holmes, Ward blazoned on the shoulders of everyone, but everyone, young, grimy, professional, dishevelled, rabbinical, diminutive, monstrous, shrunken, and old. Predictably, we have taken a while to adapt: "how many points for that goal?" we continue to ask, not understanding why the point values vary between 1 and 6, nor that the term "goal" (without a "field" prefix) really refers to soccer and that maybe we should just shut up and drink our beer.

Cultural incompetence aside, we found ourselves invited to a Steeler's bash at the residence of two Pitt biology professors. Always game to sneak a peak at the indigenous tribes, we accepted. With Ben, a six pack, a loaf of fresh bread, the carseat, the diaperbag, the pack-n-play, a handful of chupos and a half-dozen toys, we descended on what we assumed would be a gathering of 25 low-key, mild-mannered professional adults. Turns out we caught them them in their Hyde phase: one of the professors was wearing a miner's hat with a Steelers logo, snuffling around the house like a shrub bear, emitting occasional hoots and snarls long before the game even started, as if to find his form, or complete his transformation, in time to be the Beast Itself when the chips were down. And he was on the tame end of things: our good friend J.P. had enormous black and gold bulbs dangling from his ears which were so barbarous that upon seeing them Benjamin burst into tears and had to be taken upstairs for half an hour to calm down. There was a chocolate cake with 'Steelers' spelled out in sprinkles; the au-pair girl from Austria who had arrived two days earlier was sporting a team jersey, eye-paint, two beers, and a fiery look; the cat was nestled in the bedroom on a Terrible Towel, watching the game with studious detachment.

In general, Benjamin is a trooper when it comes to parties, but Superbowl Sunday chez the biologists proved to be a little more than he was ready for. After recovering from that vision of J.P. the Zulu Warrior, Ben maintained a spotty cool, but every five minutes or so, something would happen (a fumble? a first down? a three-pointer? damned if I know), the crowd would erupt, Benjamin would freak, and we'd be back upstairs in the quiet room, singing lullabies and playing Follow the Finger in desperate attempts to regain some composure. The upshot of all this is that I actually only saw about three minutes of the game, which was, by all accounts, one of the finest in Superbowl history. In some ways, this is fitting: after all, am I not the very man who, while living in Boston, was woken up from slumber on the night the Red Sox broke the Curse, crushed the Yankees, and headed for the World Series? At the very least I'm getting myself to a TV these days.