"We" or "They"

Sorry for the lack of posts--I got so stuck in the morass of the personal finance stuff that it was hard to get out. I thought about posting some thoughts on the Giants game last week (against the Cowboys), but didn't have any great depth of thought--I was just relieved they didn't blow the game.

And that's a common theme for me, even in ultimate or anything really, relief at not losing and/or failing, rather than the joy of winning/succeeding. I guess the flailings of most of the teams i root for over the past dozen years or so has created a certain emotional detachment from the results. But the ultimate is also a factor here--being directly involved in the winning/losing aspect, made me less attached to a uniform worn by a bunch of guys I don't know. Yeah, I still am interested in the result and a homerun by Yadier Molina or a meltdown like January 5, 2003 hurts for a bit, but I get over it. But it's conditioned me to expect the worst and not appreciate the success.

So that brings us to yesterday. I was playing beach ultimate during the first half of the Giant-Packer game, but caught the second half and watched it with a group that was predominately Packer fans, who were much more invested in their team than I am with mine. Hence the subject. They referred to the Packers as "we" and "us". I don't even refer to ASU sports (where I've spend most of the last 12 years as a student or employee) that way, let alone the Giants or other professional sports teams. After the game, when Lawrence Tynes finally ended it, two of the people congratulated me, and I'm thinking to myself "you know, i don't recall making any tackles or throwing a block," but just said "thanks" and moved on (we had to hit the road).

What causes that level of devotion? Is it good, to have that depth of passion? Is it bad to care about something so much that you have absolutely no control over? I mean, after all, it's just football right?

Or is it more than that?:

Unreal what decades of Giants football does to people.

My Dad passed away in May 2005. He instilled this disease in me and my brother. Dad bled Giants' blue since the early 1930s. Met Mom around 1960 and since then, Mom suffered through hundreds of game-day Sundays.

Funny how she'd always complain about the way we'd behave during games, me, Dad and my brother. For years, we lived and died, more or less, depending on the game's magnitude, through many years. And Mom complained.

We enjoyed '86 and '90 together and suffered through 2000 in the same room. Tonight, as Tynes' 47-yarder sailed through the uprights, putting my brother and I into a mild state of shock, the phone rang right away. It was Mom. She was alone in her living room just a few miles away, watching these Giants win ... the same team she'd cursed for decades.

This team, she used to say, upset her family so much. So for that, she hated them. She just couldn't understand, she had said. She despised these Giants for all that pain they caused her men.

But in May 2005 it was the '86 Super Bowl video that played on a TV in the lobby of a funeral home as literally hundreds of folks lined up to pay their respects to Dad. Just a few of them understood. They smiled and nodded.

Tonight Tynes' 47-yarder was true and the phone rang.

"Look at that ball go," was all Mom kept saying into the phone. "Look at it ... look at it," she said, while she cried on the other end, watching the endless replays just afterward. "I'm bawling my head off over here," she said. "This is ridiculous."

I don't know what else could possibly show that this isn't just a game, or just a football team. The Giants are so much more, to so many more.

I know you understand. This is so great. So great.

I had been planning on hosting a Super Bowl party, since we/I like to do that sort of thing ever since we became the Plasminalls. But a big gathering just doesn't feel right.

I'm watching it with my dad.