The Philadelphia Eagles brought me back to church

The church of football, that is

There was a moment, circa 1986 or so, when I think I knew the batting averages of the entire Yankees team, and knew most of the rosters of every other major league baseball team. That season, I also avidly followed the Mets (not with pleasure, as I was a. Yankees fan, but I was glad when they beat the loathed Red Sox in the World Series) and the ascendant New York Giants (of Phil Simms and Joe Morris) in the NFL, and a bit of basketball, because how could one not in the days of Magic/Bird, LA/Boston rivalries? I cared about sports. A LOT.

Then, around 1988, when I entered high school, this fandom just ended. It stopped. Not out of some high-minded decision to reject sports fandom, but because high school was really demanding. I was doing three seasons of sports, a lot of theater, and more homework than I had ever done in my life. Whereas in junior high, I had fallen asleep listening to the Yankees on the radio (WIXY-1600 on the AM dial), and got up early to scan the sports pages, and thus kept up, I now fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and woke up just in time to wolf down some cereal and catch the carpool to school. Weeks went by that I didn’t know if the Yankees were winning or losing.

Somehow, I looked up around junior year and realized, “Holy cow, I have stopped caring about pro sports.” I didn’t miss it. I didn’t not miss it. It just was.

There was a brief resurgence of fandom after I graduated from college. In the fall of 1996, when I was an indolent unemployed soul in possession of a prestigious bachelor’s degree, and all of a sudden the Yankees, who had last been in the World Series in 1981, when I was seven, were in it again (and won), I had nothing better to do than follow them all the way to their newfound glory.

But then they started winning a lot, and that got boring (and, with their payroll, seemed unfair), and so I checked out again. I have checked into pro sports again, from time to time, but the demands of being a parent, earning a living, and actually playing sports (not a lot, enough to stave off the fear of mortality) have kept me out of the loop.

And then, last Sunday, I had nothing to do for an hour. That is a pretty rare thing. In fact, I couldn’t remember when I last had nothing to do for an hour. A friend had in fact invited me to come watch the NFL playoffs with him, but because of the impending snowfall, I begged off, leaving me at home with nothing to do, and the knowledge there was football on TV.

Normally, it doesn’t even occur to me that there is football on TV. It would be hard to overstate how thoroughly ignorant of pro sports I have become. I don’t think I could name three current NFL players (even after watching a game on Sunday). I know one of them dates Taylor Swift. I am totally checked out. I follow pro football the way that most of us follow pro backgammon, or the Nepalese legislature.

But on this day, I had free time and the knowledge that there was a game on. I sat down and found the Eagles-Rams on the TV. My eldest daughter, who is a big football fan and can name many NFL players, sat down next to me. We were watching together. And it was hella fun, as Oakland Raiders fans (of blessed memory) would say.

But it wasn’t just that it was football. It was the Eagles. And my mom is from Philly. Growing up, I ate many cheese steaks at Dalessandro’s, a place that is not Pat’s or Jim’s or Gino’s, that is better than all of them, and that only locals have heard of.

Indeed, I have relatives who sound not unlike the characters on Mare of Easttown, parodied so well here:

And as I watched the game—a minor cliffhanger, played in the glorious snow, with the Eagles hanging on to win at the very end—I found myself really caring about the outcome. Not caring in the Blackhawks/Red Wings “time to burn the city down and turn over cars” way, but caring as in, “Gosh, I’ll be a lot happier if the Eagles win.”

And I decided to keep following them for the rest of the post-season. And maybe even next season, too.

Reflecting on this turn of heart, I realized that I was primed to re-examine sports, and how sports can make meaning for people, by the time I spent in Pittsburgh reporting for this book, which you should buy now. Pittsburgh sports mean a lot to Pittsburghers; you can feel it on game day, you can see it in the black and yellow. (And is there another city all of whose pro teams have the same color scheme?)

And that is something I really saw when reporting on a mass shooting …