This morning, during my online wanderings, I came across this headline in today’s Duluth News Tribune: “GOP takes over Minnesota Legislature after 38 years.” After the obvious observations of the election's consequences, came the speculation, “Republican tidal wave could carry Vikings to L.A.”
This was the theoretical scenario: “With multiple [stadium] projects in L.A. unfolding and London now on the map to get a team, the Vikings will migrate to the top of the to-move list if they don't get a new stadium in Minnesota. Legislative majorities will confront a projected $6 billion deficit, address a push for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium ... ”
With the combined drama of both election results and the Vikings on and off-field, Minnesotans must now worry about their NFL franchise pulling up and moving to Los Angeles, the largest city in the U.S. without a pro football team.
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Los Angeles Rams, by then playing in Anaheim, played their last game in Southern California back in 1994. The Oakland Raiders played in the same stadium, the L.A. Coliseum that was the Rams home field from 1946 through 1980, before moving to nearby Orange County. The Oakland Raiders, shifted south to L.A. in 1982, making the Coliseum their home arena; they moved back home in 1995. Los Angeles has been without a pro football team since then.
Me? I became a Rams fanatic in 1965, courtesy of the comp tickets, perks that came with my job at KHJ radio. Maniacally, I have never missed watching a single Rams game, live or broadcast, since I witnessed my first one in the summer of ’65. Win, lose or tie, I resolutely planted my butt on Seat 115, Row 72, and Tunnel 11, along with five other equally crazed buddies, all of whom became Rams fans the moment their tickets were free, and the team played well for a spell.
To discourage anyone who might think that this might have been glamorous, sitting there amongst movie and TV stars, bigtime recording artists, major politicos, Gypsy Boots and the well-heeled from Beverly Hills, wheeled to the games in their limousines stocked with booze and appetizers, I dug up the following, unpublished, recollection of attending Rams games in the Coliseum for 11 years.
For those in Minnesota, I hope they get their new stadium and don’t lose their team. For those who might think attending NFL games in the Swinging Sixties was excitement, enthusiasm and extreme Hollywood personified, here is--to quote the immortal Paul Harvey--“The Rest Of The Story.”
This is probably the PEAK day of my pro football life, if I live to be 100. On the same day, the best Ram runner and the best Ram O-lineman ever saw play were enshrined in the Pro Football Hall Of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
I watched Eric Dickerson run for SMU and Tom Mack block at Michigan; saw every play they both ever played for the Rams. Today was really moving for me. Watching film of #65 in his blue and whites annihilate defenders or blasting holes in the middle and #29 pulling away from the DB's with that smooth stride second only to Sayers was always a thrill.
We sat in the Coliseum when people were INTO it. Creaming the friggin’ Niners twice a year. At least one O-lineman in the Pro Bowl annually. Dick Enberg calling the play-by-play on KMPC, pre-FM Radio. The world's most disgusting "hot dogs," which you knew were indeed made from erstwhile house pets from East L.A.
Commander Chuck Street checks out RJ's seat, 40 years later.
Intermission was the time to fight a battalion of other macho men squeezing their sphincters, trying to hold it in until reaching one of the concrete bunkers euphemistically called "Men’s Rest Rooms."
Ah, the compacted, compressed, crushed, mashed-together herd; sweating and pissed-off because they haven't beat the spread-yet; beer drunk, standing at the trough in a half-inch of urine soaking into your soles. Yuck!
The accompanying stench wafted up. A polluted putz dumping beer down your back; some schmuck with a Fidel Castro El Maximo cigar shoved into the nape of your neck, while an acid-freaked Hell's Angel glares at you, easing in close enough to shiv you in the back.
This claustrophobic tomb made Halawa Jail seem like the Beverly Hilton, fuming out of sudden death from drowning in a puddle of beer-and-Coke puke with swirling, foul fecal aromas there in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum's "Men's Rest Room" close by Tunnel 7.
Men wearing Rams gear, transvestites, cross-dressers, walk right over you, unzipped, their black, brown, red, yellow and white pulsing penises dangling at the ready, waiting for the sucker who's been standing at the troth farting to DO SOMETHING!
DAMN IT! THE SUCKING CROWD ROARS FROM ABOVE GOES NUTS. NO ONE IN THE VOMIT-INDUCING BUNKER KNOWS IF GABRIEL JUST THREW IT RIGHT TO SOME GREEN BAY DB WHO IS RUNNING IT BACK 56-YARDS FOR A TOUCHDOWN WHILE SOME RAM O-LINEMAN GOES NUTS BECAUSE HE GETS TO "PLAY DEFENSE, ONLY TO BLOW OUT HIS KNEE IN SOME RIPLEY'S "BELIEVE IT OR NOT" PLAY THAT INSTANTLY TURNS THE GUY INTO A PATHETIC PARAPLEGIC. OR, MAYBE IT WAS ACTUALLY A GOOD PLAY BY THE RAMS THAT CAUSED THE ROAR.
YOU STAND PLANTED THERE AT THE STAINLESS STEEL RUNOFF, WITH YOUR GENITALS SHRUNK, AS IF THEY WERE PROCESSED IN AN INDUSTRIAL LAUNDROMAT WITH EVERYTHING TURNED UP TO MAXIMUM HEAT. BERSERK FANS LEAKING OUT SLOW TAMALE & BEAN FARTS, BUT DOING NOTHING RESEMBLING TAKING A REAL LEAK; EVERYONE BEHIND YOU SHOVED FORWARD LIKE CRAZED TOKYO COMMUTERS CRAMMED INTO BULLET TRAINS,
IT'S SOME KIND OF TESTOSTERONE CAVE MAN GRIDLOCK. YOU KNOW THAT THE SHTUNKIN' RAMS ARE GOING TO DO THEIR ONE GOOD THING FOR THE YEAR WHILE YOU EXPIRE IN THE JOHN. YOU WILL DIE, IGNORED IN THIS MEDIEVAL PIT, YOUR EXCREMENT-MARINATED CORPSE TO BE CASUALLY DISCOVERED THE NEXT MORNING BY A BLASÉ CLEAN UP CREW DRAGS A CITY OF LOS ANGELES STANDARD ISSUE MOP. THOSE WHO DEAL WITH THE DETRITUS OF DEFEAT HAVE SEEN IT ALL. PERHAPS ONE MIGHT CALL 911 AFTER HIS A BULL DURHAM CIGARETTE BREAK.
Alas, I would go through every millisecond of it again, if I could, just to be there in that time, in that place, when KHJ was kicking ass, whether LA’s football team was or not. Then I could live the boss life for the other 164 hours before the next game kicked off. I want all of it: the ritual arguing about where to pick up the bagels, Canter's or Ma Gordon's ("Ma" being a retired pro wrestler.)
Arguing about whether the NO LEFT TURN sign would be up by the time we hit Santa Barbara, with five pot-smoking riders, all backseat drivers hollering over the Four Tops blaring out of the Caddy radio "Sugar pie honey bunch..."
Trying to look cool driving through entire blocks of Watts burnouts; every kind of street-legal machine on wheels arriving from all of Southern California as we argue about whose turn it was to pay off the Lebanese Underground that controlled the South parking lot so that we'd get one of the six Hoover Street getaway spots, next to the old Olympic pool, and parking behind Mayor Tom Bradley's limousine,
Through the tunnel, up the cement steps, hauling the Bushnell Safari Masters (wide angle enough to eye the offense on one side, the defense on the other) and climbing up to Row 72, shady side, to the left of the press box, getting one’s game setup together under seat 114. Mandatory binocs, program, peanuts, hot dog, soda. And then, checking out the kickers warming up amd the incredible T&A show of the Hollywood babes who came to the games--most of them not knowing whether they were there to watch cricket or a miniature race riot involving men in plastic armor pounding the crap out of one another for nine seconds.
Then the standing around restlessly, adrenaline pumping, during the TV commercials, which seem like they are 25-minutes long when you are actually are at the game. And the shabby but Official Los Angeles Ram Band, off in their corner, playing forget your troubles, come on, get happy!
Kickoff in one hour!
EPILOGUE: The 1999 season began a month after this was written. The lowly Rams, by then in St. Louis, morphed into the Greatest Show on Turf, went from worst to first. On January 30, 2000 in the Georgia Dome the Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV. The gun went off just after a “miracle” finish. The game, one of the most exciting championship games ever, featured "The Catch" and "The Tackle." The Rams, finally, were winners.
My memories of the L. A. Coliseum's nauseous innards were washed away by tears of joy.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar