The NFL stars and coach proved weirdly welcoming to a high school journalist
As careful readers of this publication will know, I am a person much concerned with choices, be they good, bad or indifferent. My views on this are driven less by dogma than realism: Just last week I advised on these pages that the Palestinian Authority, bad though it is, was the least-bad option for ruling post-war Gaza. A choice can be unpleasant, but an adult knows when to make it. Yet I myself have make some questionable ones.
Perhaps chief among these was my choice, while growing up in the Philadelphia area, to succumb to being a fan of professional sports. This affliction is not only a waste of time but can be, for the unluckiest, a source of constant pain. The second bit relates to another poor choice, which was to not avoid the choice of supporting Philly teams specifically.
Cleverer kids disdained the local teams and rooted for faraway clubs, making them instantly seem distinctive. This at times affected lives: One friend infuriatingly supported teams from Boston only; he lives there now, a half-century later. We’re all shaped by our choices, random though they can seem.
Supporting the local teams in Philadelphia is a source of constant pain because they underperform, for reasons which the finest minds have yet to comprehend. It is a major market – the fourth or fifth in the land or so, depending on how you measure, and the rabid fan base fills the stadiums and watches the broadcasts slavishly, such that the teams have resources with which to buy big stars. Yet the results speak for themselves.
The Flyers hockey team has won but two Stanley Cup championships, the last in 1975. The 76ers basketball team has won but two titles as well, and none since 1986. Both are currently wallowing in mediocre, dispiriting seasons that confirm the pattern. I have written them both off, and my existence is happier for it.
The other two major teams are of another caliber, though they too disappoint. The Phillies of Major League Baseball have won just two World Series titles, compared to 27 for the hated New York Yankees – but the last was in 2008, which is respectable. And as for the Eagles of the National Football League, they have won just one Super Bowl, in 2018. The Steelers, from the vastly smaller and utterly inferior town of Pittsburgh from across the state (of Pennsylvania), won six. Six! The very number mocks us.
Nonetheless I love the Phillies and the Eagles with an unaccountable zeal. As I described in my origin story of my Eagles fanhood, when they finally won the title seven years ago, I made the mistake of telling my wife and two daughters that it was the happiest moment of my life. That quickly revealed itself as a particularly poor choice.
The choice I have run away from is which of the two I love the best. I go back and forth on this one, and as a true Philly fan the answer at any given moment is mostly determined by which team is playing and how well they’re doing. Philly fans know our ways are not always graced by nobility, but they are ours, and we must own them.
Several months ago, upon the death of Phillies great Pete Rose, I wrote of my interview with him, when my friend Alfred and I snuck onto the field at Veterans’ Stadium in the middle of a game, carrying with us a back-breaking “portapak” TV camera. At that moment, I recall with clarity, I loved the Phillies best. Indeed, they went on to win their first World Series that year, which made me love them all the more.
(There is nothing global about the “World Series,” which is a national championship that might include a team from Canada. That they call it that, though baseball is also played at a high level in Japan and throughout Latin America, is one of those weird things about the US that just are. Like inches. Or psychotics allowed to buy guns. Or Trump.)
I’m afraid readers of my story about the surreal encounter with Rose may have gotten the wrong impression – that this was my first major sports celebrity interview. Today I want to set the record straight.
I am inspired to do it because this week the Eagles are my favorite. This is so because they have made it to the Super Bowl, to be played Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs, a collection of thugs despised by most rational people in the world except for Taylor Swift and NFL referees. This is the Eagles’ fifth Super Bowl appearance, and a rematch of the one from two years ago, which was awarded to the Chiefs by the refs through dubious calls at critical junctures and one-sided officiating throughout. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but this scandal is one of the great conspiracies of our era.
(I am also not a bad sport, though it can seem that way. Philly fans have a not-unearned reputation for violence and spite, but we are actually resigned to misfortune and generally do not question it.)
I am therefore choosing this moment of portent, in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, to reveal to the world that my first celebrity sports interview in fact took place I the summer of 1979 at the Eagles’ training camp at Widener University’s football field. The access was organized by Alfred and me by writing to the Eagles press office and saying we represented a cable TV station in West Philadelphia. It was a closed-circuit high school studio connected to the homerooms by some cables, so the tale is only somewhat tall. Even then, as you can see, we were studiously honing our craft.
At the appointed time we arrived at the practice field of Widener University, where they held their preseason drills at the time. We decided that I would do the interviews, because I knew somewhat more about the team (due to the shocking nature of the origin story, which I urge everyone to reread).
First up was Wilbert Montgomery, the star “running back” whose job it is to receive the ball from the “quarterback” and try to run, “gaining yards” in hopes of reaching the “end zone.” This is, for reasons no one understands, called “rushing.” I hit him right away with the unflinching question.
“We’re talking to Wilbert Montgomery. You were injured to two games last year and it may have cost you the rushing title. What do you think your chances are of doing so this year?”
“Well, I’m not thinking of the rushing title this year,” he answered with fiendish cleverness. “All I want to do is have a successful year in rushing. I would like to go over the 1,000-yard mark again.”
It is striking, watching the video, that Montgomery seems not that much bulkier than the skinny kid standing next to him. He is bigger to be sure, but the difference is nothing on the level that exists today, when players routinely weigh 300 pounds (which is about 135 kilos in normal countries). I doubt Montgomery could “rush” for a single yard in today’s gargantuan NFL
Montgomery handled it like a pro. “Well, our chances are very good of making the playoffs, but right now I cannot say how far we would go. But I would like to go all the way to the Super Bowl.”
Thinking back, I should have challenged him immediately as to why he wanted to merely get to the Super Bowl as opposed to winning it. I was young.
Next up, the quarterback, Ron Jaworski. Another affable fellow of somewhat normal size, who would be carted off the field on a stretcher within minutes if he tried to play today (even as a young man). So unassuming was this guy that I called him by his first name, which he took in his stride. “Ron, after last year’s heartbreaking loss in the playoffs, do you think that’ll affect the team this year? Do you have any added incentive?”
“Well, it’ll affect us positively. Making the playoffs, having a winning season, is definitely going to have a good influence on the team. I think a lot of the young guys and a lot of the veterans know what it’s like now to be in playoff situations, and the importance of playoff games, and we’re looking forward to a winning season and going back to the playoffs and going on further.”
I decided to throw Jaworski a curveball, if I may borrow an analogy from the other sport. “How far do you expect to go this year?”
“Well, that’s difficult to say,” Jaworski replied. Were they coordinating their answers? Had he peeked at the notebook I was clutching in my left hand? “We really have to take one game at a time, but I feel we have the talent now and the experience and a lot of veteran players mixed with a lot of young guys that give us the talent and the ability to go further than most people may think we can.”
“Well, we wish you all the best of luck in the upcoming season,” I concluded. In this, I revealed my lifelong struggle to keep at bay my instinct for opinion journalism. Jaworski seemed unmoved.
“Well, I think we’re a better football team than we were last year at the same time. I don’t think there’s any comparison.
“Last year, the kicking situation was your real downfall … Have you taken any steps to correct the situation?” This descended into a discussion about particular players and their relative strengths, which I regret.
“How great is the loss of Mike Hogan and Jim Betterson?” “We’ll miss Mike Hogan, no question about it, and Jim Betterson. They were both good guys and played well for us and helped us win, but we can line up without them.”
I wasn’t done there. “How is Jerry Robinson fit into the mold of the Eagles?” I asked of their new rookie linebacker, which is a defensive position. “Well, I think he’s going to be a great player,” Vermeil said. “He’s a future All-Pro” – meaning a selection as the best at his position. And so it was. Robinson soon earned that designation and played for the Eagles for five excellent seasons.
“Thank you very much, Dick Vermeil,” I said. “That concludes our visit to Eagles training camp.”
The following season the Eagles did make the Super Bowl, just as Montgomery had hoped. Whereupon they were thrashed by Oakland. What gentlemen all three were! What lack of bravado! Or, maybe, they reflected the fan base. We are fearful of expressing confidence, lest we jinx the team.
Now the Eagles are going to the Super Bowl for the fifth time, hoping for the second title. For the record, I am sure the Chiefs will win again, with the help of the refs, as the overrated singer waves from the stands. If I were in the habit of ever congratulating a rival team, I would do so wholeheartedly, even in advance. But that’s not how we roll. It is, in fact, a choice.
