Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [42]
The Italian Brothers who sit to my left carry the rage of our section. One is a lawyer and the other a software designer, and the wit and bile that they bring to be meted out to opponents, refs, owners, and sometimes even our own players, can inspire the entire section with a rebel zeal that is hard to imitate outside the building. There’s the Jewish Mother of 417, ever seeking the proper wealthy Jewish athlete to marry her daughter. On Meet the Players Night for season ticket-holders, she will leave a note in a Jewish player’s locker to that effect. Her son names his fantasy teams “The Mighty Hebes,” and Dad, a dermatologist by day, collects jerseys from Jewish players from all sports.
The Grande Dame of 417 sits behind me. Her husband, a veteran fighter pilot who flew P-51 Mustangs in WWII and used to attend every game with her, passed away a few years ago. But she still comes to most games and cheers louder than anyone. “C’mon guys!” she’ll scream into the back of my head. Her groans when things go poorly are so full of genuine pain we sometimes turn to see if she’s all right, only to be met with a scowl that evaporates into a loving please-forgive-me smile before she resumes her admonitions to play better. She has banned the word “sucks” from the section, and although we are all in agreement with her edict, it can be a hard rule to enforce, especially during the playoffs, and on those rare nights she isn’t there, we feel compelled to scold one another should that standard be broken in her absence.
We have the Rainbow Fascist, the Quiet Men, the Blonde Bombshell, and last of all, the Sage of 417, who, having retired from season ticketland after two decades, no longer sits with us regularly, but still pays his old section a visit when he does attend a game.
Attending all forty-one games in a season can be a challenge, and I have on occasion been pinned with the title Partial Plan Patterson, my mayoral status called up for review if skipping games threatens to become a habit.
It’s a community that sprang to life around a number, a box of seats in the upper nosebleeds where the “real fans” congregate. We aren’t there to see and be seen; we’re actually there to watch the games, and we live and die with each contest. “Welcome to 417,” someone will say when a stranger appears, nudging his or her way to a seat holding a tray of food and drinks. Chances are, we won’t be strangers for long.
Forty years of watching sports in person bring me here, standing on a Metro platform, half tipsy, after a game. A young man and his rowdy cohorts come blustering through the crowd. “Old School!” he shouts again, seeing me for the second time, and as he and his friends file past, each one of them shakes my hand.
The Nearest Thing to
Perfection
My mother, rest her soul, used to hear sports prognosticators on the TV or radio and click her teeth in disgust. “Everyone,” she would smirk, “thinks they can do two things better than anyone else. Run a restaurant and manage a baseball team.”
She loved only one sport, baseball. Football was just “a bunch of silly overgrown fat men falling all over each other.” Basketball was “freakishly tall men jumping up and down with their hands in the air.” Hockey? She would sigh, stare out the