Verified by 
On June 18, 2010, the Boston Celtics lost the NBA championship to the Lakers. This was before Boston seemed to win everything in every sport all of the time, and Bostonians were more morose back then than angry. I had just entered the exciting and nascent new world of blogging, having been asked by the Boston Globe to comment on human nature and behavior, and the general downer that my adopted city was feeling seemed a good topic around which to write my first piece.
Except every time I started writing, I only wanted to write about football. And every time I wanted to write about football, I only wanted to write about the Chiefs. The Kansas City Chiefs. My Chiefs. You know, the ones who won the AFC championship today and will for the first time in 5 freakin' decades wander back to that hallowed Bowl of American myths.
And you know what? Every time I tried to write about the Chiefs, I could only really write about my Uncle Frank. There were side plots, of course. There was the rush home from religious school on Sundays to have bagel and salami sandwiches so my dad and I could head to the game. There was our intense and studious listening to the pregame show as my dad fought the traffic to get into that cavernous Arrowhead Stadium. There was a brass band in the endzone. And the Chiefs? They were truly awful.
How long ago that seems, partly because I am middle-aged and it was long ago. And because the Chiefs won, I am a bit sheepishly overwhelmed. The elation I feel tonight has been studied. Those studies show that it is a mixture of mostly harmless tribalism mixed with the tangy aching of nostalgic recollections that sets the stage for ecstatic celebration when your team claims victory. Because there's plenty of nostalgia no matter how bad your team is, I was wracking up those bittersweet stories in spades.
But it was Uncle Frank who always got my attention. So, in honor of his memory, I am reposting the piece I wrote for the Globe now 10 years ago. It was a blog, so I don't believe there are any copyright issues. Plus, Uncle Frank would grumble that I ought to post it anyway. Actually, Uncle Frank would think that the concept of a blog was pretty amusing, So, without further introductions, here is what I penned about 10 years ago. And Uncle Frank? Try to smile up there tonight, will ya?
******
My uncle Frank loved to watch football, but you wouldn’t know it at first if you ran into him at a game and managed only to spend a few surly minutes of small talk.
First, Arrowhead Stadium, home to his beloved Kansas City Chiefs, was usually about half full. When I was a kid, the Chiefs were lucky to draw 50,000, and the place could hold near 80. It was like watching a game in some kind of geological wasteland.
The Chiefs of the late 70’s were horrid—I believe the appropriate clinical term would be something like “cachectic.” If they had played for New England, my guess, as a Boston Transplant, is that people would have a field day on AM sport’s radio, creatively learning the most colorful and opportunistic ways to say “they suck,” over and over, making sure to use plenty of “r’s” that could be appropriately and musically dropped as is the custom with New England expressions of athletic disdain.
Also, you’d only be able to talk to Uncle Frank outside, in one of those rarely filled seats at Arrowhead, no matter what kind of nastiness mother nature decided to call forth on game day. It could be 5 degrees, the wind blowing so hard that the snow seemed alive in the midst of the stadium, swirling around on the field like a third team intent on mocking all of us for even showing up.
He’d cough hard near the end, the cancer working its way slowly through his apparatus of respiration, and you’d find him wrapped in a red blanket like an old toy in an antique shop, sitting by himself in the cold, steaming coffee being nursed from a plaid red thermos that he brought to every game.
I’d leave the Ford Motor Company Suite (my grandfather owned a Ford Dealership in Kansas City, so we had access), and, I’ll admit, I found the concept of an indoor space at a football game a strange and conflicted place. A man in a white shirt and a black bow tie would serve me Dr. Pepper for free and everyone seemed dressed up and chatty. Only Uncle Frank seemed to appreciate or even care how much the Chiefs sucked.
“Don’t you people have any pride?” I’d think, working hard to bring the tangy soda into my mouth from the cocktail straw, and I would tell my dad that I was going outside to find Uncle Frank.
“Pretty cold out there, tiger,” he’d say, and I’d nod. “Sorta the point,” is what I was thinking, but I knew Uncle Frank would understand.
He’d be about halfway down the suite section, his wool blanket covering his body. only his face exposed. He looked like a babushka from the old country, but he’d manage a smile and motion for me to join him. He always offered me coffee, but I would make clear that I was happy with my Dr. Pepper.
“You can’t see a damn thing on TV,” he’d say at first, and then, a long sigh after pausing to watch the Chiefs anemically flub something else, he would motion with disdain at the window behind which the warmth of the suite was present. “And that,” he would say, “watching a game indoors and getting served your drinks?” He’d shake his head like a fundamental law of nature was at risk. “That comfort is no way to watch either.”
We’d sit in pleasant silence, and it was like the cancer in his lungs was somehow known on the field, the Chiefs suffering their own crab-like destruction, failing at each opportunity to make good on the simple act of breathing.
Boy, it was bad back then.
So, one time, sitting there next to Uncle Frank, his body skinnier than even a month before, his eyes sunken, his cough a whole-body experience, his coffee unopened, and the temperature no greater than freezing, I asked him why he came.
“If they’re this bad, why watch?” I asked. It seemed a fair question, and though I was only 11 or 12 at the time, I thought I ought to make some effort to get a sick man out of the cold.
He didn’t look at me, but he smiled, the skin pulled tightly against his rapidly aging face.
“Because it's great,” he said. “Hell, they’re out there for us, Steve. I mean, don’t you think it's great?”
The score would be something like 35 to three, and it didn’t look all that great, but Uncle Frank meant it and, after all, he’d watched a lot more games than I had.
So, he up and died not long after that conversation, but I gotta say there was never a bigger fan. And sure, the guys we watch now are paid all sorts of money, and they do all sorts of stupid things, and maybe Frank would feel different if he were a fan today, but still, this I think I know:
If Uncle Frank were from Boston, he’d be glad he’d watched last night. He’d be grudgingly proud of the Celtics and he’d tell anyone who would listen.
And I know I couldn’t have a better companion on those cold days at Arrowhead.
