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Monday, January 23, 2012

SPORTS POPCORN  
Why I Love Playing The Villain On The Road


A good New York Football Giants friend of mine gives a thumbs up, while I point the way forward last night after the Giants defeated the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park in the NFC Championship Game.  In two weeks the Giants play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in four years.  Photo with my camera

 by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Monday, January 23, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO
"Do you want something for cover over your shoulders?", said a lady in her late fifties seated to my left, a San Francisco 49ers fan. 

"That's very kind of you, but I like it like this," I replied.

"Are you gonna last like that?", asked another Niners fan, a young man in his thirties.

In shivering cold, monsoon-like weather in San Francisco yesterday during an excellent National Football Conference Championship Game, I sat there exposed, a New York Football Giants fan, in the upper box behind the goalposts at Candlestick Park, at end of the field where the winning field goal sending my team to next month's Super Bowl would be kicked four hours later.  I was soaking wet, like a happy gameday fool. 

I love it like that. 

Decked in a 1994 throwback Rodney Hampton #27 Giants jersey and dark Ray Ban Wayfarer glasses like the ones Tom Cruise wore in "Risky Business", I was ready.

Some thought it would be risky business to sit among normally sedate Niners fans, but with their outstanding season this year following several years of mediocrity, a small but very vocal group of Niners fan had grown rabid, younger and less welcoming to the opposition's fans.  I had a good Giants friend with me, although we couldn't sit together in the same row.   

Yesterday I felt like a villain in a movie.  Villainy is good in movies and in sports.   Some Niners fans gave me dirty looks as if I was Boo Radley or Paris Trout or Nurse Ratched.  Or as if I hadn't showered in three weeks.

I love playing the villain on the road.  Shouting my team's name, stirring and igniting the home opponent fans into a vigorous back and forth, whether with friends or alone.  It's the best feeling.  You are alive.  You are soaring.  It's exciting.  You tantalize the opposition into a good-natured ribbing.  If you do it the right way -- by NOT chanting that the home team "sucks" in the middle of their ballpark -- you gain respect.  Even begrudging admiration.  Your tenacity and never say "die" spirit becomes infectious.  Your passion immense. 

You are the villain.  The villain doesn't have to play by the rules.  Nora Desmond didn't.  Bonnie & Clyde didn't.  Cruella De Vil didn't.  Alonzo Harris didn't. 

In your heart you like the villain.  You love to boo the villain.  It gives you pleasure to do so.  You wish you were the villain, or at least play that role.  Good is safe.  Good is bland.  At least in sports.  Good is the San Antonio Spurs in basketball: great champions but no personality or panache.

In any sport if you're the home team's fan you have the pressure of expectation.  You expect your team to win at home.  It's tense.  One bad play from your beloved team and all of a sudden you're sitting on your hands nervously, squirming while a small contingent of the road team's fans grow louder and louder in audible chant, as if more of them have arrived in your building as the game progresses, an irritant that won't go away.
 
Winning moment: New York Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes, in white in the uppermost part of the field to the right of the left goalpost, watching his kick in overtime defeat the San Francisco 49ers last night at Candlestick Park.  Omar P.L. Moore


Being too bold in a stadium as the road team's fan can cost you if your team doesn't deliver.  I know what that feels like.  I felt that feeling in November when the New York Giants lost to the Niners in the regular season, 27-20.  It was sunny that day.  And so were Niners fans.  One Giants fan -- not me -- said something awfully prophetic that day as Niners fans taunted him, me and anyone else with "NY" on their person: "It's just the regular season, wait 'till the playoffs -- it's a whole new ballgame."

Even with my prediction making I am confident not cocky.  There's a fine line between the two.  Sometimes I am right.  Sometimes I am not.

I know when to celebrate on the road when my team, in this case the New York Football Giants, whom I've been a fan of for 30 years, takes the lead in the game.  I told any 49ers fan -- and any New York Giants fan -- who would listen, that at 10-7 at halftime of yesterday's game, the game was far from over.

I am also a San Francisco Giants baseball fan -- and have been for a long time.  Some friends and colleagues have looked for psychological underpinnings of my rooting for two teams with the name "Giants", but I've assured them that there's no there there.  They laugh and make jokes. 

You can only imagine those jokes.

The following was no joke: New York Giants field goal kicker Lawrence Tynes, a native of Scotland, said he had dreamed the night before that he would win the game in San Francisco on Sunday night by kicking a 42-yard field goal.  In reality he kicked a 31-yard field goal, and in overtime.   

I realize that it's only a game.  There are far more important things in life.  Had the Giants lost I'd have been gracious.  Many Niners fans were gracious last night after a bitter loss for them.  At the end of the day they're classy fans.

Three days earlier I had prognosticated that the New York Giants would beat the San Francisco 49ers 23-17 in overtime, and when the game was tied 17-17 heading into overtime I couldn't believe even my own predicting eyes.  (The final score was 20-17.  In overtime.)

The New York Giants will beat the New England Patriots in two weeks, just as they did in 2008 in the Super Bowl.  There are too many similarities between this year and four years ago.  And the Giants are making plays and winning games at the right time.

Let the villain spring forth again on February 5.
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