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| After the game last Saturday |
It is dusk on an autumn afternoon. Saturday. The light is a yellowish-brown hue. An unseasonably warm day is cooling. I am in a football stadium that rests in Strawberry Canyon in Berkeley, California. Past the east rim are hills including one called Tightwad Hill where some fans huddle to watch games for free. Behind me is the west rim of the stadium. From there one can see all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. Anytime of day the views are spectacular, but especially as the sun descends.
The stadium has mostly emptied out, there were close to 30,000 people in it less than half an hour ago. The University of California marching band is on the field. They are playing the campus alma mater. Alistair and I have linked arms and are swaying to the campus alma mater song, our previous revelry at the final gun replaced by a mellower savoring of a long afternoon well spent.
Later I’ll leave the stadium and follow the band as it marches down Bancroft Way. I want the joy to last, especially as this was the last home game of the season. It was also only the third home victory for my beloved Golden Bears in six tries. Three wins. Only three. It will be nine and half months before they play again. Cal football home games are precious. Victories for this perpetually woebegone team are especially so.
Despite the many, many, many heartbreaks that California football has inflicted on me, I have been a devotee since childhood. I don’t remember my first game, I was so young and went so regularly that it feels like Cal football has always been a part of me, it’s like a body part (one that causes occasional discomfort and sometimes euphoria). The first game I specifically remember going to was in 1962 when I was eight-years-old. The team was generally bad when I was a kid (some things never change) but I fell in love nonetheless. What was it about the experience of going that so enraptured me? Certainly the classic Roman Colosseum like stadium nestled in the hills (construction completed 100 years ago). Definitely the band and its jaunty spirit songs. Obviously the cheering section and its clever yells (that have sadly gone generic in recent years). Also the victory cannon booming for Cal scores and the team taking the field. Without a doubt, Oski, the Bears lovable mascot. Unquestionably the colorful blue and gold uniforms and those same colors being worn in different forms by tens of thousands of fans. The roar of the crowd. The unrepentant joy in victory. Victory. Many schools roll through their schedules facing only one or two challenges a season. But not the Bears. We savor our days of glory. Whether a trouncing of a lower division foe, an upset of higher ranked opponent or a thrilling win over our arch rivals, we veritably dance (sometimes literally) in the streets when victorious.
I have but few happy memories of my mother who was afflicted with serious mental illness in middle age. But I remember quite fondly her taking me to Cal football games including my first Big Game (the annual clash with hated Stanfurd University). She attended Cal from 1938-1942 and sat in the student section (then segregated by gender) for home football games.
My dad took me too, of course (he also took me to pro football, pro and college basketball, baseball, track and field, boxing and ice hockey). Everyone liked the Bears in our household, except me — I loved them.
As the years went on my interest in Cal football didn’t wane one iota. Even as a rebellious teen who could be found at anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and arguing for overthrow of the government, I enjoyed the tradition-bound spectacle that was college football — especially as played by the Bears.
I attended games as a high schooler, as a college student, as a young working man, as lost soul given to drinking and using drugs copiously. I went through all manner of changes, re-inventions and internal revolts, but the Bears were a constant. Perhaps even acting as a steadying influence. I attended games with rowdy drunken companions, with girlfriends, with relatives, with serious fans and those out on a lark. I missed a few seasons when I lived elsewhere and when I say I missed seasons I don’t merely mean that I wasn’t able to attend games, it was the one thing about the Bay Area that I yearned for. After all, Cal football and its fan base were family and who doesn’t miss a loving family?
There were a few seasons in which Cal did well: the mid and late seventies, a few years in the early nineties and most of this century’s first decade. These were magical times, surreal. To see the Bears excelling on the football field was like watching that wonderful dream you had last night actually happening. It was like the most beautiful girl at the party dancing with you. It was like winning the grand prize at the raffle. It was like an out of body experience. But even at their best the Bears never quite reached the top of the mountain. The Rose Bowl was always the dream. In ’75 they tied for the conference title but the failure of one rival to beat another on the season’s last weekend cost us a trip to Pasadena. The Bears were great in ’91 but Washington was a touchdown better when we met. That season was marred by a face plant in the Big Game. In 2004 the Bears were great again but U$C was a touchdown better. That season was marred by an ugly loss in our consolation prize appearance in the Holiday Bowl. We again tied for the conference title in ’06. A player tripping over a yard marker cost us the brass ring. So very Cal.
Since then the Bears haven’t even come close. They had a few more good seasons to close out the decade but have been mostly bad — occasionally rising to mediocrity — in the years since.
The losses hurt less than they used to. One gets used to it and then despairs at having gotten used to it. The regularity of the defeats makes one nearly immune to an individual loss but the weight of the accumulation is a heavy cross to bear. But then there are the wins. They make it all worthwhile. The reward for the suffering. Those games that make me think: I am privileged to have been here, there's no other place in the world I'd rather have been. The wins are a better high than I ever experienced drinking and using.
Throughout it all the Bears have suffered some terrible thumpings, though mostly on the road. At home their thing is more the inexplicable heartbreaking loss, one in which the fates conspire against us in the form of costly turnovers or ridiculous referring decisions or bonehead plays or stupid coaching decisions. Twice this season the Bears have — as the cliche goes — snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Auburn and U$C should have been well-beaten, but missed field goals and a team wide case of fumbilitis, respectively, cost us. Saturday looked for awhile to be another crushing loss. The Bears had gone up by 18 insurmountable points with nine minutes to go. But no lead is safe for the Bears — never has been. Our heroes had to hold on by the skin of their incisors to clinch victory with an interception on the game’s last play. No one was upset that it had gotten so close (it’s kind of our thing). But everyone was relieved then jubilant that the day had been won.
I don’t know how many seasons I have left but I do know that I’ll be there for all of them and I won’t be missing any home games. Cal football is coursing through my blood. It is part of who I am. My own eternal zeitgeist.
You may have gathered by now that it’s more than just the football. It is the whole experience. It is the days and hours leading up to each game. It is the days and hours following each game. It is all the time spent in contemplation of the team’s prospects and ruminating over their latest performance. It is a feeling in my bones. It is my heart. I hardly watch any other football at all. I’m much more of a soccer guy. When I go to Memorial Stadium it’s not to see a football game, it’s to see Cal play football. It is the atmosphere.
Loyalty is love practiced.
I cannot close without mentioning the people who have been part of the journey. Of course my parents, so many elementary school and junior high school and high school friends. College chums. Girlfriends. My wife. Friends I drank with and friends who I’ve stayed sober with. Special shoutout to my late friend Kevin who I watched decades of Cal football with. When he died I was left suddenly alone at Memorial Stadium. Then a new friendship was forged with Alistair. Like Kevin and others before him, he gets it (poor sap). But also a shoutout to all those people I’ve attended games with that I’ve never met but with whose voices I’ve joined in exhorting on our Bears. Our efforts have not always borne fruit, but we wouldn’t change the experience for anything.
Go Bears!!!
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