Perhaps the best comment came from right guard Mike Flynn, who upon laying eyes on me in the locker room, started screaming, “How fucking crazy are they going in Baltimore right now? Just tell me how much fun they’re having!”
As I walked out of the vacant stadium, I started thinking about his words. I was leaving the stadium on the greatest night a fan could ever have, and it became pretty clear in the still and darkness outside the stadium on Dale Mabry Boulevard, that the real party was going on nearly a thousand miles away, in downtown Baltimore.
What a shame, I thought, that I couldn’t be there, too.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t have traded my experience for anything in the world. I love my memories of that day. But, gosh, couldn’t I just tap my shoes together like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and be in Fells Point at a moment’s notice?
Instead of naked women, honking horns, high-fives from complete strangers – all of the things my Mom was giving me play-by-play about on my cell phone an hour after the game, “They’re going crazy here,” she screamed into the phone – I was in a cab with my partner Steve Hennessey, drinking a cold bottle of Coors Light that I had bought at the hotel bar and snuck into the vehicle, and eating pepperoni pizza out of a box en route back to Whiskey Joe’s.
After a brief stop there, I headed to the team party next door.
There, the team was finally fully together – albeit not alone – for several hours after the game, eating, drinking and dancing the night away with their families, fellow employees and invited guests at an all-night party at the Hyatt Westshore in the same parking lot tents that had been used all week to house the press conferences.
I managed to sneak into the V.I.P. room of the party, using my anti-security acumen. As David Modell paraded the Trophy down a tunnel from the main room, which had limited access only to players and their immediate families, I passed the security going the other direction, and walked straight toward the bar.
After managing a bottled water (I was drunk in the atmosphere so there was no need for more alcohol!), I sought out Brian Billick and queried him as to how I could be locked out of the V.I.P. room.
“We did that on purpose,” Billick said. “We knew you’d find your way in, but we just wanted to make it interesting for you. It’s a better story this way.”
Of course, his parting shot, after a hug, handshake and a toast, was the same battle cry I’d heard since the first Tennessee game 13 weeks and 10 wins earlier.
“It was a pretty big but it doesn’t make up for that Washington game, does it?” Billick prodded. “By the way, does this get me on the national show tomorrow morning?”
Actually, it got him on “Nasty Nationwide” the next afternoon. I figured I’d let him sleep in. He had earned it.
