void in our lives that calls for games, rules, stadiums, gatherings, beer, colors, logos, gambling, wings and fellowship with other like-minded civic souls who root for the home team.
In the end, if you love sports for the right reasons it becomes a lifetime addiction.
And most people don’t question that psychological association when they wear a Ravens or Orioles hat.
But when you find yourself on Eutaw Street angry and soaked with the police questioning you for wanting to kill a team mascot who just assaulted you – and knowing the owner of the team is upstairs laughing while he counts tens of thousands of dollars you made him while continuing to screw the fans – well, it makes you not want to rush back to a baseball game.
So, I’m here to tell you that I hear your anger and feel your agony. And I still watch the Orioles 140 nights a year 14 years later because it’s how I feed my family and my chosen vocation, investment and livelihood.
If you’re on the Trump team and think his deeds and tactics and words and the “son of a bitch” references were legitimately warranted, professional, Presidential, on the up-and-up and you are inconsolable and unsolvable and pissed for life because some black Ravens players took The Wembley Knee on foreign soil and stood for “God Save The Queen” – or even if you voted for Hilary Clinton or abstained, then “have at it” as Coach Billick used to say.
Go away if that is where your “patriot” heart leads you. Choke the Baltimore Ravens of revenue and love. Mow your lawns on Sundays. Get a boat. Spend more time with your friends or kids. Pick another sport or hobby or go to a museum or build one or something. It is completely your God-given right to take your precious time, money and interests elsewhere if you don’t feel appreciated by the Ravens or the NFL.
And as I wrote in Part 1 in The Ghost of Baltimore Football Past – Paul Tagliabue and the National Football League never wanted you to have a team, anyway.
I suppose I don’t understand such visceral angst over a peaceful, humble protest of a morally bankrupt President threatening the careers of players on Twitter and stirring hostilities to the point where I’d want to burn my Ravens gear and trash the organization and the NFL for the rest of my life after buying a PSL and sitting in the upper deck since 1996.
But, there’s a lot going on in the world that I don’t understand including why if you show me a Ravens deserter over The Wembley Knee there’s a strong chance it’s a person who is a Trump apologist for all of the evil that has pursed his lips over the past two years with words and deeds that no mother would ever be proud of for her children or her country.
Sure, The Knee has been couched as a “military” or “patriot” stance but it really probably indicates that you are on Team Trump, since that’s really at the heart of how all of this happened.
That has been the common denominator that I have witnessed since September.
Politics.
Sports.
Wealthy and powerful men.
Ancient bad blood.
A mouthy President.
Highly visible black men and athletes disrespected publicly. One blackballed.
The Knee.
The perception of military disrespect in the aftermath.
Rich NFL owners running for cover.
Sponsors getting uppity and nervous.
A mouthy President piling on.
Some white fans staying away in droves and saying they’re done with the NFL for life.
Black players unapologetic.
NFL teams and players and the league trying to do some kind of damage control and have some kind of “plan” moving forward for social change and justice in local communities.
Colin Kaepernick has been blackballed.
The playoffs start next week.
To be continued…
And, as I’ve taken three chapters to point out, there were already plenty of people who didn’t feel good about the NFL in Baltimore after Ray Lewis and Ray Rice and the Steve Bisciotti summer dalliance with Colin Kaepernick, whom apparently the general public of the NFL feels has been rightfully outlawed and blackballed from earning a living in “America’s Game” because he took a social stance for justice for people of color in his community.
It’s very emotional – and now quite racial and political and contentious – this business of being a passionate NFL fan (short for “fanatic”).
But the Ravens aren’t rolling back the clock to London. They can’t undo The Wembley
