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Saturday, January 26, 2002
By Michael McGough
In "The Ascent" by X.J. Kennedy, one of my favorite poets, the lapsed-Catholic narrator sits at home on Easter Sunday watching churchgoers pass his window while he is "in bathrobe still, out of it as a Jew." I know how he feels, but the faith from which I'm estranged is not Christianity; it's Steelermania.
Unlike the narrator in Kennedy's poem, I was in church on Sunday. The Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Allison Park had agreed to display an exhibition of editorial artwork by Post-Gazette illustrators, and I arrived early enough to catch the last few minutes of the service.
When I complimented a parishioner about how good the choir had sounded, she gave me the impression that it would have been in even stronger voice if a few members hadn't stayed home getting ready for, you know.
Perhaps the minister should have emulated the Catholic priest who during the "one for the thumb" days donned black-and-gold vestments for a Super Sunday Mass, a union of church and sports I found bizarre if not exactly blasphemous. (I wanted to tell the pigskin padre to render unto Rooney the things that are Rooney's and to God the things that are God's.)
On the other hand, the analogy between sports and religion has a certain force. I felt it during the recent controversy over the city Art Commission's attempts to keep corporate logos -- including the Steelers symbol -- off banners hung across Pittsburgh streets.
The way the inhabitants of Grant Street sprang into action, you'd have thought the ACLU's SWAT team had swooped down on another manger scene. At least when they're winning, and despite that tax-supported stadium, the Steelers aren't a corporation. They're sacred.
Which makes a nonfan like me a heretic? Or, to use the civilized term for British Protestants who don't subscribe to the Church of England, a Nonconformist? I'm not anti-Steelers, just not much of a football fan.
It's not a new apostasy. As a boy I followed professional baseball -- I can recite the 1960 National League standings from memory -- but never developed much of an interest in football at any level. Of course, even when the Pirates were winning, I wasn't a very demonstrative fan. I was no more willing to wag a green weenie than to shake a Terrible Towel.
My colloquy with the choir member wasn't my first realization of the morning that I was "out of it" on a day consecrated to the cult of Cowher. The Sunday PG I had pored over at breakfast had been saturated with sacred scriptures about the faith, including a story by Bob Batz Jr. about a local family that planted a "Go Steelers" sign on the grave of "Pap, the ultimate Steelers fan."
For the rest of the day, I was incessantly reminded of my outsider status. At the drugstore that afternoon, the sales clerks were prayerfully paying attention to the Steelers-Ravens game on portable TVs. In the evening, at a benefit concert at Central Catholic High School, the master of ceremonies expressed gratitude for the fact that the Steelers and Ravens hadn't drawn the late slot. One of the singers at the concert punctuated his performance with "Go Steelers," an applause line even when offered ironically.
At the PG editorial conference the next day, the Steelers' victory was a bigger topic than assessments or Osama. Inside every editorial writer -- well, nearly every one -- there is a sportswriter struggling to get out, so it wasn't hard to find a colleague willing to editorialize about the Steelers' victory -- and quite eloquently.
Which was fine with me. I don't resent being marginalized because of my athletic apostasy, even as I acknowledge the analogy to be being a religious outsider.
Michael Kinsley once wrote a wicked column on the seasonal subject of Nativity displays on public property and the attendant political and judicial controversy. The column had a special resonance for me as a Pittsburgher. As with pro football, the Burgh occupies a secularly hallowed place in the annals of Christmas litigation. We're the city of creches as well as the city of champions.
In his column, Kinsley had fun with the standard liberal position that creches at courthouses remind non-Christians that they are in a minority in America. "There is a majority culture in this country," he wrote. "It is Christian, white, middle-class. Jews and nonbelievers (I am both) are outsiders to some extent in that culture. So are blacks, homosexuals, Orientals and so on." Essentially, Kinsley told the complainers to get used to it. Besides, he added, minority status can be a crucible for creativity and social activism. Look at the accomplishments of Jews, African Americans and homosexuals.
I still think Kinsley was too cavalier about the courthouse creches, but I agree with his larger point that it's futile to deny that there is a majority culture, whether the context is religious, cultural or athletic.
It's unfashionable to acknowledge that, I know. "We Are All Multiculturalists Now" was the title of a book written a few years ago by the social critic Nathan Glazer, and a thousand feature stories about Kwanzaa prove him right.
Moreover, impelled by the admirable desire to tamp down anti-Muslim sentiment after Sept, 11, President Bush and other pillars of the majority culture have embraced "good" Islam as opposed to Osama bin Laden's supposedly heretical version. Listening to Bush, you might think that he keeps a copy of the "Good News Koran" -- a gift from a mullah in Midland? -- next to the Bible in the Oval Office.
Yet I suspect at least some Muslims find this sort of thing patronizing, even if it does deter some Arab-bashing. It reminds me a bit of the sports-loving high school principal who, after rhapsodizing about the football team's victory, adds, "And our chess team is doing very well, too."
I had the same reaction, as a non-Steelermaniac, to a story the PG published on Monday giving not-quite-equal time to Pittsburghers who, as the headline put it, "prefer to give Steelermania the boot." The story focused on Stuart Karow of Squirrel Hill, who turned off the Steelers-Ravens game after the first quarter so he could make the Pittsburgh Symphony's 2:30 p.m. performance of Brahms' German Requiem.
"This is a great concert," Karow told reporter Jan Ackerman. "I do not know whether Pittsburghers realize how great their symphony is. It may be overshadowed by sports."
It doesn't bother me that Pittsburghers say "How about those Steelers?" more often than "How about that symphony?" In Kinsley's terms, outsiderness might make the teen-age violin virtuoso practice all the harder. But that doesn't mean he should be beaten up on the way home because he's not wearing black and gold.
Likewise, those of us who are "out of it" at playoff time ought to be indulged as the harmless oddballs we are, and not denounced as heretics or enemies of the state.
Michael McGough is editorial page editor of the Post-Gazette (mmcgough@post-gazette.com). 