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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

They're ridiculing you in Houston, where they already lost one football team.

They're laughing at you in Chicago, where both major newspapers made fun of you: the Sun-Times and the Tribune, the company that owns the Cubs, for crying out loud.

They probably would wag disparaging fingers at you from Cleveland, if they weren't so busy using them to wipe away the tears.

You left.

You ran out on your team.

You jumped off the ship deck, you rats.

And you call yourselves Steelers fans?

This is to the 10,000-plus who left their Heinz Field seats and the countless more who turned away the television channel Sunday afternoon: Oh ye of little faith, or patience.

Granted, it appeared as if half of the patrons who began making their way out of The Mustard Bowl at the fourth quarter's start somehow got back into the place by game's end. The throng standing underneath the scoreboard numbered in the thousands. You guys must've crawled over the fences or walked through unattended gates. However you did it, hope you didn't leave the motor running or forgot to close the trunk -- wouldn't want snow getting all over that beer.

Why did you leave in the first place?

The Browns were rebuffed on a third-and-1 play at the Steelers' 6 and settled for a field goal, in what amounted to the first of many monumental goofs Sunday. Cleveland increased its lead to a whopping 27-14. And by the hundreds, people started heading for the Heinz Field exits. I know. I was outside in the cold and snow with you at the time. I wrote it down on my notepad: Dawson 24 FG Good. People leaving.

The Steelers scored a touchdown minutes later, only to witness the Browns respond with one of their own and a 33-21 lead. Ten minutes, 17 seconds remained in this rivalry come playoff. And within minutes, the place looked at least one-third empty. I know. I was outside at the time. I took copious notes: 5:31 left. People really leaving.

Look, having been born and reared here (go ahead, you can claim that I'm still a rear), it is a sports-attending affliction that is well documented in Pittsburgh.

Fans leave early.

It's the traffic. It's school or work the next day. It's the beer at the tailgate. It's, what, the economy?

Never have I condoned such action, nor even fully understood it. After all, would you pay $50 a seat to attend barely three-fourths of a Broadway play? Would you finish only 15 ounces of a 20-ounce Porterhouse and simply walk away, leaving the rest on the plate? No parking garage, homeroom, job or Iron City is so important that another 15 minutes, half-hour couldn't be invested into the time, money and snowy weather already put into it.

Before anyone trots out the tired but-you-ink-stained-wretches-get-in-free argument, now read this: My family doesn't leave games early. Consider it a pet peeve. No matter how incessantly the kids complain, and ours deserve honorary doctorates in that field, we stay until the end whenever we pay our way into Penguins games, Pirates games, high school games, whatever. OK, so there was the Pirates game in summer that turned into a doubleheader because of a rainout a night earlier; we left at the end of the first game only because a Weather Event approached. Otherwise, it's a perfect attendance record.

So for those of you who walked out or clicked away from the greatest rally in Steelers playoff history, from the second consecutive double-digit turnaround by Tommy "Comeback" Maddox, nobody wants to hear it.

Don't act like the millions who swear they witnessed the Immaculate Reception, so many big fat liars that Jack Ham wonders if the game was played in Los Angeles' Coliseum. Don't act like the hundreds of thousands who recall Mazeroski's home run as if they could still smell the Forbes Field hot dogs like it was yesterday.

On Sunday, some of you turned your backs on the Steelers, and you plumb missed history.

"A surprising number began trudging through the exits, their Terrible Towels hanging limp in their grasp ... ," opined one of the poet writers from Houston.

"You should have seen all the funny people scurrying back from the parking lots, trying to re-enter Heinz Field as it shook and swayed in delirium," began Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, who is, by the way, a Western Pennsylvania native. "The lesson: You're in good hands with Tommy Maddox. 'No one should be leaving when that man is operating,' said Antwaan Randle El. ..."

Come this 4:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon, you guys could instead tune into ESPN Classic for a replay of the 1991 Stanley Cup final Game 6 between the North Stars and Penguins.

Even though you know the outcome, try to watch until the very end, anyway: Victory celebrations are even better in the playoffs.

But some of you wouldn't know that from Sunday.

POSTSCRIPT

The 0-12 hockey team from last week's cyber-missive?

They won this past weekend.

A small reward.