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Saturday, January 11, 2003

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The list of cities where Michael Liptak has waited in a hotel lobby to cheer for the Steelers is long and distinguished.

Seattle, Denver, Houston -- four times apiece. Los Angeles, San Diego, five times. San Francisco, half a dozen. No journey is too long for Liptak to make from his home in Grindstone, Pa., 20 minutes outside Uniontown, and cheer for his favorite team.

	Steelers fans Michael Liptak and daughter Patty Liptak cheer as their favorite team arrives yesterday at the Doubletree Hotel Nashville ahead of today's 4:30 p.m. playoff game against the Tennessee Titans. (Peter Diana/Post-Gazette

In the 1995-96 season, he attended every single game, home and away, including the Super Bowl.

So of course he was in the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel Nashville yesterday evening when the Steelers arrived for their playoff game today against the Titans, clad in his Steelers jacket, shirt and scarf and hollering as loudly as he could.

He's 74 years old now and retired, so it's easier for Liptak to make the trips ... not that he ever let his job get in the way of anything really important.

"When I worked at the post office and there was a Steelers game, I took off," said Liptak, who estimates that he has invested $20,000 in his six season tickets. "They knew I was going to be there."

That pretty much sums up the attitude of the die-hard fans who greet the Steelers in hotel lobbies.

"Pittsburgh Kenny" Roberts, of Dayton, Ohio, is officially scheduled for a day off today to see the game. But he was part of the lobby crowd yesterday, even though he believes his absence at Moraine Assembly, where he makes GM trucks, was "unexcused."

"I'm sure they know I'm here," Roberts said, as his wife, "Pittsburgh Patty," laughed. "I wear Steelers clothes every day to work."

Pittsburgh Patty doesn't have any trouble buying Pittsburgh Kenny presents for Christmas. He owns six pairs of Steelers gloves, eight Steelers coats, 10 pairs of Steelers socks, 65 Steelers hats and 120 Steelers shirts.

For his first-ever lobby experience -- this is the first time the Robertses are attending a road Steelers game -- Pittsburgh Kenny attired himself in a shiny, two-piece black Steelers warm-up suit, a Steelers hat and a golden Steelers logo on a chain around his neck.

Pittsburgh Patty roamed the lobby with her camera, trying to get photos of her favorite players, Joey Porter, Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala, Jason Gildon and Hines Ward -- and to have Fuamatu-Ma'afala autograph her Steelers-Browns tickets.

It wasn't easy, because the staff and security personnel at the Doubletree restricted fans and media to a corner of the lobby, and few of the Steelers acknowledged the crowd.

One who did was quarterback Tommy Maddox, who no longer had to concern himself with the controversy over a Nashville radio station's proposed "gurney race," in which the goal was to transport "an injured Steelers player" from the Coliseum to a make-shift hospital.

The contest was canceled after an outcry from people who thought the contest tasteless. The morning disc jockeys from WRVW-FM apologized on the air yesterday morning at an outdoor news conference.

The station announced that it had acquired an extra pair of game tickets and would auction them off on the air, donating the proceeds to a charity of Maddox's choice.

There were plenty of people in the lobby who would have loved a chance at those tickets -- Pittsburgh Kenny and Pittsburgh Patty, for instance, made the 325-mile drive from Dayton hoping to buy tickets before the game. The lobby crowd wasn't quite as large as usual, maybe 50 fans or so, at least partly because tickets have been so hard to come by.

"There was not much time to prepare," said Liptak, who has made so many trips that he has a variety of travel contacts, one of whom came through with tickets for himself, his two daughters, Patty Liptak and Karen Angelilli, Angelilli's husband, Frank, and Liptak's grandson, John Lowery. "Everything just happened so fast."