1st and Five - The Weekly Tendown, a Halfdown Edition September 12-18 2010

Dear Internet:

Have I been hating the wrong football team?

Last Sunday, here was Randy Moss at the Patriots' post game press conference:

Two years ago, here was Tom Brady courtside at a Celtics playoff game:

I'm sorry for all the times I rooted against the Patriots. 

I was going to law school in Ohio in September of 1993, and when I'm going to law school in Ohio in September of 1993, in the pre-internet world, the number of people who are living with me through the torture that was seeing the best San Francisco Giants team of my lifetime in a daily (losing) battle for a playoff spot was very, very small.  Small enough that, one day, when I saw a young black child at a shopping mall in a Giants t-shirt, I pointed and said "yeah!  yeah!  Billy Swift going today!  Hell yeah!"  Given the way his mother looked at me, I was fortunate that Megan's Law did not exist then, or I may still be introducing myself to new neighbors as per court order.  The woman I was dating at the time suggested that we lived in Ohio in 1993 and that maybe pointing at young black children and yelling "Hell Yeah!" might not be well taken by the boy's family. 

That young boy - turned out to be LeBron James.

True story.

Okay - the tag is not true, LeBron's a couple/three years too old - but it would be good.

I don't have any group identity with my country - to the contrary, most people who identify themselves as patriots would label me anti-American.  I don't have a religion or any particular ethnicity; what I have is sports - the Niners had enough success that their bandwagon was once too full with which to identify and while I went to USC for a minute and a half when I was 18:

I just wasn't there long enough to feel a kinship with those possessing SC degrees. 
But for me - if you're a Giants fan; it crosses all barriers.  Giants fan+Sarah Palin supporter = you and I are cool.  Something has to take priority; for me its not race or class or level of demonstrable brain activity (because to be a Sarah Palin supporter, I mean - come on - she doesn't believe in evolution; I get if you don't understand Keynesian economics or the idea of a living Constitution - but you just can't hop on someone's train who thinks the earth's 6,000 years old) it's mutual support of the San Francisco Giants.

So - go Pats!  Go Brady!  Go Moss! Go Danny Glover and Robin Williams! I am prepared to read your newsletter and will share with you my foodstuffs. 

After the jump - the rest of Tendown 44