The 1997 Season

Note: 1997 was the first season that I wrote down thoughts the entire year. Therefore, the 1997 season summary will come in multiple additions to my blog. Today's 1997 entry will be Week 13, Green Bay thoughts.

Week Thirteen: Green Bay

I rather imagine that I am quite mad. Nothing spectacular, you understand. Nothing calling for restraint or shock therapy. I can live on, dangerous to no one but myself.

The chair I sit on at the Metrodome is quite comfortable. During pre-game warm-ups I sit in the chair and watch the players go through their drills and think of Joe. He probably wouldn’t like the way I look today. My fingernails are chewed off and broken, my blonde, braided wig a disaster. Late last night I looked at myself in the mirror and my eyes were dead.

It was then that I decided that it might help for me to write all this down. I have no idea what I’ll do with it.

You see, I shared Joe’s dreams.

I now know those dreams are no longer possible for this season. I wonder if he learned how impossible they were in the final few seconds of a football game held on January 11, 1970.

There have always been people like Joe and me. For thirty-seven seasons our kind has looked at the stars and thought of reaching the ultimate goal. This team was to be the new frontier, the new world upon which our kind could expand and find the full promise of the Viking soul.

I never thought much about it until I saw Joe for the first time. Twenty-eight years ago. At that time I was a lad in front of the television on a Sunday afternoon. It was 1969. The year before, the Vikings had been the NFL Central Champions.

Joe Kapp. I thought I’d figured him out. A good looking man with dark hair and a careless grin and a swagger. That’s all I saw in the beginning. It was January 4, 1970, the NFL championship game against the Cleveland Browns. Kapp then showed me why I would be a Viking fan all my life as he rolled out of the pocket on a pass play.

The Brown’s linebacker, Jim Houston, awaited Joe down field. Joe didn’t head for the sideline or slide feet first when he saw Houston approaching. Instead he tried to hurdle him, the result of which was a knee to Houston’s jaw which knocked him out of the game. Kapp stayed in, the grin a little larger, the swagger a little more pronounced. The Vikings won 27-7. It was the season for 60. Forty men playing together for sixty minutes.

The following week the Vikings lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV. As I sit here at my desk, I can imagine how it was for Joe those last few seconds of the game, :00 looming up large on the fourth quarter scoreboard. He must have given up reluctantly, calmed by the belief his team would be back again next year. 40 for 60.

Before last night no one else knew what I know. Maybe now they will guess. And then there will be an end to the proud dreams of a trip to San Diego. We are mired in mediocrity, a team of individuals. There will be no Super Bowl trip for us this year. We have made a mess of this season, and it is something that we cannot leave behind us. We must stay here and clean it up as best we can.

Maybe a few fans had already known. Maybe they had guessed it. Maybe they had guessed, as I did, on the basis of the dead eyes I saw as I walked past the Viking bench during the loss to the New York Jets. Yes, I saw the faces on the Viking players that day and last night. I looked into their hearts and saw the flaw. No 40 for 60.

There is no divisional championship this year. There is no home playoff game. There is only a team that, due to an unknown influence, is constantly deteriorating.

For a little time this year the team avoided that influence. That is why we all believed so much, why we couldn’t avoid the coming crash, and why I am quite mad.

Posted by maasx003 at October 28, 2004 07:56 AM