Month: January 2020

I really don’t have much to add to this. A good recap of the last few weeks, including the championship game.

The Chiefs have always been Kansas City’s first love. The city has been devotedly loyal to the team even through 25 years of playoff failure, even though it’s 50 years this month since the team was last even in the Super Bowl. No matter to the fans – they’ve kept the faith all this time, even as the team continually let them down.

Two years ago, I remember. Another January evening. Lona and I went out for Mexican food. It was a good meal – I bumped into one of my coworkers at the restaurant, always a joy – and in the background was another Chiefs playoff game. As we filed out, Lona elbowed me and said, “Hey, look! You’re winning!” I glanced over. It was halftime, and the score stood 21-3 in the Chiefs favor. I laughed.

“I’ve seen this movie before,” I said. “There’s a lot of game left. Give ’em time, they’ll let you down.”

By the time we reached home, the game was over, and the Chiefs had lost 22-21, in a game that featured an opposing fumble blown dead because of “forward progress” and the opposing quarterback managed to somehow throw a pass to himself in the end zone. Same old Chiefs. I loved them anyway, because some things are important.

But now…maybe not same old Chiefs.

As the entire world knows by now, watching from the sidelines of that failed playoff game was a young man, a 23-year old out of Texas Tech University who had been drafted by the Chiefs at #10 that year. His dad was a major league baseball player, but Patrick Mahomes II’s first love was always football. A few weeks after the game, the Chiefs traded their veteran quarterback Alex Smith (the man behind the helm for both the 2014 and the 2018 defeats, as well as 2 more in the meantime) and said they were all in with Mahomes as the new starter.

Well, we all know what happened next. That fall, Mahomes took the league by storm. He was the second coming of Favre, Montana, Elway, all rolled into one. He could throw passes on one foot, across his body, with either hand, with his eyes closed. He could throw a football 70 yards and place it in a window 6 inches wide.

For the first time in my life, the Chiefs had the best player in all of football. And while the Royals had won, the one thing that my grandfather would have most wanted to see – the one thing that everyone wanted to see – was the Chiefs playing the Super Bowl. With Mahomes under center, suddenly that looked like a real possibility.

The Chiefs stormed to the #1 seed in the AFC last year and home field advantage in the playoffs. They hosted Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in a game at Arrowhead for the right to go to the Super Bowl, a titanic game, the largest in the old stadium’s entire history. It was a brutal slugging match, a back-and-forth affair that came down to the final seconds. I remember, as Brady drove down the field, trailing by 4, with less than two minutes to go, he slung a single ill-considered pass – and a Chiefs defender (Charvarius Ward) came up with the ball. An interception!

For one, brief, shining moment, I thought I’d seen what my grandfather had wanted for his whole life. I thought I’d watched the Chiefs just punch their ticket to the big dance.

Of course, we know what happened. Dee Fords was off-sides. The play was nullified, and the Patriots would go on to win in overtime.

It was a gut punch, a sickening blow right in the stomach, but it was one I’d felt before. Because it had happened to us before – in 2014, when the Royals came up 90 feet short. They had come back the next year. Now the Chiefs would have to, too.

The NFL is not an easy league. It’s been a long, tough road. The Chiefs lost a game to the Colts, and to the Texans, games they should have won. New England won the Super Bowl (again) and looked as unstoppable as ever. The Ravens exploded to completely dominate the league. Meanwhile, the Chiefs struggled, Mahomes was injured, and it looked like any prospect of repeating was slipping away. The low point was when the Chiefs went to Tennessee and were beaten in the closing seconds by the lowly Titans.

I’m sorry, Grandpa. Maybe next year.

But sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference.

The Chiefs quietly put things together. They stopped losing. They went to New England and beat Brady’s Patriots. At the time, it seemed to hardly matter – New England still had a 1-game lead for the bye, and the Ravens had locked up the #1 seed long since. The top 2 seeds are almost always the teams competing for a Super Bowl. The Chiefs, as a #3 seed, would have to beat a wild card team, then go to New England and beat the Patriots again, then go to Baltimore and beat the 14-2 Ravens, just to reach the Super Bowl. A tall order. But the Chiefs kept grinding, kept winning.

I’ll never forget the last week of the season. The Chiefs came in, 11-4, needing to beat the Chargers even to have a chance at a bye. The Patriots were 12-3, simply needing to defeat the lowly Dolphins, a team with only 4 wins, who the Patriots had blown out 42-0 in Miami earlier, a team so terrible legitimate articles were written earlier in the season questioning if the team was the worst of all time.

And as the Chiefs closed in, doing their part, beating the Chargers, a miracle happened.

As time wound down in both games, the Dolphins marched down the field – and took the lead with barely 30 seconds to go.

In Arrowhead, the news was kept from the big screen – Reid didn’t want his players distracted. But the crowd knew, and the word spread via word of mouth around the stadium. ANd you can see the roar steadily grow and spread in a natural wave as everyone learns the amazing news. The players learn, too, and react with unfeigned joy: the Chiefs were now the #2 seed. They would have the bye – and the Patriots would have to play a wild card team, and, if they won, come to Arrowhead to play.

And then last week. The Patriots, and then the Ravens, were upset. The two teams the Chiefs were chasing all season – eliminated. And for the second straight year, the AFC Championship Game will be held at Arrowhead.

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

And so it comes to the Titans.

It had to be the Titans. The last team to beat the Chiefs this season. A team the Chiefs have beaten only once in the last five years, and lost to four times. Last year, the Chiefs beat the Colts in the playoffs and got that monkey off their back. The game in Foxborough this year ensured the Patriots were in the wild card and served as fitting revenge for the defeat last January. Now the Chiefs face a tough, physical team that isn’t the least bit frightened of them.

The team the Chiefs lost to, the last time I doubted them, 22-21?

The Titans, of course.

But they’re back. Against all odds, the Chiefs have clawed their way to a second chance. A second chance to give me the thing I’ve wanted for Grandpa for years. A chance at a Super Bowl. And so the game on Sunday means everything to me.

But not whether they win or lose. I want htem to win, obviously, but ultimately the winning or losing isn’t what’s important. What is important is that you’re there, with your team. Because when you cheer for the team, you’re not alone. You’re sharing the experience with millions of people from around your city. You’re coming together and joining in something larger than yourself, something you choose to devote yourself to. Not because they just happen to live nearby. But because the people you care about also choose to. And when you’re cheering on your team, the ones you love – including the ones you lost – aren’t really gone. For just a few hours, once a week, they’re right there with you, again.

Because ultimately, you cheer for your team because of your family.

Good luck Sunday. Go Chiefs.

Six years ago this month, I had one of the most intense arguments I’ve ever had with my family. Tempers flared, things got heated, and for a while we even had to separate just so everyone could cool down – maybe common, in other houses, but definitely a rarity with me and mine.

It was January, 2014. We were in Florida for Christmas and New Year’s. We’d gone across the bridge over the Caloosahatchee River to Cape Coral, to a restaurant Mom had wanted to try there near the riverfront. It was a crowded place, and the NFL playoffs were on. My hometown Kansas City Chiefs had made the playoffs for the first time under their new head coach, Andy Reid, and had traveled to Indianapolis to take on Andrew Luck’s Colts. Everyone in my family was deeply invested in the game – except me. And here the troubles began.

“It’s stupid,” I said, “to invest so much of your happiness in a team like the Chiefs.” I went on, “You don’t know any of the players. They’re a bunch of people you’ve never met, people who aren’t even from Kansas City. Their winning or losing affects your daily life not a bit. And if they win, it’s no credit to you – you did nothing.”

My mother was horrified. “It’s not about the winning and losing,” she said. “It’s about supporting your hometown team!”

I shook my head. “They have no connection to Kansas City! Most of the players, again, aren’t even from Kansas City. They’re basically just hired mercenaries. Basically, they’re just a bunch of people who happen to play geographically near me. I have no connection to them.”

Back and forth we went, each side steadily digging in, and things started to get heated. Meanwhile, on the screen, the Chiefs were thumping the Colts, racing out to a 38-10 lead over the luckless* Indianapolis team.

My position was simple. I refused to get invested, emotionally, in Kansas City’s two professional teams, the Royals and the Chiefs, because they would always disappoint me in the end. The Royals, of course, were the perennial laughingstock of baseball, having had only 1 winning season in the last 20 years and not having sniffed the playoffs since 4 years before my own birth.

In many ways, though, the Royals’ quiet, hopeless futility was better than what the Chiefs did.

The Chiefs would break your heart.

Many of my earliest memories, especially in the winter time, are of my family – all of them, including grandparents, uncles & aunts, cousins – gathered in the living room on Sundays to watch the Chiefs in the playoffs. The red and white sweaters would come out, snacks would be made, and then a lot of yelling and tears would inevitably ensue.

See, unlike the Royals, the Chiefs consistently made the playoffs. They were a consistently tough, well-performing team – in the regular season. In the playoffs, they preferred to implode dramatically.

In 1996, I was 6 years old. I had just started kindergarten at Prairie View Elementary, two years after we had moved to Lee’s Summit, a small but quickly growing suburb of Kansas City. The top-seeded Chiefs lost to a wild card Colts team 10-7 after Lin Elliot missed 3 field goals in the same game.

In 1998, I was 8. My parents were splitting up, Clinton was being impeached, and the Chiefs were in the playoffs against the hated Denver Broncos, again the top seed against a wild card team. This time they lost, 14-10, after more missed field goals, after a touchdown was ruled out of bounds despite replay showing Gonzales clearly in (instant replay review was instituted the next season).

In 2004, I was 14, by now at Lee’s Summit West High School. I had a baby sister and two new stepparents since the last time the Chiefs made the playoffs. But they were back, and hosting the Colts again. The monstrous Chiefs offense didn’t have a single punt the entire game and scored 31 points. Unfortunately, the Colts under a young Peyton Manning also never punted and scored 38.

And so it went.

In 2007, they lost to the Colts again. In 2011 they lost to the Ravens. In between these brief flashes of hoped-for success were long stretches of irrelevant mediocrity or outright failure (as in 2008). And along the way, I slowly drifted away from caring about the Chiefs or the Royals. That way would only bring disappointment and pain, I learned. I graduated high school, I went to college, I fell in love with a girl from St. Louis (and watched her hometown Cardinals go to the World Series, twice, and win it once), I changed my intended career, I started grad school, and all along I knew that sports was a foolish waste of time.

I don’t remember what we ate, that January night in Florida. I just remember the argument, the rising tempers on both sides, and behind us, the Chiefs actually playing well in the playoffs for once. I simply couldn’t understand why anyone would want to invest themselves in the team, and I was irritated that I was being attacked for doing what I considered to be the smart choice. On the other side, Mom was hurt that I was attacking her fandom, and frustrated that I didn’t seem to understand why the Chiefs were important to her.

We drove home around halftime, back across the bridge and around to the house. We went to separate rooms, while my brother put the second half on the living room television. I was proven right. The Chiefs let us down again, as the Colts somehow clawed out the second-largest playoff comeback of all time, and won, 45-44.

I didn’t take much satisfaction.

I think of that argument today, because I was wrong. It is important to support your teams. They do give something valuable. And they’re not just a bunch of strangers – no, not at all. There is a connection, and it’s important.

I’ve told this story before, but it’s one that merits multiple tellings. That January, 2014, was probably the low point of Kansas City fandom. The Royals’ drought entered its 29th year. The Chiefs’ inability to win in the playoffs entered its third decade. And since then, everything has changed.

The moment I became a fan of Kansas City sports was September 30th, 2014.

As you know, the Royals won the wild card, a wild, improbable, come from behind win, a moment of redemption for a franchise that had been nothing more than a speed bump for thirty years, the guys to play the patsies in other team’s highlight reels.

But Papa, the biggest Royals and Chiefs fan in the world, didn’t get to see it. He passed away from complications from heart surgery at the same time the Royals’ crazy playoff run began.

I’ll never forget that fall. I was home, for the first time in years, after so much time spent in college and grad school. My whole family gathered for the funeral, to say farewell to maybe the best man I ever knew. And what a sendoff he had.

The atmosphere in Kansas City was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced before. The Royals were playing the best team in baseball, the Angels. And suddenly, in 11 innings – they’d taken a game. Then, in 10 innings – another game. And now they’re only one game away from advancing to the next round, one game that they have three chances to win. And people started to talk about how far they could go, and even started to think something once unthinkable: that we could see the Royals – the Royals – in the World Series. And every person in the street had a Royals thought, or wore a Royals hat, or asked a Royals question.

I wasn’t a Royals fan, not at that time, but when I came home, the city enveloped me. Everyone was a part of the Royals kingdom. Everyone was united, like the old city had never been before, everyone sharing in one experience of joy, excitement, dread, and exhilaration, every night, as the Royals hurled themselves at the tallest mountain in sports: the World Series.

Every evening, I’d come together with my family, and though we still mourned our loss, and it hurt, deeply, to think about Papa’s absence, when the game was on, it didn’t hurt so much. He would have been overjoyed with everything happening. He would have shared in the city’s united exuberance more than anyone. Watching the games, I knew that. And so when I watched the Royals, just for a few hours every evening, it was like I still had my grandfather. And suddenly I got it.

Now, the Royals fell short that fall, 90 feet short, thanks to Madison Bumgarner, but the next year they clawed their way back and won the whole damn thing, a feat no other team has managed to pull off since. It’s a long, long story, worthy of a book of its own**, but the Royals rewarded my faith beyond all belief. And since those fall days, I have faithfully followed my Kansas City teams, because those teams are important to me.

When I cheer for a team, I remember that feeling of unity. I remember everyone in Kansas City, coming together to support their team. And I remember how it helped me salve the hurt of losing my grandfather. When I support the team, it’s because I know he supported them, and it’s in his memory. It’s not about me, and it’s not about Kansas City. Not really. It’s about Papa. And Mom***. And my aunt Traci. And my dad, and my brother, my friend…It’s about being part of something larger than myself, and sharing in something that I know is important to the people I care about.

So that’s why I support my hometown teams. That’s why I went from someone who hated sports to someone who loves to watch the games, to follow the competition. That’s why I like to wear my Royals cap here, or my Chiefs jacket. Because it’s not for me. It’s for Papa. And for Mom. And my father, and my brother, and my cousins, and uncles, and aunts, and my old friends in Kansas City. When I support the Chiefs, I’m not alone – I’m with my family. And I will always support my family:

This post is long. But it’s not done. There will be part 2, tomorrow.

Because while the Royals reached the top of the mountain, Kansas City’s other team has not.

*ha
**A book I’ve sort of already written. I’d like to polish the baseball parts there up and maybe seek publication some day.
*** Mom – this also is me admitting I was wrong 6 years ago, and you were right. I’m sorry.

It’s a blank screen. How on Earth do you make a blank screen interesting?

What do you mean, make a blank screen interesting? That’s on you, man! Haven’t you always said that a good writer ought to be able to make writing about a single brick on a brick wall interesting?

That’s different.

How so?

Well, for one, a brick has texture. It has history…

Screens have texture. They have history.

It’s not the same. The point is, I’m staring at the screen here, the stupid cursor keeps blinking and I have no idea what words to put here.

If you don’t know what to write, why bother writing at all?

Because it’s been nearly two weeks and I haven’t written anything, and what I wrote before that wasn’t even about Korea so it hardly counts. I wanted to write every day. Then at least every week. Now even that goal is fading into the rearview mirror. It’s so difficult for me to muster the motivation to do anything these days, it’s hard to write when I have nothing important to write about.

I mean, I think the Christmas post was important.

Important to me, at least. Not sure about anyone else.

If you want to write about Korea, man, then write about Korea. What’s new?

That’s just it. There’s nothing new. I live here. Every day is just…routine at this point.

But it’s routine in Korea! That’s got to count for something, right?

I’m not so sure about that. But fine. Here’s my routine. My alarm rings at 7:00 every day. I stagger up, turn on the hot water, and shower. I silently give thanks every day that I have a real shower and not a freezing wet room like some of my friends have gotten. Then I dress and I’m out the door for work.

The days are cold, and, if I’m lucky, clear. If I’m not, the fine dust hangs all over the city in a thick haze, and every passerby on the street is wearing a mask. Some days I am, too. Other days a thick, wet mist hangs low over the city, sometimes edging all the way over into a chill rain. I huddle in my coat, turn on my Revolutions podcast, and walk through the streets to work as Mike Duncan’s soothing voice tells me the stories of long-ago wars and the passionate, life-and-death struggles of men and women most of the world has long since forgotten. I pass an old man cleaning the sidewalk, a young woman always hurrying somewhere off to the west, pass a young man who walks too slowly every morning, stop and greet my cat in his little nest under the tree behind the seafood place, wait to cross the street, step in the same pothole again just as I do every morning, and then squeeze through the gate and walk up the front path into the school.

I make my way through the cold* and dim** hallways up to my office on the third floor. I unlock it, turn on the lights, turn on the heat, think for a moment, then turn the heat up a couple of degrees, and walk down to my desk, shrugging off my bag and my coat as I do. I drop into my chair, rest my eyes for a moment, and then log in.

Work will pass by slowly. If I’m lucky, I’ll see perhaps one other human being in the school while I’m here. Everyone else is on vacation. In the meantime, I fill my time by alternating between writing a syllabus and lesson plans for the semester to come, daydreaming about my trip to Japan, and finding long boring things to read on the Internet (did you know that the US State Department has a ton of archives available online? I’ve been reading a lot about the Korean war lately).

The day will pass, the sun will set, the dust and rain will continue to hang, and gradually the hallways outside become even more quiet and more dark. At 4:40, I’ll stand up, stretch, shrug on my coat, and shut off the lights and the heat. I walk home as Duncan tells me of the failed Presidency of Francisco Madero and the rebellion of Victor Huerta who toppled him (“Pity poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!”), back up to my apartment, where I take a few minutes to simply lie on the bed and muster the motivation to do something.

Some days, I’ll cook. Some days, I won’t. I’ll debate trying to write something. Most days, I won’t. I’ll try to read. Some days I’ll actually go to meet someone for dinner. Eventually, night will come, I’ll toss and turn for a while until I sleep, and the next day, I do it again. Those are my days.

See? You wrote a lot! Except…there’s nothing really about you in there, is there? Where’s the joy, the excitement that you had earlier in the year?

…no, no I don’t think I’m ready to share about that, yet. Suffice to say that life is harder than it was four months ago, and I have so much more sympathy for people with depression. I’ll get back to myself again. I’ll have energy, and the motivation to do things. I’ll have confidence in myself, and I’ll be happy with myself. Hell, it’s possible that this is jut my suspected seasonal affective disorder – always mildly present – just gone into overdrive because I’m away from home, I’m grappling with the failure of my relationship, and I’m isolated from everything I’ve ever known before. As time passes and the air grows warmer and the days grow longer I’ll bounce back.

Sometime.

But not yet.

Until then, I’m just going to stare at this stupid blinking cursor and try to figure out what to do to make it go away.

*”I like the cold. Nips the bones. Keeps the heart from overheating.” – Ebenezer Scrooge
**”I like the dark. Darkness is cheap – and that is tonic to the sensible man.” – Also Ebenezer Scrooge