Behind the Steel Curtain

IT WAS AN EASY choice, really -- a down payment on a home, or Super Bowl tickets? I’ll be in Detroit today watching my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers try to win their first championship in a quarter of a century.

As a boy living in Chihuahua, Mexico, I was as enthralled by the spectacle of el futbol americano as I was by the more universal version of futbol, or soccer. I started rooting for the Steelers in the ‘70s, the decade of the storied Steelers-Cowboy rivalry.

My friends all followed the NFL, and like Angelenos today, we were free agents not beholden to a local team. Many kids fell for the glitz, geographic proximity (and cheerleaders) of the Dallas Cowboys. The rest of us, the more contrarian lot, splintered into Raider, Ram, Dolphin and Steeler factions.

I was smitten with the Steelers before they won their first of four Super Bowls in six years. I’d like to think that my devotion was forged by an admiration for the values the city and team represented -- true grit, seriousness of purpose and plain-spoken authenticity. This was a no-nonsense squad with no cheerleaders from a city that had given so much of itself to provide the steel that built 20th century America. The team was so modest (and tightfisted?), its helmets had its logo only on one side.

Then again, I was only 8 or 9 at the time, so maybe I chose Pittsburgh simply because they wore black uniforms. Black was the constant running through all teams I rooted for in sports, but that’s a subject for another column, perhaps even a little therapy.

In addition to watching that Steeler dynasty of Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert and Lynn Swann whenever Mexican TV deigned to carry them, I followed their exploits in that treasured gift from my grandmother: my Steelers Weekly, which would arrive weeks or months late, depending on the vagaries of the Mexican postal system. One year I even got a Christmas card from the old man himself, Art Rooney, who had bought the team for $2,500 in 1933 and was evidently tickled to have a fan in a place called Chihuahua.

With my team winning four Super Bowls before I turned 14, life was sweet. Alas, the question today is whether they will win a fifth before I turn 40.

It’s been a rocky quarter of a century for us Steeler fans, though with plenty of decent years and near misses. Bradshaw and Swann gave way to the likes of Mark Malone, Bubby Brister, Neil O’Donnell and Kordell Stewart.

Sports fanaticism really is “for better and for worse.” As English novelist Nick Hornby sums it up in the first line of his poignant memoir as an Arsenal fan: “I fell in love with football the way I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.” In the loose American movie adaptation of the book, the protagonist, a Red Sox fanatic, asks his girlfriend: “Do you still care about anything you cared about 23 years ago?”

I like to think that I am by nature cool, calm and collected, which is why people have always been a bit shocked at their first exposure to my Steeler fan within. After countless wonky discussions about world politics and global development issues, one English friend was taken aback when she first witnessed my passion for the Steelers. “And here I thought you were a highbrow editorial-writing chap,” she said.

In the late 1990s, during a rare Steelers Thanksgiving Day appearance, my mother-in-law asked her daughter, in a tone hovering uncertainly between amusement and genuine concern: “Is he always like this when they play?” In fairness, my screaming at the TV was prompted by a certain infamous botched coin toss call heading into overtime. That game was in Detroit too, but let’s not dwell on that fact. Not today.

Pittsburgh is clearly the team of nostalgia today, and not just for me. Seattle, the other Super Bowl contender, is to the early 21st century what Pittsburgh was in the early 20th century. If the Pittsburgh of U.S. Steel, Gulf Oil, Alcoa and Heinz was the iconic city of the Industrial Age, the Seattle of Microsoft, Amazon.com and Starbucks is all about the Information Age. And as uber-tycoon-turned-philanthropists, Seattle’s Bill Gates and Paul Allen are the New Economy’s answer to Pittsburgh’s Carnegies and Mellons. One city is ascendant; the other is in decline.

Best not to dwell on that fact either.