Homecoming season for a Bills fan

The last four
falls, I’ve been a Bills fan in exile on the peninsula of Portland, Maine.
That’s deep in Patriots country, enemy territory.

            Surrounded by Patsies, I’d take
refuge in sports bars to watch Buffalo play via satellite. I had to arrive well
before kickoff to stake out a stool near the one TV in 10 showing the game.

            I wasn’t competing for seats against
Patriots fans. They were all at home, sitting on couches, watching the
Patriots-partial local stations and practicing witchcraft, or whatever they do.

            I was angling for position among
what would become, as the season progressed, a familiar crew of football
refugees — Steelers fans, Raiders fans, a confused kid who liked Carolina,
and a few of those ubiquitous assholes who love the Cowboys. There was one
other Bills fan there, but he didn’t talk much. He had the air of a man
defeated.

            Spot secured, I’d start pounding
PBRs (as close to my beloved Genny Light as I could get) and eviscerating
second-rate chicken wings in frustration. I can’t tell you how many times I
watched the tiny football leave Rob Johnson’s hand, bounce off a panel in outer
space, and fall to the ground, incomplete.

            The experience often brought
thoughts of Frederick Exley, author of the autobiographical novel, A Fan’s Notes: a schoolteacher on a
bender in a Watertown bar, raving for Gifford and his Giants. I was a
journalist with a beer buzz, muttering curses against our foes, like Bledsoe.

            (By the way, am I the only one
around here who suspects this guy is a secret agent the Patriots pawned off on
us to sabotage our season? If a few conspicuous Bledsoe interceptions keep us a
game behind New England this year, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

            Like Exley, I squandered a lot of
emotional capital on the outcome of the games. If the Bills won, I felt
hopeful, even heroic, strolling home up Munjoy Hill in the golden autumn
afternoon. But if they lost, I was a loser, a bum trudging up the sidewalk stinking
of cigarettes and cheap beer. I’d reproach myself for having wasted a fine
Sunday staring at a bunch of rich jocks who’d have kicked my ass in high
school, given the chance.

            Why did I waste my time in places
like Asylum, a particularly soulless sports bar that raffled off Bud Light
T-shirts during the games?

            I’d like to think I had better
things to do, like the stuff listed in this fall guide. I could have been
picking apples, or picking out a pumpkin, or riding around country roads,
lounging on a bed of hay in the back of a pickup truck, looking at leaves.

            But it wasn’t so much what I could
have done as what I used to do that drew me back week after anxious week.

            It was memories of slouching in the
bean bag by the fireplace of my folks’ old house in Fairport. The wood would
crackle, the popcorn would pop, and Joe Ferguson took the snaps. It was an era
of low expectations, embodied by a grammatically challenged slogan: “We’re
talking proud!” (“We play pretty one day!”)

            But it was also the memory of the
time my buddy Giz and I watched the big wild card comeback against the Oilers
at MacGregor’s in Perinton. The whole bar became one, as Frank “The Second”
Reich pulled it off. We were rowdy with joy. There were countless high fives. I
hugged a neighbor whose grass I used to mow.

            And it was the memory of Rochester
itself, which the Bills’ season brought to mind as strongly as the smell of
chimney smoke in thin air.

            It’s great to be back in Bills
Country, looking forward to a fall surrounded by my fellow fans. I don’t
suppose I’ll spend many Sundays in sports bars, unless the home-game blackout
inspires a road trip to Toronto. I’ll leave that scene to the football refugee
community here, and practice my witchcraft in the privacy of my own home.

This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2002.