Pittsburgh Pride and Passion

The people of Pittsburgh LOVE their football. This is a city that does not have nationally recognized tourist attractions or cultural destinations. The only things we really have that bring widespread pride are our sports teams, and no sports team is as beloved as the Steelers. Now that they are stand on the brink of possibly bringing a championship back to Pittsburgh, the whole city has just completely lost it.

You cannot go out in public without someone mentioning the Steelers. You cannot turn on the radio without hearing one of the many Steelers fight songs. You can't go to work on a Friday before a game and not wear balck and gold. Even the Penguins rescheduled their travel plans for a road game this past weekend so that their players could watch the AFC Championship Game. That is life in Pittsburgh right now.

Everyone is a little bit friendlier than usual, because the whole city shares one common bond. This feeling of brotherhood was never more evident than when a Denver Post columnist wrote last week that Pittsburgh is a "butt-ugly" town. Nevermind the fact that he was obviously just trying to push buttons - his misguided reference to the "old steel mills" that one would supposedly see "dotting the town" on the way in from the airport was a dead give-away that he had not even been here - people were still enraged. How dare you bash our city!! I wish the pride that is swelling up right now could be captured in a bottle, because it is at an all-time high (at least in my lifetime as a resident of this place). That is life in Pittsburgh right now.

The local TV stations are really exploiting this. Every night, the news starts something like this: "Today there was a major incident in Iraq, and we'll talk about the 28-car pile up that's currently blcoking I-279, but first.... meet a woman who dresses her cat in Steelers outfits, and learn why kitty will be wearing his lucky #36 jersey for the big game next week!" It's 24/7 coverage of Steelers mania, and it should serve as an embarassment for anyone who went to school for journalism. But that is life in Pittsburgh right now.

Mario Lemieux, the greatest sports figure in the history of Pittsburgh (and my idol since age 10), announced his retirement yesterday. Always classy and humble, he waited until everyone was paying attention to the Super Bowl to announce this so that people wouldn't gush all over him, but people did anyway. They recalled how fired up this town got when Mario and the Pens won the Stanley Cup in 1991. If the Steelers win in Detroit, we may see triple the excitement of 1991. They may just have to cancel school and work for the days following the Super Bowl, because the jubilation would be too intense for anyone to concentrate. That is life in Pittsburgh right now, and I'm loving every minute of it.

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