It was also the day my mother, the
choir director for the church we attended back then, scheduled a
concert. She also scheduled me, a gawky 17-year-old kid at the time
who was just developing a serious sports addiction, to be an usher
for the event. I had grown up in Minnesota and suffered through three
prior Super Bowl losses by the Vikings. This game, I thought, would
be different. Despite having never played for the Vikings, I, like
other fans, referred to the team as “we,” as in “I'll be
watching when we win this one.”
Instead, while others were sitting at
home enjoying the game I was showing non-sports fans where to sit in
the church.
To make matters worse, my parents —
nay, my mother only. I'm sure my dad had nothing to do with this —
bought me a hideous yellow sweater for Christmas two weeks earlier
and bade me to wear it for the concert. The thing had tufts of furry
yarn on it. Alas, I looked like a chicken. And since it was 1977, I
had buckles on my dress shoes. It's a wonder the churchgoers didn't
beat me up.
Since the football game began in the
afternoon back then, I was able to watch the first half at home
before being shuttled off to the church. Oakland built a 16-0 lead by
then and I realized the Vikes were well on their way to losing a
fourth Super Bowl. Still, however, I wanted to see the game in its
entirety.
Instead, during the second half while
Fran Tarkenton handed off the ball to Chuck Foreman, I handed
programs to the poor souls who shuffled into the church for the show.
My parents lived in an Arkansas retirement community at the time and
a majority of the denizens probably remembered when the real Vikings
first traveled by creaky wooden vessels to American from Norway and
Scandinavia. They also liked my yellow furry sweater. I told them I
looked like a chicken. They thought I was a cute whippersnapper.
I remember a fellow Minnesotan who
moved to Arkansas enter the church at the last minute. He was an elderly sports fan and I'm not making this up, but he remembered seeing Babe
Ruth play minor league baseball in St. Paul once. I looked at him
with pleading eyes. It was unsaid, but he knew what I was seeking.
Hope? A miracle? A couple of Minnesota touchdowns? I was in a church after all. I had the front row to
the football prayer line.
He shook his head sadly, almost in the
manner of a doctor solemnly acknowledging that, despite all he could
do, the loved one didn't make it.
The Vikings died.
They lost to Oakland, 32-14. It was the
last Super Bowl Minnesota has played in.
Super Bowl XLVIII (48) will be Sunday.
Thirty-seven years after the Vikes' last championship game, and I
still wait and hope for the team to return there. I still hate that I
missed the second half of that game. Why, oh why, couldn't my mother
have scheduled her concert a week later?
And, since this blog refers to the APBA
sports replay game, here's the APBA connection. I have the 1976
football season for the game. It's the first APBA set I've ever
owned. In fact, one of the first games I ever replayed was Minnesota
vs. Oakland. Of course, the Vikings won the game.
Now, as I near the end of replaying the
1942 baseball season with APBA, I'm looking for a new project.
Baseball is front-runner for the next replay, but I'm really debating
about playing some with the 1979-80 NBA season I have. And now, as
the Super Bowl nears, the idea has popped into my head to roll the
dice and redo the Vikings' last Super Bowl game. If I can find, and
fit into, that yellow chicken sweater, I may just do that.
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