My Santa Chronicles Part III: Swamp Fox and Low-Flying Boids
The day I was Santa Claus was the last day of the 1985 football season. The Eagles were playing their one and only game under an interim coach named Fred Bruney, who, near as I can tell never coached another game in his career, and it was the dark and dismal end of a thoroughly dismal season.
1985 had been the last year for Eagles coach Marion Campbell, who had been fired with one week to go in the regular season. Campbell was mainly known for being some kind of defensive genius, and for having a nickname that demonstrated a certain level of erudition to get, at least until Mel Gibson inflicted The Patriot on unsuspecting audiences. The defensive genius part of his rep was more or less accurate; over the first eleven games of the season the Eagles had given up twenty or more points three times. Keep the other team from scoring, and generally you win a lot of football games. But with week twelve, the bottom fell out, the roof caved in, and the defense suddenly turned into a sieve. And the offense, well, it's been a long running tradition in Philadelphia to hire defensive wizards who live up to the name by not having any idea whatsoever to do on offense. The Eagles scored 286 points that year, 24th out of 28 teams, and that included a 37 point spasm on that last insane day. They lost their last four games under Campbell, and by the time he was fired, it was kind of a relief to all concerned.
Really, Campbell was doomed from the beginning. He replaced a burned-out Dick Vermeil, the man who took the Eagles to the Super Bowl and stuck it repeatedly to the hated Dallas Cowboys. In a town as notoriously brutal on its sports legends as Philadelphia, Vermeil remains beloved to this day. He'd have to get caught naked and drunk with an underage goat on top of Billy Penn's statue while trading Cliff Lee to the Mets to tarnish his image in Philly, and anyone following him was going to have to do superhuman things not to look bad by comparison.
Campbell wasn't superhuman. He was an "almost" coach. His teams always almost won, and the Philly sports nabobs could say "If we coulda..." about one play or two plays, and dream of respectability. But they were that way every week, every year. In 1985, they lost three games by one point, and tied another. They were always almost, and after three years of it, folks had had enough of dreams of not quite there. Somehow, the bit got flipped from "if we do one more thing, we're over the hump" to "why can't we ever do that one little thing", and all that inevitably comes home to roost on the coach.
Which left us, that last Sunday of football season, listening to the one and only game of the Bruney era. I don't remember who the color guy was on the radio broadcast, but the play-by-play was by Merrill Reese, who is a Philadelphia institution. Much like the late Harry Kalas, Reese - still going strong - has a voice that can be characterized as unique and instantly recognizable. But where Harry the K's was all booming drawl and affability, Reese had - has - an innate tension, an ability to make every play feel like a Special Forces operation, in a voice that could belong to an auctioneer who gargled unfiltered cigarettes. "FIRST and ten on the Eagles' OWN thirty seven yard line, moving from right to left. Backs are in the I. Wide receivers split. Now Jackson goes in motion, moving to the near side. The ball is snapped. Jaworski's back. He's looking...looking...THROWS down the right sideline to Garrity, comPLETE for six yards." The staccato phrasing, the sudden and rare emphasis - that was the voice of Philadelphia in the fall, especially in the long drought between the Wheeze Kids and the current incarnation of the Phillies as Yankees-lite. By God, you listened to the man, and took what he said with breathless seriousness.
And so Dad put the game on in the car. It was, quite literally, the only game in town, and even though we knew they were going to find a way to lose - they always found a way to lose - they were at least interesting about it. Most of the stars of the Super Bowl team were gone - on offense, it was largely Jaworski and tight end John Spagnola left. Spagnola had a degree from Yale, and I'd apparently once been heard on national television yelling something rude about him after he dropped a pass. Because of that, I always shamefacedly rooted for him. But his career was winding down at this point, and the monstrous defense that Buddy Ryan would weld together was just starting to emerge. The stars on the team were either too old, like Jaworski, or too young, like the QB they'd just drafted to follow him, Randall Cunningham. But there were guys with personality, lots and lots of it. Hubie "Rockman" Oliver, a fullback from Arizona with hands like cinderblocks, but who made highlight-reel blocks. Herman "The Needle" Hunter, a kick returner who had precisely one season of glory. Free safety Wes Hopkins, already wearing a reputation as a homicidal maniac in pads. The only boring guys on the team were the frontline offensive skill players. The rest, well, they ran around and they hit people and they dropped balls and they got hit and they found interesting ways to lose.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Dad turned the game on in expectation of reasonable amusement while I was off ho-ing my ho-hos. It was a reasonable expectation. But a funny thing happened. The game went on, and on, and on.
It shouldn't have, really. Both teams' seasons were over. The Vikings were playing out the string in their last season under legendary coach Bud Grant, a year which had become a mysterious disaster. They were far more talented than their record, ranking top 5 in both points scored and points allowed, but when they stopped people, they didn't score. When they scored, they didn't stop people. And they did it wit a bunch of bland nobodies like Wade Wilson and Darrin Nelson. But when they hit the field that day, strangeness happened.
It was early afternoon when I started my Santification. The pregame show was just about wrapping up. The game was expected to be over quickly, as everyone, including the fans, just wanted to go home already. But people started scoring. Lots of people started scoring. And the day crept on, and the sun got lower, and they kept scoring and scoring and scoring. Every time I came back to the car, the first question I had was "What's the score now?" A couple of times, someone scored as I was getting in. All it needed was pinball noises to be complete.
We went to dinner after wrapping up the bulk of the parties. The game was in the fourth quarter by then. It was full dark outside, and I was too tired to change out of my costume before eating. I just yanked the pillow out in the parking lot, took off the beard, and stuffed them in the car before we went in to eat. Dad looked at me, then looked at the restaurant, which was full of families eating on a budget. "I think you just killed Christmas for a couple of kids," he said. "I'm Santa's helper," I said. "I'll tell 'em the real one's out there. If they ask." Nobody did, but I gave out a bunch of candy canes anyway.
There were only two houses left to go at that point, and the last dregs of the fourth quarter. The first of the two went uneventfully, and as I got in the car, the game ended. The Eagles won, 37-35. It was, I believe, the most points they'd scored all season. It may have been the most points they scored in a game in that decade. Dad shut off the post-game show as we rolled to the last stop, a row home on a darkened street. He wasn't much one for the talking heads as opposed to the game - still isn't, to be honest - and whenever something like that came on, he'd mutter something like "We don't need to listen to the idiots." So the radio went silent, and the voices that had soundtracked our day together were gone, and the day itself, in every significant way, was over. Just one house left, after all. The anticlimax. The loose end.
And as we pulled up to that last stop, I saw somebody waiting for me on the porch, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and holding a beer bottle. I'm pretty sure he had a lighted cigarette as well. "That's funny," I thought. "He doesn't look dressed for a party. He doesn't look dressed for a party at all."
But I was Santa, and I was on the job, so I got out of the car in time for him to come off the steps, shouting.
The running started a few exchanges later. And my last thought before I started sprinting was, "Must be a Vikings fan."
1985 had been the last year for Eagles coach Marion Campbell, who had been fired with one week to go in the regular season. Campbell was mainly known for being some kind of defensive genius, and for having a nickname that demonstrated a certain level of erudition to get, at least until Mel Gibson inflicted The Patriot on unsuspecting audiences. The defensive genius part of his rep was more or less accurate; over the first eleven games of the season the Eagles had given up twenty or more points three times. Keep the other team from scoring, and generally you win a lot of football games. But with week twelve, the bottom fell out, the roof caved in, and the defense suddenly turned into a sieve. And the offense, well, it's been a long running tradition in Philadelphia to hire defensive wizards who live up to the name by not having any idea whatsoever to do on offense. The Eagles scored 286 points that year, 24th out of 28 teams, and that included a 37 point spasm on that last insane day. They lost their last four games under Campbell, and by the time he was fired, it was kind of a relief to all concerned.
Really, Campbell was doomed from the beginning. He replaced a burned-out Dick Vermeil, the man who took the Eagles to the Super Bowl and stuck it repeatedly to the hated Dallas Cowboys. In a town as notoriously brutal on its sports legends as Philadelphia, Vermeil remains beloved to this day. He'd have to get caught naked and drunk with an underage goat on top of Billy Penn's statue while trading Cliff Lee to the Mets to tarnish his image in Philly, and anyone following him was going to have to do superhuman things not to look bad by comparison.
Campbell wasn't superhuman. He was an "almost" coach. His teams always almost won, and the Philly sports nabobs could say "If we coulda..." about one play or two plays, and dream of respectability. But they were that way every week, every year. In 1985, they lost three games by one point, and tied another. They were always almost, and after three years of it, folks had had enough of dreams of not quite there. Somehow, the bit got flipped from "if we do one more thing, we're over the hump" to "why can't we ever do that one little thing", and all that inevitably comes home to roost on the coach.
Which left us, that last Sunday of football season, listening to the one and only game of the Bruney era. I don't remember who the color guy was on the radio broadcast, but the play-by-play was by Merrill Reese, who is a Philadelphia institution. Much like the late Harry Kalas, Reese - still going strong - has a voice that can be characterized as unique and instantly recognizable. But where Harry the K's was all booming drawl and affability, Reese had - has - an innate tension, an ability to make every play feel like a Special Forces operation, in a voice that could belong to an auctioneer who gargled unfiltered cigarettes. "FIRST and ten on the Eagles' OWN thirty seven yard line, moving from right to left. Backs are in the I. Wide receivers split. Now Jackson goes in motion, moving to the near side. The ball is snapped. Jaworski's back. He's looking...looking...THROWS down the right sideline to Garrity, comPLETE for six yards." The staccato phrasing, the sudden and rare emphasis - that was the voice of Philadelphia in the fall, especially in the long drought between the Wheeze Kids and the current incarnation of the Phillies as Yankees-lite. By God, you listened to the man, and took what he said with breathless seriousness.
And so Dad put the game on in the car. It was, quite literally, the only game in town, and even though we knew they were going to find a way to lose - they always found a way to lose - they were at least interesting about it. Most of the stars of the Super Bowl team were gone - on offense, it was largely Jaworski and tight end John Spagnola left. Spagnola had a degree from Yale, and I'd apparently once been heard on national television yelling something rude about him after he dropped a pass. Because of that, I always shamefacedly rooted for him. But his career was winding down at this point, and the monstrous defense that Buddy Ryan would weld together was just starting to emerge. The stars on the team were either too old, like Jaworski, or too young, like the QB they'd just drafted to follow him, Randall Cunningham. But there were guys with personality, lots and lots of it. Hubie "Rockman" Oliver, a fullback from Arizona with hands like cinderblocks, but who made highlight-reel blocks. Herman "The Needle" Hunter, a kick returner who had precisely one season of glory. Free safety Wes Hopkins, already wearing a reputation as a homicidal maniac in pads. The only boring guys on the team were the frontline offensive skill players. The rest, well, they ran around and they hit people and they dropped balls and they got hit and they found interesting ways to lose.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Dad turned the game on in expectation of reasonable amusement while I was off ho-ing my ho-hos. It was a reasonable expectation. But a funny thing happened. The game went on, and on, and on.
It shouldn't have, really. Both teams' seasons were over. The Vikings were playing out the string in their last season under legendary coach Bud Grant, a year which had become a mysterious disaster. They were far more talented than their record, ranking top 5 in both points scored and points allowed, but when they stopped people, they didn't score. When they scored, they didn't stop people. And they did it wit a bunch of bland nobodies like Wade Wilson and Darrin Nelson. But when they hit the field that day, strangeness happened.
It was early afternoon when I started my Santification. The pregame show was just about wrapping up. The game was expected to be over quickly, as everyone, including the fans, just wanted to go home already. But people started scoring. Lots of people started scoring. And the day crept on, and the sun got lower, and they kept scoring and scoring and scoring. Every time I came back to the car, the first question I had was "What's the score now?" A couple of times, someone scored as I was getting in. All it needed was pinball noises to be complete.
We went to dinner after wrapping up the bulk of the parties. The game was in the fourth quarter by then. It was full dark outside, and I was too tired to change out of my costume before eating. I just yanked the pillow out in the parking lot, took off the beard, and stuffed them in the car before we went in to eat. Dad looked at me, then looked at the restaurant, which was full of families eating on a budget. "I think you just killed Christmas for a couple of kids," he said. "I'm Santa's helper," I said. "I'll tell 'em the real one's out there. If they ask." Nobody did, but I gave out a bunch of candy canes anyway.
There were only two houses left to go at that point, and the last dregs of the fourth quarter. The first of the two went uneventfully, and as I got in the car, the game ended. The Eagles won, 37-35. It was, I believe, the most points they'd scored all season. It may have been the most points they scored in a game in that decade. Dad shut off the post-game show as we rolled to the last stop, a row home on a darkened street. He wasn't much one for the talking heads as opposed to the game - still isn't, to be honest - and whenever something like that came on, he'd mutter something like "We don't need to listen to the idiots." So the radio went silent, and the voices that had soundtracked our day together were gone, and the day itself, in every significant way, was over. Just one house left, after all. The anticlimax. The loose end.
And as we pulled up to that last stop, I saw somebody waiting for me on the porch, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and holding a beer bottle. I'm pretty sure he had a lighted cigarette as well. "That's funny," I thought. "He doesn't look dressed for a party. He doesn't look dressed for a party at all."
But I was Santa, and I was on the job, so I got out of the car in time for him to come off the steps, shouting.
The running started a few exchanges later. And my last thought before I started sprinting was, "Must be a Vikings fan."
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