A good friend called and told me he had tickets to the Giants opener against the Redskins. As a loyal 49er fan praying for Alex Smith and thankful for Frank Gore, the Giants have been a team I appreciated but didn’t root for. Until last year in the playoffs. How one could not cheer for the Giants, especially against the Patriots would seem crazy to me. That person probably cheered for Dolph Lungren in Rocky IV too.
I skipped a commission meeting to go. Fortunately, I invited our new senior pastor so I’m pretty semi-confident that I won’t get in too much trouble. Arriving about four hours early, I could not get over all the tailgating. Our tailgating party was out of an RV, had steak, shrimp cocktail, beer of course, and satellite tv showing the pre-game. Oh, there was a DJ next door, err, the next parking space.
So there I was eating steak, bbq chips, drinking Heineken, when The New Kids, “Hangin’ Tough” came on (He may not have been the coolest DJ, because earlier I think I heard Snow’s “Informer”). Around that moment I started wondering what exactly was going on. It was Thursday, my new senior pastor and I are tailgating with people we really don’t know, listening to someone’s playlist called “1986-1991” (Did I mention the Milli Vanilli?).
Prior to kick-off Pre-game Super Bowl celebrations. That was cool as there was a lot of energy in the stadium for that. Michael Strahan came out and introduced the Giants. That also was cool until I found out that he needed to be paid 75,000 to do it. Lame. I would have done it for half and I probably wouldn’t have stuttered. Anyway, The first half of the game was fantastic; second half, not so much.
Here’s where I get reflective. There seems to be so much more community at football games as opposed to baseball games. Don’t think I realized it as much til then. Some of the tailgaters try to get the same spots, the season tickets holders welcoming and hugging each other prior to kick off. One guy showed off his new baby who was born in the off-season. Maybe that happens in the expensive box seats at Yankee Stadium but whatever. Baseball of course has about 8x the amount of home games so I’m sure that’s part of it.
It brought back a conversation that I had with a woman regarding why her brother always went to the bar. I tried to explain that was place of community. He goes there to get what she gets out of the Ladies Bible Study. The Scriptures are an important part of it, but there’s a reason why she goes to her church bible study. She knows those ladies. Similarly, her brother goes to that bar to talk about sports and whatever with his “small group”.
We Christians, are used to thinking of this type of community strictly in our terms but there are so many other ways that people connect. This isn’t to say that we each receive the same type of benefits or in our language “blessings” but I think it’s an observation worth mentioning. If he idea of “office wife” makes sense to you, then you will see this. If you see that as a form of adultery, then these you’ll probably be frustrated with the rest of these thoughts, this blog, me, you don’t get the Simpson’s but let me humbly encourage you to expand your way of thinking.
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