Dear HST,
How ya doing Ace? I’ve been thinking a lot about you recently; in fact two things always make me think of you: Las Vegas, and the end of the football season. With the end of the season rapidly approaching I wanted to take this time to write to you.
I always wanted to meet you, heck to be you—but a more sober you. It’s been nearly 4 years since you killed yourself. You were 67, and you always wanted to go out, Hemingway-style, by your own hand. But that’s not why you did it; you killed yourself because ‘Football Season is over,’ at least that’s what you titled your suicide note. You watched the Super Bowl (the Patriots’ 3rd win in 4 years), then you stayed around another week for the Pro Bowl but by the 3rd Sunday in February—the first Sunday after the season was really over—you just couldn’t take it anymore.
I like to think that it was Bill Belichick that drove you over the edge. A sweaty little insecure man, he had to remind you of Nixon—this was even before we learned of Bill’s spying tendencies. You hated Nixon; you felt he “was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it.” I just picture Belichick getting fired from the Browns, hosting a press conference and swearing off football: You won’t have Billy Belichick to kick around anymore… So I think seeing Belichick be called a genius had to be hard on you and to do it as a “Patriot” had an irony that I’m sure you could appreciate. But last season, oh you would have loved last season: seeing him win by a landslide, seeing him near perfection, but then…well, then Bill Belichick was humbled. It was a sight to see. In fact you’ve missed a lot last 4 seasons, and I’d love to take some time to tell you about this past season…
The 49ers struggled early before ending the season on a winning streak. You were a San Francisco 49er fan through and through. I would have loved to talk Niner football with you, talk Bill Walsh with you. I bet you called him “Stanford” and you mocked his Ivy-League-of-the-West-Coast-style, but you would have respected and loved the intelligence that he brought to football. But these aren’t Walsh’s Niners anymore; what would you think of Mike Singletary? What would you have said about the Niners now? They’re on their way up but the Yorks are gonna ruin it? Would these last few years of losing have turned you into a pessimist or would you still believe that Shaun Hill could lead you to the playoffs? I think you would be so excited about their prospects that you could hardly contain yourself.
The Raiders struggled early, and often. Ya know, it’s funny, if you weren’t a Niners fan I kinda expected you to be a Raider guy, but Madden’s Raiders, Alzado’s Raiders, they would have been yours; the Raiders of today, the Al Davis of today, would have only been a reminder of the dangers of getting old. The tarnish on these teams—teams that were great in the 70s and 80s—I bet you would have written about that.
But as any good Niner fan, you hated the Dallas Cowboys, and I bet you would have hated Tony Romo too. So I’m sure you would have enjoyed the Cowboys collapse this year (and really every year for a decade). The weight of expectations pushing down on America’s Team, on America itself; I bet that would have been a theme for you.
I wish you could have written about New York this year. Did you hate Eli Manning—an underachiever trading on the family name—I wonder if you would have compared him to W? Or would you have changed your opinion of him after last Super Bowl? I did; of course in this year’s playoffs he reverted to form, so what do I know? Speaking of changing opinions, how hard would you have been on Brett Favre? Even as a Niner fan I don’t think you hated him; but this season he crashed to Earth. Would you have piled on, a warrior fighting one too many times?
If I am right, and you did hate Belichick, would you have liked seeing him this year without Tom Brady? Matt Cassell carried that team to 11 wins and yet they missed the playoffs; I wonder how you would have treated their surprising success before they fell short? Ya know, you kinda softened on Nixon later in life; you eventually respected him as a football fan. Would you have done the same to Belichick, would you have respected those 11 wins more than the 3 championships he had with Brady? As much as I don’t like him, when Brady went down we all said Well now we’ll find out what kind of coach Bill Belichick is. And you know, it turns out he’s pretty damn good.
Would you have cheered for the Lions to go 0-16? They are a poorly run organization, and they deserved those 16 losses, but would you have had mercy on their souls—or would you want them condemned to their disgrace? I wonder if you enjoyed sports for their degradation of losers.
Did you like Donovan McNabb coming back after the benching, after the booing, and leading his team to the playoffs? I wonder if you enjoyed sports for the redemption.
You hated the Ravens of 2000, so I can’t imagine you would have much cared for this year’s version; but what about Tenneessee or Pittsburgh? Haynesworth was a beast in the middle, and Polamalu was crazy-good patrolling the field, Ed Reed too. You were always more of an offense guy, but could you have grown to love the D this year?
In September 2001, you wrote a column that basically predicted every world event that would happen during the Bush administration. You predicted Iraq right away, you predicted the economic troubles and the cost of gas. You were scared, and scary, but you pretty much nailed what was gonna happen during that administration. But could you have seen these Arizona Cardinals coming? I mean, these guys weren’t supposed to win a playoff game, now people are picking them to win the Super Bowl? This season has been Weird. But you loved the high-flying attack, so would you have been cheering for them to put up 50 points in a year where everybody else was based on their Defense? I wish I could hear your thoughts on this season.
There was no football this past Sunday. This weekend is the Super Bowl, and then of course the Pro Bowl, so football season’s not done yet. But that first Sunday without football—that methadone Sunday designed to prepare us to be off it completely—made me think about you. About how much you probably hated the bye-week Sunday. How much you hated methadone. How much you hated not having that high that watching football gave you. I always wanted to be a more sober version of you, but this past Sunday always makes me think of you, because man, I know how you felt. I hate not having football, I hate not feeling that football high. I just picture you, every Tuesday morning, dying for it to be Sunday again. So this Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday—I will enjoy it, enjoy football, enjoy the football high, enjoy the feeling that you enjoyed feeling…and I’ll think of you.