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His Philosophy

"I gawt a fillin', Picksbargh's goan to dah Saper Bowl!" That's a good one.

Remember the Steelers polka song? We had the 45 laying around the house. I just found the lyrics on the internet - it was called the "Steelers Fight Song." Click here for the link to the lyrics. My parents and older sisters know all the words. I remember that one being sung during the playoffs at my grandmother's house with an uncle on a banjo or guitar or something.

But you know what song I hate, is that fucking "Here we Go" song they play on the radio sometimes. Not the chant, the chant is the shit - "Here we go Steelers, here we go! DA DA" No, I mean that piss-pour song sounding like it's sung by a bunch of tired, hungover McKees Rockers. "Here we goah, stillers, here we goah. Picksbarghs goan to dah saper bowl.." YAWN. Yeah thanks for the effort there, you regular Sinatras. "The dee-fense is gonna bringa still curt-in dahn." Oooo, intimidating! That song contains no trace of 70s style Pittsburgh Steeler fan spirit. I think that was written in '95 too, and it made us lose against the Dallas Cowfuckers.

Along with Irish folk music and KISS, the polka "Steelers Fight Song" is imbedded in my first memories of music. I remember black and gold knitted shamrocks pinned to yellow Steelers shirts worn over a black cotton shirt with the pointy lapels. I remember the Iron City beer cans (with the peal off an throw away tops, of course) with the whole team on it. You were supposed to not drink those and save one but my dad filled his with pennies. (That's back when beer cans were shaped like soup cans, before they had that little pussy streamline shit on them so you don't get a boo-boo on your poor little lips and poor little tongue.) I remember my dad losing his mind watching the games, hollaring and jumping out of the chair while I cracked up at him. I remember the old gold terrible towels, and Myron Cope, and every damn member of that team had his own fan club - example: Franco's Italian Army. You watch old films of those Pittsburgh fans and people were nuts back then, and it looked like a fun fuckin party to be at.

I played football for 4 seasons. Three for the Crafton Little Cougars and one for the Carlynton High School Cougars. I was never a starter or anything. It was physically impossible for me to excel against dudes that were twice my size NOW. But I loved to hit people. That was fun, just being able and encouraged to run as fast as you can and nail someone. Even if you'd bounce off the people and hurt yourself more than you hurt them, it was a great thing. Lee Dreshman was OT and I was DT during practice and he used to knock the shit outta me and call me "Fag-aller." It hurt like hell. He was a cool guy off the field, but he was damn evil on the field.

Practice was tough as hell. I was a tougher dude back then, but I dreaded practice. Half push-ups and six inches ("I said six inches, not SIX FEET!"), and laps till you puked. I mean literally. Sometimes, when the coaches were pissed at us, like if a team scored one touchdown on us the week before or if we fought, you weren't allowed to stop running until you puked.

And we were 11 and 12.

The Little Cougars were tough. We were undefeated champs the seasons I played, and most of the other teams were scared shitless of us. In addition to the freakin neanderthal kids we had from Crafton and Ingram, we had kids on our team from Broadhead, the projects, and some mean-ass coaches from hell. Crafton wasn't in the city league, so most of the time we played people up in Fort Cherry and all these other weird places with fairy names like that, that you never heard of before. Those kids would be scared.

We had war chants we'd do all the time in practice, that we used when we came down into the other teams' fields, walking in a double line. We did the "My Addidas" song by Run-DMC - that was funny. But my favorite went "Kill! Kill kill! Kill kill kill kill kill!" Simple, threatening. We had a special one for Fort Cherry that went "Kill, the fairies, from Fort Cherry. Kill, the fairies, from Fort Cherry." We used to get one or two of those off before the coaches made us stop, and we proceeded to kill the fairies from Fort Cherry.

The only 2 teams I can think of that were'nt scared of us were Sto-Rox and the Sheridan Tigers. Sto-Rox, from McKees Rocks was tough. Away games there were brutal. People'd be throwing rocks and eggs at us from the stands. There'd be glass on the field. Paul Spadafora, the current IBF lightweight champ, played for Sto for a while, and I think he and his brother played for the Cougars for a while too. I played some grade school basketball with him too. He used to kick peoples asses all the time, but they were punks asking for it. He was a cool guy. He was always cool to me and tried to pass me the ball in basketball and shit, but I sucked. But anyway, they were tough, but we won against them. Sheridan, I think, was in the city league, but I think the Crafton coaches and the Sheridan coaches were friends, so we used to scrimmage them once a year. This would consist of 20-30 minutes of scrimmage, and 10 minutes of full team brawls before the coaches would break it up, everyone would go home, and we'd run till we puked the next week of practice. I think that happened every season I played.

When I was around 13 I got out of sports. I'd been playing guitar for a few years and realized that was my true calling, and by that point I was even sucking in baseball (my best sport) and lost interest.

But I was glad I played football, and I'm glad it was tough, and I'm glad I had to go up against dudes from the projects twice my size, and I'm glad hated going to practice and I'm glad the coaches were evil. It's not that it made me this tough guy or anything, but playing a hard sport with good coaches and parents (not like these hockey fuckers) at a young age teaches a lesson early on that life is never easy - so wear a damn helmet.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about football in Pittsburgh. Now I've talked about it before, but the 70s Steelers gave Pittsburghers something 1000 times more valuable than what the 49ers gave San Frannies, or the Cowfuckers gave Dallassholes. As you might fathom, Pittsburgh in the 1970s wasn't too easy a place to be if you were a steelworker, which a helluva lot of burghers were, not to mention Western Pennsylvanians in general. The mills were closing, the industry was rotting away, and who gets screwed when this happens?? Not the pig-fucking executives (see Enron). No! The workin' man gets screwed (see Enron, GM, Chicago meat-packing industry, etc. etc on and on to infinity in history). And I imagine it seemed like Pittsburgh was the pit of hell for these people. And just when that happened, and alcoholism and shit was on the rise, all the things that go with unemployment - the Steelers took the spirit of hope, the toughness of these tough steelworkers in Pittsburgh, and took it all the way. Steelers football is what kept Pittsburgh going through the hard times, and it's no wonder the people that lived through that treat football like it's the most sacred thing of all time.

Of course you don't have teams like that anymore. You don't have owners like Art Rooney, you don't have classy announcers like Myron Cope (okay I'm reaching here, but the guy is smart), you don't have tough dudes like Rocky Blier and Jack Lambert. In Spite of all the rich, arrogant punks like Deion Sanders playing in fields named after banks, you still do have guys like Bill Cowher, and you have some AMAZING players - despite all that faggoty dancing they do out there after touchdowns, they got the best skills of all football history.

And the Steelers are KICKING SOME ASS this year!

But JESUS, PLEASE PLEASE LET US WIN.