As I flipped on the Cubs game last night, I saw the Padres wearing some familiar uniforms. They were celebrating the 30 year anniversary of winning the National League pennant in 1984. It’s fitting that they chose this weekend vs. the Cubs to do this. (There was still nobody in the stands). As if that wasn’t bad enough, there were some members of that team present, and WGN flashed a picture of them. Who was right in the middle of the photo? None other than Steve Garvey, my initial entry into the Hate Files. As I dozed off watching the Cubs get killed, I figured now was the perfect time to revisit the Hate Files… it’s time for the next entry.
The Green Bay Packers: The team I hate the most in sports. This just didn’t happen overnight. As a lifelong Bear fan, this is something that you were taught. I’ll never forget something that was told to me very early in life: If the Bears went 2-14 in a season, but those 2 victories were against the Packers, it was a good year. Not only was it part of being a Bear fan, there were things that happened… events that transpired, that brought the hate to the forefront. It wasn’t hard to hate this team… it still isn’t.
Mark Lee. That’s where the hate started to become reality for me. During the 1985 season, the Bears made their annual trip to Green Bay. It was Week 9 of the NFL season, and the Bears sat at 8-0. Those were probably the best years of the Chicago-Green Bay rivalry, meaning the Bears were awesome and Green Bay sucked. I bet there weren’t so many Packer fans roaming around Chicago back then, like I see today… The Bears clearly outclassed this Green Bay team, but a slugfest ensued, in one of the toughest victories the Bears had all season. During the game, some bum safety, named Mark Lee, took my first sports hero over the bench about 15 yards out of bounds. Talk about a dirty play. At 9 years old, I wanted to kill that guy. You don’t do that to any player, let alone Walter Payton. (I’ll never forget shaking his hand at the Auto Show about 30 years ago. My dad stopped him to say hello, and he did, and he reached down to shake my hand too. There’ll never be another…) That was probably the most memorable thing this guy Mark Lee ever did in his career. He was a bum then, and he’s a bum now…
Charles Martin. A name that will live in infamy. How do you pick up a QB and slam him down to the turf about 5 seconds AFTER he threw the ball? He would have been suspended for the rest of the year, maybe longer nowadays. Back then, he was suspended 2 games. He knocked out the punky QB Jim McMahon, who I dressed up as for Halloween that year, for the rest of the season. That led to QB hell for the Bears ever since. Not only did it screw us up in our chance to repeat as Super Bowl champs, we never found another QB like McMahon. The Bears only recently, more than 25 years later, have a QB even worth mentioning in Jay Cutler. For that Charles Martin, I hate you.
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Is that enough to hate a team? Is that enough to turn something I was told into reality? Sure, but for good measure, I’ll throw out some more names. Brett Favre: career record of like 50-5 against the Bears. Ok, it was only 22-10, but it seemed like every time we played him, we lost. Special mention to Corey Wooten at this point for knocking Favre out as he winded his career down with the Vikings. Edgar Bennett: Monday Night Football, retiring Butkus & Sayers numbers, a game I attended in a typhoon, I saw this guy run up and down the field on the Bears for a total of 118 yards and 3 TDs as the Bears got crushed 33-6. Aaron Rodgers. Not only did the Packers have Brett Favre, now they luck out with another great QB, making it easy to continue to hate this team.
I can go on & on, like how they ended our season the last 2 years, but I will only mention one other game, and that’s the NFC championship game of 2011. This was arguably the biggest matchup of the 2 hated rivals, and it did not end well for the Bears. This is the game I will remember Jay Cutler for, unless he bring us a Super Bowl. To see him standing (STANDING) on the sidelines during the 2nd half of the biggest game of his career, the biggest game of the year for us against our hated rivals with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line… you would have had to wheel me off the field. This is the most memorable thing about Cutler to me… again, only way he lives that down in my mind, is to bring us a Super Bowl. That’s his penance for that game… We finally get a good QB, and he does this, vs Green Bay of all teams… let the hate flow!
OK. I feel better now. I can breathe again. I can close the files on Green Bay, and file it back under HATE, only to be opened up again and again every NFL season. Like I said, this stuff just doesn’t happen overnight. There’s some serious history here. It’s NOT changing. NFL season is only about 105 days away…
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