The Champions In Latrobe Scott Silsbe
A Steelers Fan’s Notes From Training Camp
It was a Saturday night in early August in Pittsburgh, with pre-season Steeler-mania at a fever pitch, when my girlfriend and I lucked into VIP tickets to Steelers training camp. Our friend Anna was leaving town for grad school and her going-away-party, a kegger, boasted the VIP tickets as a grand prize for the evening’s drinking games. Some of the younger partygoers did their best to be enthusiastic about the Flip Cup and Beer Pong (which I believe was being played with a cat toy), but most of us sat in a room near the stereo, listening to T. Rex songs with plastic cups full of East End beer.
Of course, it wasn’t long before the Cat Toy Beer Pong and messy Flip Cup activities died down with no clear winner (is there ever a winner in such games?), and no one made claims for the Training Camp tickets. Around midnight, Margaret—one of the hosts of the kegger—approached Francine and I with an envelope that had “Grand Prize” written on it in a neat cursive. “We decided that you two should have these,” Margaret said to us, “I won them giving blood.” About a week later, Francine and I were on the road to Latrobe—an hour’s drive east of Pittsburgh—decked out in Steelers gear and prepared with Terrible Towels, Sharpies, and two flasks of vodka. When I told my buddy Kris that I was going to write about the Steelers, he recommended I finally get around to reading Roy Blount Jr.’s About Three Bricks Shy of a Load—a near-legendary nonfiction account of the ’73 Steelers’ season. I believe it was Kris who passed the book along to me in the first place, snagging a copy that came into the bookshop we both work for. Anyway, this seemed like a good time for me to crack it open, so I brought the Blount book along for the ride too.
I haven’t always been a big football fan. Growing up in Detroit in the 80s and 90s didn’t instill much more in me than a faint appreciation for the running style of Barry Sanders, and I felt it difficult to appreciate the sport with such a lackluster team to root for. It was only about eight years ago, roughly a year after my move to Pittsburgh, that I started to see the beauty of the sport. What lured me in was not only the great team the Steelers were putting together in the early ‘00s, but also the great history of the team, the incredible characters associated with the team, and undoubtedly, the Steelers fans. Eventually, it became clear to me just how much football means to the city of Pittsburgh, to the people of Pittsburgh. Once I noticed that, I began to feel that when professional football wasn’t being played here, it was as if the city was holding its breath.
Blount’s book is full of great anecdotes that have become the stuff of Steelers lore—including great asides on the Rooney family, Franco’s Italian Army, and eccentric players like Frenchy Fuqua. There is a little bit in Three Bricks… about the great Myron Cope, but not a whole lot, and Cope was a major selling point for me in my eventually fandom. When I first started watching Steelers games, Cope was still a radio broadcaster, and when I would watch games with friends, we would turn the television volume down and the Cope-broadcast up to hear his abrasive yet glorious voice mm-ha-ing and yoi-ing over the airwaves. It reminded me of when I was a youngster back in Detroit, and I’d hear Ernie Harwell or George Kell on the radio calling Tiger ballgames. The fact the Cope was such a talented writer about sports only made me appreciate him more.
It is, however, the Steelers fans that won me over entirely and completely. I suppose Franco’s Italian Army is a perfect manifestation of just why I love Pittsburgh Steelers fans so much—they are at times ridiculous, they are nearly unstoppable, and Christ, do they know how to have a good time. Oh, and also, they are very very Pittsburgh. Loving the city of Pittsburgh the way I do, it’s not hard to love such a distinct group of fans from here.
For the most part, we had had a mild summer—cool, clear July days that felt more like late spring weather, fantastic red sunsets beyond the skyscrapers and the Point that promised more sun for the next day. But as Franny and I made the drive out in the early August afternoon, inching closer to Latrobe (pronounced LAY-trobe by most Pittsburghers), it began feeling more and more like a real Pennsylvanian summer day. I wasn’t sure, but I had a sense it was reaching for the 90s.
I was wearing a black Myron Cope tribute t-shirt I found for two dollars in the Strip District—two dollars because it misprinted “Double Yoi” (one of Cope’s many catchphrases) as “Double Yai.” “I guess my guy in New York doesn’t know who Myron Cope is,” the guy at the t-shirt stand had said to me when I bought it last year. In the passenger seat, Franny was wearing a pair of sunglasses over top of her regular prescription glasses—the sunglasses had “Big Ben” and the number 7 printed along the sides. The stereo was playing a Vehicle Flips’ tune called “Steelers Fight Song” as we passed signs of local business along 22 that sang the praises of the Steelers. I noticed one that counted down the days until the first pre-season game.
A little before two in the afternoon, we pulled into the VIP parking lot at St. Vincent College. It was just down a hill from Chuck Knoll field and not far from the Fred M. Rogers Center where we were to sign in as VIPs. Before signing in, we walked under a line of weeping willow trees and up to the field, which was roped off with a mesh fence that read Steelers, Steelers, Steelers. To one side of the field was a grandstand, full already with black and gold fans holding cameras and binoculars; to the other was a dirt hillside with small green bushes that spelled out Saint Vincent.
Without any players on it, the field wasn’t much to look at, so Franny and I decided it was time to check in. Inside the Fred Rogers Center, we were treated to a free Steelers ball cap, some refreshments, and a bit of paperwork detailing our day at camp. Franny donned her new cap, we grabbed a couple cold Coca-Colas, and then we were ushered into a room full of seated Steelers fans where a video of last season’s highlights was being projected onto a large screen, the volume cranked. After a couple swigs off my bottle of Coke, I pulled out my flask and spiked it with some warm vodka, making myself a lukewarm cocktail. The crowd in the room cheered wildly as the Steelers made it through round after round of playoffs, cheered as if they were surprised, as if they didn’t know we were going to win the Super Bowl.
Once the highlight reel was over and the applause had died down, I started leafing through the paperwork and found that we’d been given a numerical roster of our 2009 team, displaying the names, numbers, and some stats of all 80 of our players. Early on in the Roy Blount book, Blount introduces the reader to the ’73 team, talking about great football names and player nicknames. Looking over our 2009 roster, I noticed some names I thought Blount might appreciate. First off, there was a new backup kicker named Piotr Czech, a name that sounded better suited for a Pittsburgh Penguin it seemed to me. A bit further down on the roster was Limas Sweed—this would be Sweed’s second year as a Steeler. Though Sweed came into the league with high hopes, the main thing I remember about his rookie year with the Steelers was his inability to hold onto the ball in the endzone.
There were some newer names on the roster that were fun to say—Mewelde Moore, Keiwan Ratliff, Rashard Mendenhall. And there were old stand-bys like Troy Polamalu and Chris Kemoeatu. No doubt the best new name on the roster was a rookie defensive end out of Missouri named Ziggy Hood. I didn’t know much about Hood, but with a name like that, I was hoping he’d stick around Pittsburgh for a while and make a name for that name.
