Last week, I wrote a piece about why I was putting aside my usual hatred for the Baltimore Ravens and rooting for them against the San Francisco 49ers in yesterday’s Super Bowl.
In addition to loathing 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh, who on the national stage last night lived down to my description of him as a spoiled bully-brat, I discussed my affection for the city of Baltimore, where I’ve lived since 2001.
My love of Baltimore is of the warts-and-all variety. And that was certainly the tone of my piece. In part, I embrace Baltimore precisely because it is not the shining, glimmering city on the hill; because it is not the place that people from around the world want to take romantic trips to in springtime or find a magical experience during the holidays.
Baltimore is very, very far from perfect. Yet in many ways large and small, it often overcomes its drawbacks and deficits. Living here can be frustrating, stupefying, needlessly expensive, and even sometimes dangerous. But I also find it to be deeply satisfying. I’m genuinely very happy to call Baltimore my home.
The article got a lot of traction, at least for the standards of this site, receiving close to a thousand page views in just a few days. And from what I can tell, most readers enjoyed it. Just the fact that it caught fire indicates as much, and the Facebook clicker at the bottom of the page tallied more than 200 “Likes” at last count.
However, it didn’t sit well with everyone.
While Baltimoreans don’t put on any airs about their city being something it’s not, which is one of the things I really love about this place, they can also be a little defensive at times. Understandably so, there’s a bit of an inferiority complex in the air, and even a touch of paranoia.
For example, I actually heard some people last night strongly imply that the power outage at the Louisiana Super Dome, after which the 49ers staged their nail-biting near comeback, happened because “the NFL hates Baltimore.”
And to be honest, I wasn’t surprised to hear it. That sentiment has been conventional wisdom around here ever since the league first allowed the beloved Baltimore Colts football team to leave for Indianapolis in 1984 (though the NFL legally could not stop it), and then refused to award the city a new franchise a decade later when it expanded. Instead the league handed new teams to Charlotte, North Carolina and, of all places, Jacksonville, Florida.
When the NFL passed up an established, loyal, and deeply aggrieved market in Baltimore for the wing-and-a-promise prayer of greater fortunes in the untested and probably undeserving Sun Belt town of Jacksonville (at least based on the results so far), it not only worsened the wound, it created long lasting scars.
No wonder then that the Baltimore municipal and Maryland state governments then went out in short order and stole the Cleveland Browns, abusing the city of Cleveland the way Indianapolis had abused Baltimore more than a decade earlier.
I don’t think two wrongs make a right, but what’s done is done, and thankfully Cleveland received a new version of the Browns, complete with the old uniforms and team records, an honor Baltimore was denied when reviled former owner Bob Irsay took the name and color of the Colts with him to Indiana.
So when you take Baltimore’s general status as a second tier city of the Northeast, and funnel it through the rather tumultuous history of their football teams, it’s really no wonder that some people were not happy with what I wrote.
Because I reveled in the city’s shortcomings, some folks accused me of being condescending.
It’s okay, I get it. I mean, I ‘m in no way apologizing because I don’t think I actually was patronizing, and I certainly didn’t mean to be. But I understand how someone who doesn’t know me or isn’t familiar with my writings on this site could make that mistake. Having lived all over the country, in the biggest of cities and smaller towns, I take a pretty subjective view the world.
I firmly believe that every place has its ups and downs. And that if you can cope with the downs and enjoy the ups, then you’ve found a place that’s worth making a home in.
Having grown up in New York, for example, I have no patience with people who glorify that city as the be all and end all. People who say that can’t live anywhere else? They’re pathetically narrow to the point of being socially crippled.
Likewise, no matter where I live, be it New York, Baltimore, or Lincoln, Nebraska, I have no tolerance for people who incessantly bitch and moan about how horrible a place is. Such people are just miserable wretches funneling their deeply seated unhappiness through a convenient cypher, using their exaggerated hatred of place as a crutch.
Some of them are actually my friends. But if I can accept the place I live warts-and-all, I can do the same with friends.
And that’s really why I put aside my usual hatred of the Ravens and rooted for them last night. It was a way to look past downs for a time and to enjoy the ups in the place I call home.
I ventured out into the Baltimore environs, lightly dusted with snow, and an hour before kickoff I settled in at a local favorite called Dizzy Izzie’s.
Located directly across the street from where they used to shoot the TV show Ace of Cakes, Dizzy Izzie’s (or The Diz as it’s now known) is a fixture in the working class neighborhood of Remington, about a ten minute walk from where I live in the somewhat more upscale neighborhood of Hampden.
I don’t go out drinking that much, but it’s been my favorite bar for many years. Among its many charms is the seamless way in which locals and newcomers of various classes and even races (a rarity in this former Jim Crow town) blend together to form a wonderful atmosphere.
As you might expect, the place was a maelstrom of beer-soaked purple, loaded down with burgers and crab cakes and steamed shrimp. I ate a pound of the latter.
There were ooohs and aaa
ahs and groans and cheers and the gnashing of teeth and the stomping of feet and roaring crescendos in full throat.
In the end, justice prevailed. Jim Harbaugh was banished, at least for now. Longtime Ravens greats Ed Reed and Terrell Suggs finally got their championships. And the city of Baltimore found joy, the hard way.
“It isn’t prety, it isn’t perfect, but it’s us,” said coach John Harbaugh during the trophy presentation.
Quarterback Joe Flacco echoed that sentiment. They did it the hard way, the rough way, he said. The Baltimore way.
And Ray Lewis, with trophy in hand, shouted it loud enough to be heard in the rafters of the Super Dome in in the streets of Charm City:
Baltimore! Baltimore! Baltimore!
Afterwards, it was cold outside and the dark sky was lit by the electric festivities circulating throughout the city, The Diz being just one fluorescent node in a network of celebration.
As I walked back, revelers whooped and hollered. Passing cars honked their horns, and people sang in the streets.
I was home.