I went to my first Calgary Stampeders game at the age of 12. Our family had moved to Calgary from Ottawa, where CFL games were held in a gloomy pillbox known as Lansdowne Park. Fans there were treated to the tragically inept Ottawa Rough Riders and a noodle-armed quarterback who chucked flutterball passes that were dropped by a crew of butterfingered wide receivers. So, we never bothered going to a game.
In Calgary, however, I encountered a different football universe. My father and I rode a packed C-Train to McMahon Stadium where red-jerseyed Stamps fans were jam-packed to the rafters. Raucous cheers followed every positive play. Failed possessions often resulted in aspersions cast upon the referee’s capacities.
“Hey, ref,” one guy yelled after one such dubious call, “if you had one more eye, you’d be a cyclops!”
A man in the next row cheered for those other Roughriders, the ones from Saskatchewan. He was portly, visibly intoxicated and bore the green-painted face of a bewildered commando. “Let’s go Rough-riders!” he bellowed with the wounded belligerence of a wooly mammoth sinking into a tar pit.
“Sit down!” my father shouted.
“You sit down!”
“I am sitting!”
“Yeah? Well ... let’s go Rough-ri-ders!”
Beach balls were batted round the stands.
A young hottie rose up, snatched one of the balls, lofted it above her head and spiked it like a volleyball. It struck the noisy Roughrider fan on the back of his skull, eliciting the loudest cheer of the day.
Meanwhile, the Stamps won. And a new fan had been born.
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