Call It A Comeback
There are moments in our lives when desperation seizes us and hope seems a bastion long since past. Inevitably, we search for a moment relegated to another time and place that, if recollected properly, will offer a moment's reprieve from our dark and stormy reality. I never really had a story that offered me such comfort, until yesterday, while I was sitting on a barstool watching a muted television tuned into the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (or ESPN). It was then that I realized that the story I could use "in case of emergency" had been sitting on the shelf waiting for me since January 3, 1993.
That was the date of "The Comeback." You don't have to know sports to know that teams come back from behind all the time. It seems remarkable at the moment, but then the memory fades as other comebacks and sports stories obscure the feat. Not this one though. Of all the histories sports offer us of such circumstances, this one was the grand daddy of all of them. It is simply billed as "THE Comeback."
Come with me, back to Buffalo, New York in January 1993. If ever a team (and a town whose hopes for collective identity rise and fall weekly with the success or failure of its football team) was on the ropes, it was the Buffalo Bills at halftime. They were losing to the Houston Oilers 28-3 and to put it mildly, were getting their asses handed to them by a bunch of guys in wearing white and powder blue outfits. This was Buffalo in January, and a team from Texas was running them ragged. Did I mention they were in white and powder blue?
What Bills Head Coach Marv Levy said at halftime to his players, I have no idea. Many of their starters were hurt, and the backups must have felt desperate. Upon recollecting the game for an article in Football Digest a few years later, he simply said, "We were getting crushed." We've all been there...Those moments when life is kicking your ass, and it's wearing a white and powder blue uniform to boot. Sometimes you just want to stay in the dressing room, throw out a white towel and forget the game entirely. Fuck it. It's over.
This is why "The Comeback" hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday. The Bills did not quit. They came back out of the tunnel running right into the madness, and even the guys in the upper decks, enduring the January Buffalo windchill were going nuts. Rest assured, the Batavia Party Zone was raging. Everyone there, at that moment, believed in "The Comeback" before it even happened. Sure, the guy who takes his shirt off to reveal a target so people can throw iceballs at him could have given up and took off to "beat the traffic," but he stayed. When the Bills came on the field, the place went collectively insane.
And then it happened. Not "It" as in "The Comeback," rather "It" as in gut check time. The guys in the white and powder blue outfits told everyone to shut the fuck up, intercepting Frank Reich's pass for a touchdown. Now it was 35-3. Some of those people who believed at the half did start to leave to beat the traffic. People at home turned off their television sets, and figured it would be a good idea to snowblow one more time before they couldn't open their garage doors. The only people left were the die hards. That's when you look around and take note. Whoever is with you when it's 35-3, after your halftime momentum has been crushed, they are the true believers. At that moment, they probably believe in you more than you believe in yourself.
And then "IT" happened. The Comeback. A touchdown, an onside kick, another touchdown. Desperate plays for desperate times. In a period of seven minutes, about the time it took for the quitters to get to their cars and turn on their radios, The Bills had scored four touchdowns. Oh, to see the look on their faces, driving home from the game on "The 219" as The Bills and the people who believed in them started looking around the stadium, realizing that history was being made and they were there to experience it, because they didn't quit.
But the game wasn't over. Classic victories never end so quickly. The team in white and powder blue weren't going to quit either, as life never does when it so obviously wants to beat you down, and the Oilers tied the game to force an overtime. If The Bills were going to win this game, they were going to have to put in some overtime of their own. The Oilers had momentum once again, and The Bills were reeling. Whether it was luck, fate, strategy, or an incalculable combination, Nate Odomes intercepted a pass that basically kicked death off of the Buffalo doorstep. The Bills made good on this fortunate occurence, and marched down the field just close enough for Steve Christie to kick a field goal. Despite my less than Van Miller-like recounting of these events, there was nothing anticlimactic about it. The place went shithouse crazy. Sometimes you just need a little, and they got it. The Bills won. "The Comeback" is now legendary. The persistent and the faithful were rewarded with a page in the history books.
I've known this story since it happened. I'm from Buffalo and I remember it well, but I guess I was just never able to put it in any context that was relevant to my life. After doing a little reading about this game (on which a lot is written), I like what Marv Levy had to say about the team's ability to come back. He said "One key to our resiliency was that the players were very close to each other. A lot of them were there for a long time and developed close friendships. They really cared about each other as human beings, not just as players." The lesson is simple. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to make a comeback, you've got to believe in yourself, the people around you, and even the crazy guy in the upper deck with no shirt on, because if they're there even after the locker room speech and the run through the tunnel when things don't go your way despite your best efforts, it's because they believe in you, and they can't all be wrong, right?
As to a critic of all this might say, the Bills didn't win the Superbowl that year, or any of the other years they were in it for that matter. This is true, but again I defer to Marv Levy for a response. Regarding the Bills loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Superbowl 27, he said "We didn't win, but just getting there was a real testament to our fortitude and heart. These guys never quit--they never gave up. Beating the Oilers in the playoffs was proof of that." Looking back, I'll take "The Comeback" to a Superbowl win any day, because if it came easy, no one would appreciate it. It may not be a Superbowl win, but it's the greatest comeback in sports history, and the life lessons woven throughout it are worth too much to write off so easily. Whenever life is kicking my ass on my home field in its white and powder blue uniform, I'll remind myself of "The Comeback," and come out of the tunnel raging.
That was the date of "The Comeback." You don't have to know sports to know that teams come back from behind all the time. It seems remarkable at the moment, but then the memory fades as other comebacks and sports stories obscure the feat. Not this one though. Of all the histories sports offer us of such circumstances, this one was the grand daddy of all of them. It is simply billed as "THE Comeback."
Come with me, back to Buffalo, New York in January 1993. If ever a team (and a town whose hopes for collective identity rise and fall weekly with the success or failure of its football team) was on the ropes, it was the Buffalo Bills at halftime. They were losing to the Houston Oilers 28-3 and to put it mildly, were getting their asses handed to them by a bunch of guys in wearing white and powder blue outfits. This was Buffalo in January, and a team from Texas was running them ragged. Did I mention they were in white and powder blue?
What Bills Head Coach Marv Levy said at halftime to his players, I have no idea. Many of their starters were hurt, and the backups must have felt desperate. Upon recollecting the game for an article in Football Digest a few years later, he simply said, "We were getting crushed." We've all been there...Those moments when life is kicking your ass, and it's wearing a white and powder blue uniform to boot. Sometimes you just want to stay in the dressing room, throw out a white towel and forget the game entirely. Fuck it. It's over.
This is why "The Comeback" hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday. The Bills did not quit. They came back out of the tunnel running right into the madness, and even the guys in the upper decks, enduring the January Buffalo windchill were going nuts. Rest assured, the Batavia Party Zone was raging. Everyone there, at that moment, believed in "The Comeback" before it even happened. Sure, the guy who takes his shirt off to reveal a target so people can throw iceballs at him could have given up and took off to "beat the traffic," but he stayed. When the Bills came on the field, the place went collectively insane.
And then it happened. Not "It" as in "The Comeback," rather "It" as in gut check time. The guys in the white and powder blue outfits told everyone to shut the fuck up, intercepting Frank Reich's pass for a touchdown. Now it was 35-3. Some of those people who believed at the half did start to leave to beat the traffic. People at home turned off their television sets, and figured it would be a good idea to snowblow one more time before they couldn't open their garage doors. The only people left were the die hards. That's when you look around and take note. Whoever is with you when it's 35-3, after your halftime momentum has been crushed, they are the true believers. At that moment, they probably believe in you more than you believe in yourself.
And then "IT" happened. The Comeback. A touchdown, an onside kick, another touchdown. Desperate plays for desperate times. In a period of seven minutes, about the time it took for the quitters to get to their cars and turn on their radios, The Bills had scored four touchdowns. Oh, to see the look on their faces, driving home from the game on "The 219" as The Bills and the people who believed in them started looking around the stadium, realizing that history was being made and they were there to experience it, because they didn't quit.
But the game wasn't over. Classic victories never end so quickly. The team in white and powder blue weren't going to quit either, as life never does when it so obviously wants to beat you down, and the Oilers tied the game to force an overtime. If The Bills were going to win this game, they were going to have to put in some overtime of their own. The Oilers had momentum once again, and The Bills were reeling. Whether it was luck, fate, strategy, or an incalculable combination, Nate Odomes intercepted a pass that basically kicked death off of the Buffalo doorstep. The Bills made good on this fortunate occurence, and marched down the field just close enough for Steve Christie to kick a field goal. Despite my less than Van Miller-like recounting of these events, there was nothing anticlimactic about it. The place went shithouse crazy. Sometimes you just need a little, and they got it. The Bills won. "The Comeback" is now legendary. The persistent and the faithful were rewarded with a page in the history books.
I've known this story since it happened. I'm from Buffalo and I remember it well, but I guess I was just never able to put it in any context that was relevant to my life. After doing a little reading about this game (on which a lot is written), I like what Marv Levy had to say about the team's ability to come back. He said "One key to our resiliency was that the players were very close to each other. A lot of them were there for a long time and developed close friendships. They really cared about each other as human beings, not just as players." The lesson is simple. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to make a comeback, you've got to believe in yourself, the people around you, and even the crazy guy in the upper deck with no shirt on, because if they're there even after the locker room speech and the run through the tunnel when things don't go your way despite your best efforts, it's because they believe in you, and they can't all be wrong, right?
As to a critic of all this might say, the Bills didn't win the Superbowl that year, or any of the other years they were in it for that matter. This is true, but again I defer to Marv Levy for a response. Regarding the Bills loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Superbowl 27, he said "We didn't win, but just getting there was a real testament to our fortitude and heart. These guys never quit--they never gave up. Beating the Oilers in the playoffs was proof of that." Looking back, I'll take "The Comeback" to a Superbowl win any day, because if it came easy, no one would appreciate it. It may not be a Superbowl win, but it's the greatest comeback in sports history, and the life lessons woven throughout it are worth too much to write off so easily. Whenever life is kicking my ass on my home field in its white and powder blue uniform, I'll remind myself of "The Comeback," and come out of the tunnel raging.
posted by MK | 2:02 PM
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