Pack mentality

It's been more than four months since I was last in Green Bay. For the most part, I've been so busy at seminary that I haven't had much of a chance to miss my hometown. But I simply can't wait to go back for Thanksgiving.

As detached as I've felt from Green Bay lately, there's one thing that keeps me connected: The Green Bay Packers. (Well, there's also the fact that the tables in Luther Seminary's Northwestern Hall auditorium were made by Green Bay-area furniture manufacturer KI, but let's focus on the Packers.) Take for example, 20 minutes ago, when Hall of Fame-shoo-in quarterback Brett Favre left the field with an apparent elbow injury. My heart was beating to the same nervous rhythm as all those back home. Nevermind his performance today, as the Packers were losing 21-0 to New England; Favre has, by my math, 231 consecutive starts (251 including playoffs) on the line. Nobody wants that to end.

I was a Packers fan before I had teeth (and yes, Vikings fans, most Packers fans do have teeth). My first toy, just after I was born, was a little, yellow, plastic Packers football. My best birthday present in fourth grade was a Don Majkowski jersey. I was thrilled in 1992 when the Packers acquired a certain quarterback named Brett Favre, whose football card I had recently sought to complete a set (at that time, I thought his name was pronounced "FAHV-ray.")

And imagine my excitement when, in October 1996, my question was selected in an NFL.com chat (I just dug it up from my hard drive):

PackMan (that's me) from netnet.net at 9:38pm ET
Brett,
I heard once that (then-Packers center) Frank Winters got the nickname "Frankie Bag-o-Doughnuts." Where'd the name come from?

Brett Favre at 9:39pm ET
Me and several guys gave him that because he has a real rich, East Coast, New York accent. And there was a comedian who imitated these Italian guys with all these nicknames, like Frankie Bag o' Doughnuts, and so Frank with his accent fit the mold perfect and that's how we gave it to him.

That, of course, came during the season that the Packers won the Super Bowl. I guess nothing really beat that Super Bowl Sunday. Although there was that Sunday in Dec. 2003 when the Arizona Cardinals made an impossible comeback in the regular-season closer to knock the Minnesota Vikings out of the playoffs and give the Packers the division championship. That moment came close (I had been monitoring that game on the Internet in disbelief from my desk at the Green Bay Press-Gazette, and I was mighty proud to be the fill-in local-news editor that day).

Getting to meet legendary quarterback and world-class gentleman Bart Starr last year (and later getting an e-mail from him in appreciation of a story I wrote) was another mighty proud moment. My wife, Tracy, also had a cool series of brushes with celebrity when she got to interview a bunch of first-year Packers in her sports-writing internship at the Press-Gazette (she's pretty sure she caught a former back-up quarterback checking her out in the locker room). And I got to meet the late, great Ray Nitschke at his Green Bay-area home on one Super Bowl Sunday when I was in grade school, when my dad returned his Super Bowl ring. Ray, who attended my home church in the 1960s, let my dad borrow the ring for a children's sermon. Ray told us that it only occurred to him later that my dad could have been scamming him.

I have to say, though, after all that reverent name-dropping, that last Sunday was pretty awesome. Let me tell you, having the Packers beat the Vikings (at the Metrodome, no less) is never as exciting as when you live in Minnesota. I was so excited that I couldn't help but wear my Donald Driver jersey (Driver, in case you Vikings fans forgot, had the 82-yard touchdown) to my contextual-leadership-site church that night and to seminary the next day. Ah, good times.

The thing is, Packers fans are a community unlike any other in the world. Although Green Bay is the nation's smallest city to host a professional sports team, the appeal stretches the world over. The multitude of Packer-backers at Luther Seminary allowed me to share a number of high-fives and thumbs up last week. And even those who aren't fans are respectful. A classmate told me last week that once, on a mission trip, he got off the plane in Taiwan only to be greeted with "Go, Packers!" by his hosts, who knew he was a Minnesotan. We concluded that Christian missionaries could learn a lot by studying the social practices of Cheeseheads.

I don't think I could ever turn my back on the Packers. It's a little upsetting that my dad (who is pictured with me at Lambeau Field in August 2002) actually sort of jumped ship this year; he became a Houston Texans fan after the Packers fired head coach Mike Sherman, whom my dad really respected. I'm willing to bet my dad will come back around if and when the current Packers regime gets ousted.

That might not take very long. All this time that I was reminiscing about the better days, the Packers just suffered their second shutout at Lambeau Field this year. Yeah, 35-0, Patriots. I could take solace in the fact that the Vikings lost, too, but that was only by four points. Hmm. Maybe I should have written about the furniture in Northwestern Hall instead.