Los Angeles NFL fans rekindle their love affair with the Rams
Rams fans took to the Coliseum parking lot early Saturday to celebrate the team’s return.
Angelenos are easy when it comes to the love of a game.
Unrequited, jilted, rejected, spurned — they’ve felt it all, and like dusty moths to some weekend flame, they’re starting to fall for a team all over again.
Call it a fever, a swoon, a moment of truth. The celebrations for the city’s newest team — the Los Angeles Rams — started promptly at noon on Saturday, as soon as the parking lots around the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum opened.
Kickoff for the Rams’ exhibition opener against the Dallas Cowboys was five hours away, but the cheerleaders were ensconced in Trailer 28B, the inflatable doughnut for Randy’s was aloft and pickups piled high with barbecues, tables and coolers began streaming through the gates.
This day, this hour, this moment of renewal couldn’t have come soon enough.
“It is like something died and came back to life,†said Sherry Pie, unfazed by a momentary riff on Lazarus.
“Jesus comes first,†said Vince Cadena, offering his own perspective. “The Rams come second.â€
Revelations were in the air along with smells of barbecue starter and carne asada.
Music boxes beat out a range from hip hop to rock, a revival meeting of a secular sort, a chance to let a 22-year absence drift away, to bury that sad memory of Christmas Eve, 1994, when the Rams played their last game in Southern California, losing to the Washington Redskins, 24 to 21.
But that was a long time ago, another world, another place, time now to let bygones be bygones and open a new chapter in the life of this football-deprived city. Sorry USC, UCLA, but for these enthusiasts, college ball just isn’t the same.
“A lot of people like me are trying to reconnect with the team,†said Walter Lopez, 47, from Westminster.
Lopez had found his spot in the shade of the sycamore trees in front of Gate 4 at 8 a.m. With an ice chest close at hand — packed with guacamole, beer, margarita fixings, Coke and tomato juice — he was happy to wait for his friends and wax a little nostalgic.
When he was a student at Cal State Fullerton in the early ’90s, he sold hot dogs at Anaheim Stadium. He watched the Rams on the monitor, made $70 a game and couldn’t imagine a better job. But when the team left for St. Louis, he didn’t follow them. He didn’t care.
“I was heartbroken,†he said. “It was an empty feeling, nothing to do, no one to cheer for.â€
Today the high school history and PE teacher is ready to put the old feelings aside and put on his blue and gold jersey, No. 85 for Hall of Famer defensive end Jack Youngblood. He’s saving his Eric Dickerson jersey for another game.
Never mind the team’s current record, no winning season since 2003, no playoffs since 2004. That’s for another time and place.
For now, let not the marriage of Ram fans and their team admit impediments, as the poet might say. But love is blind.
“The Rams have come home,†said Ed Elias, as if their return was never a question. “They just got lost for a while.â€
Elias, along with Raul Valle and Shenandoah “Chano†Yrigollen, set up their chairs and tables just off Vermont Avenue. A stately Moreton Bay fig drew its broad canopy over them.
Summer temperatures said summer, but the cast of the sunlight suggested something more autumnal. On the nearby lawn in front of the Natural History Museum, two young men executed pass patterns for one another.
“We bought our tickets three minutes after they went on sale in May,†said Elias. “We paid $810 for a seat in Section 17. Just don’t tell my wife.â€
His love affair — with the Rams, that is — began in the early 1960s when his uncle took him and his cousins to games. He was upset when they moved to Anaheim, but he was mad when they left for St. Louis.
“So I switched to the Cowboys,†he said.
But now he’s ready for the “Rams Empire.†Let others have their Raiders-, Cowboys-, whatever-Nation, he’s ready to start something new.
Of course it’s too early to start talking about a dynasty, but the bloodlines are here. Deacon Jones. Lamar Lundy. Merlin Olsen. Rosey Grier. The Fearsome Foursome. If past is prologue, then the future will be bright.
Two trees down from Elias, Sherry Pie started to cry. The mood was right: On a nearby phone, a doo-wop melody by The Escorts began to play, “Look Over Your Shoulder.â€
“This is a very sentimental thing,†Pie said, explaining her feelings for this team.
She was 6 years old when her father — “rest in peace,†she adds — piled the family, almost nine of them, in the Chevy Impala and drove them to the Coliseum.
“Dad always said, ‘One day the Rams will come back,’ and I wish he were here to see it,†she said.
At the time, quarterback Roman Gabriel was her favorite player, and the move to Anaheim in 1980, then St. Louis in 1995, was inexcusable.
“We lost our team,†she says, “but we never lost our Ram roots.â€
Her mother, who had a stroke, is just as happy to have the team back in Los Angeles. Pie recalls when they received the news, mom lifted her one good arm. “Viejo,†she said to her deceased husband, “they’re back.â€
“Puro Rams,†Pie says. Only the Rams.
Vince Cadena shed his tears last weekend when the Rams held their family day at the Coliseum.
“We’ve been counting every single day for them to return,†said Cadena, as he waited for the rest of his family, some 40 others, to arrive. “It was painful, but now it’s harmony. It’s all about love.â€
As the afternoon revelry continued, little did the exhibition game seem to matter, and the cheers of some 90,000 began to rise.
The Rams have come to town when no one thought it possible, and their fans are ready. It was that easy.
Such is the measure of a 22-year football drought in this land of little rain.
Twitter: @tcurwen
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