Even in tony Sag Harbor will my battered and sweat-stained Buffalo Bills cap with the dog-tooth bites on the visor elicit “Go Bills!” from passing citizenry. Twice, this was, in a matter of minutes Monday as, with apologies to Grantland Rice, outlined against a blue-gray November sky I strode again . . . into a bank’s lobby.
Safe to say the world of journalism has changed since a sportswriter could afford to kick back in an East Hampton estate-district mansion, as Rice did. And his prose was purple.
The Bills are true blue. One of those fellow fans was actually my SUNY Binghamton-educated banker, a school that’s become awfully selective, I couldn’t stop myself from pointing out to him as I went on to explain how my elder daughter’s tenure at college in Geneseo in western New York had solidified my amorphous loyalty formation.
His response was apt: “It’s an easy team to like.”
Yes. But why? It can’t simply be that the Jets and Giants play in New Jersey. And it can’t only be Josh Allen, the 6-foot-5, 240-pound quarterback who’s Clark Kent-like in his self-effacing earnestness postgame or in press conferences, and Supermanish with his cannon arm and running back’s legs on the field of play.
This season, my banker, unusual in that his appearance somehow out-Kennedys any Kennedy, has been enthusiastically tracking the juking and hammering backfield exploits of dreadlocked James Cook, now the N.F.L.’s number-two in ground yardage gained.
There’s also something about those die-hard fans and their propensity to voluntarily help shovel Highmark Stadium in the face of lake-effect snow squalls. Or their insistence on donating to the charities of players the Bills brutally vanquish.
Or their wit. A recent Bills Mafia
“It’s not us, it’s you. . . . Niagara Falls is already split — that’s done. We’ll take Lake Erie, and you take Lake Ontario.” Visitation weekends for shopping purposes will alternate. “Have a great life.”
Hey, whatever it takes to improve the Bills’ juju.