OK. Before you drop a flaming message in my comments box, let me make something clear: I’ve lived here for 11 years. I love Pittsburgh.
I love Pittsburgh even during football season, when Pittsburgh doesn’t spend much time loving me back.
I’ve had a great time since I moved here in 1994, even though the Stillers thumped my Cleveland Browns about five minutes after I moved into my apartment. My adopted hometown has a great arts scene, imaginative restaurants, bars with beer lists so long that I may never get through them. It’s got my Penguins, at least for a while. It’s got a beautiful baseball stadium, one that makes going to see teams I don’t care about enjoyable.
But here’s the thing. I grew up in Ohio. My dad attended Browns games in the 50s and 60s, back when your Stillers were a perennial afterthought in the NFL. I remember sitting on the cold tile floor in our family room watching the Browns, specifically Leroy Kelly, my first football hero and a future hall-of-famer. That was back when Cleveland-Pittsburgh rivalry was as one-sided as it is now, only the people smiling were the ones to the west of the Ohio-Pittsburgh state line.
(Stiller fans tend to not remember that football existed prior to the 1970s, when Chuck Knoll, who learned to coach from Paul Brown in Cleveland, showed up here to turn things around. That Stiller dynasty was a long time coming for Pittsburgh, and the Browns had already played in 11 NFL Championship games — winning four of them, including their first in 1950 as a freaking expansion team — before the Stillers ever got a whiff of the postseason.)
I started attending occasional Browns games in the 1970s, when my dad would drive us up to Cleveland from our home in Columbus. I suffered through that brutal decade, the ups and downs of the Kardiac Kids and the wonderful but endlessly frustrating 1980s.
I’m not the most committed Browns fan on the planet, after the theft of my football team by Art Modell, the city of Baltimore and their willing accomplice, the NFL itself. And my well-documented passion for Ohio State has turned into a full-time job in recent years, and that time spent on Saturdays doesn’t leave me much energy for football — or much else — on Sundays.
But I’m not so far gone that I don’t enjoy the rivalry, even as lopsided as it’s been since the Browns returned. And I still love — and will without fail take advantage of — the precious few chances I have to poke fun at Stiller fans. Groundhog piss and a Terrible Towel? Are you kidding? You wouldn’t have passed it up either.
But some of you are going to miss the part about that being a joke. And I’m going to get shitty comments from people who didn’t even bother to read this post, just because I was making fun of the Stillers. You’re the folks who need to lighten up a little bit. I get to have some fun, and when your team is beating mine 41-0, I don’t have that many chances.
I just spent a weekend with a big group of friends, a couple of whom grew up here and are huge Stiller fans. As dreadful as this past two weeks has been, hanging out with Fred and DD — as well as The Wife and her Stiller tendencies — put this into perspective a bit. Now that y’all have your fifth Super Bowl championship, it’s not going to be the end of the world for me. And it’s something that’s going to make some people who are important to me pretty happy. And that’s never a bad thing.
So enjoy that ring you finally got for your collective thumb. As a Browns fan I’m not especially thrilled, but it’s good for the city I live in. It’s good for my friends.
And that’s good for me.
Uncle Crappy 
UC –
you headliner tease – just trying to still things up are ya?
Hope the new ‘alpha’ borrow was adequate and suited all – so what is your adivce for next year – return? And if so, and Dirtmerchant is reduced, is a camper / mobile home the way to go??
On other fronts – I recently noticed that Mt. Washington has openings for winter day trips to the summit – so, when should we shoot for – Winter 2007, 2008??
With Groundhog, the Buckeyes, Super Bowl over with – I’m a bit reluctant to focus on the other issues – foreign policy, Bushisms, ect – but I guess that’s life.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
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“I love Pittsburgh…I’ve had a great time since I moved here in 1994…My (fucking) ADOPTED(!) hometown…great…imaginative…beer…beautiful…enjoyable…”
I, I, I, I was going to say something about if your father has read this. I was going to say other things about reading this, but I am just lost. I don’t know who you are…and, I wonder, why do you only share these emotions through the distance of technology, why can’t you open up to me when we are together?
By the way, have you seen Brokeback Mt. yet?
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I did say as much last weekend, and I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been reading Uncle Crappy for a while. This is just a synthsis of things I’ve expressed over a couple of years. It was offered now because:
— I was expecting hoards of pissed-off Yinzers to visit Uncle Crappy on Monday, and I wanted to see if I could confuse them.
— I was trying to talk myself off the ledge after the goddamn Stillers won on Sunday. And it’s not working.
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Oh, and to the shithead who thinks he can post ads on my web page because he thinks I’m a sympathetic Ohio State fan:
Bite my ass.
Love,
Uncle Crappy
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i remember some of the things you said last weekend…but the FOG prohibits me from remembering all things said…the FOG and the image of the virgin hog in the ‘bega have taken much of the space in me heeeed…
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Ok, I’ll bite. What’s a “Yinzer”? Sounds like something Kewyson would’ve mumbled from the backseat or under the kitchen table. Inquiring minds and all that…
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OK. As is the case with many regions, there is a dialect specific to the Pittsburgh region. Among that dialect’s many charming idiosyncracies is its version of the collective pronoun: “Yinz,” a clipped version of “You ‘uns.” It is not unusual to refer to Pittsburghers as Yinzers, although outsiders should do so with caution as it can be considered derogatory.
Clearly, that’s not the case with Uncle Crappy, as I use the term only with a smile on my face and love in my heart.
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I’ve never uttered that sound before. Wouldn’t want to seem a degrating sort. Of course, many utterances have been done without full recollection – maybe you did hear it from me in the back seat – I was probably asking something of the sort of, ‘ what kind of engine you got in this thing? ‘ and it came out more like ‘ wha kin of yinzer ou got . . . thing?’
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Kewyson…
I’m sure the word yinzer came up during the Boulder years….either on the lawn sofa or with the big dogs…..
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Ah yes,
The Yinzer years, as I like to call them. When mailing a letter resulted in a 75 mile – gambling, drink fest – the original pure sensation of KBCO, at A-Basin, watching the Downhill sleders, and of course Fat Tires & Kicking Bird – can you not see that I am wind in my Butt, that I will always be wind in my butt!
But I digress . . .
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Go Browns!
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And a Browns fan? Kristi — I’m impressed.
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