Читать книгу American Football - Die Seattle Seahawks - Maximilian Länge - Страница 7

FOREWORD

Living in Seattle my entire life, it was hard to adequately grasp the impact a franchise like the Seahawks has outside of the city. I saw the Matt Hasselbeck jerseys as I showed up to middle school. Seemingly every kid in the neighborhood peeled off the plastic on Madden 2007 when Shaun Alexander graced the cover. I watched hundreds of thousands of Seahawk-loving Seattleites flood the streets of downtown, playing hooky from work and voluntary aiding in their children’s truancy in order to celebrate the city’s first Super Bowl in February 2014, but all of this was easy to chalk up as a local phenomenon. Ditto for the deafening noise I experienced during Seahawks’ home games as a beat writer.

To fully understand the significance of Pete Carroll’s preachings, to truly comprehend the iconic nature of a Skittles-obsessed running back and to honestly appreciate the transcendence of a bunch of badass defensive backs, I had to venture out.

I had to go overseas.

My grandparents moved to Seattle from the Midwest in the 1960s and had Seahawks season tickets in the inaugural season in 1976. My maternal grandfather, Willie Lee, was a well-traveled metallurgical engineer for Boeing Airlines. He died in 2002. To this day I think about the look he would have had on his face upon learning I’d be paid to cover a Seahawks game in London.

I landed in London on October 9, 2018 and almost immediately felt the shockwaves stemming from a decade of thrilling Seahawks victories, heartbreaking losses and touchdown runs punctuated by crotch grabs. Over the course of one week spent across the water, I interacted with Seahawk fans from all over the world, chronicling their affection for a team tucked away in the upper left-hand corner of the United States. On the eve of Seattle stomping the Raiders at Wembley Stadium, the local Seahawks fan group threw a party simultaneously celebrating the team and raising money for the late Washington State University quarterback Tyler Hilinski. As I write this foreword, the proud WSU alumnus that I am, I’m wearing my white and red “Hilinski’s Hope” sweatshirt, purchased that night.

In sharing stories that evening with 12s from thousands of miles away – some of whom mistook me for who-knows-how-many Seahawks players – I sensed their genuine excitement in meeting and engaging with people from across the pond who shared their love of Seattle’s most popular franchise. People who could recall the roller coaster of emotions when Hasselbeck declared in overtime that they were going to score. People who shared their conspiracy theories from Super Bowl XL. People who remembered Doug Baldwin wearing number 15, Brandon Browner body slamming Greg Jennings, the Kam on Cam violence in the 2015 playoffs and Richard Sherman asserting his superiority as if these were all childhood memories. It was a tangible feeling of community.

By the end of the trip, I had frequented an unhealthy number of pubs, taken the perfect number of international selfies and returned home uniquely aware of the influence of the team I had spent more than two decades watching grow from an up-and-comer in the early 2000s to a legitimate powerhouse in the 2010s.

I imagine everyone who covers an NFL team feels the impression the team has on the people in the community. And anyone who travels while covering an NFL team feels the impression that team has across the country. They meet the fans who relocated years earlier and have Seahawks games circled on their calendar in Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., Dallas, Carolina and the like. They meet people who host podcasts in Georgia. People who wait tables at Seahawks bars in Arizona. But nothing beats that indescribable feeling of hearing someone speaking in an entirely different language rant about their love of Steve Largent or tell their stories of following Kenny Easley’s career from the beginning or dusting the cobwebs off of their Walter Jones jersey.

The Seahawks belong to the city of Seattle. That much has always been obvious. But, as this book will illustrate, they also belong to 12s all over the world.

Michael-Shawn Dugar

Seahawks beat writer for The Athletic