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Mixed feelings

16 Aug

I support my boys in green. I stand with them. I sing for them. I wear a scarf in the dog days of summer. I drag a giant Scotland flag around with me to support my two surviving Scots.

I don’t tell you this to paint myself as some sort of superfan. I just love my club. I want to see them succeed. I want better for them than what’s happening this season.

Not for me. For them.

I’ve been ranting for a week straight now. Perkins to Montreal. Chabala to DC. Gavin being Gavin. John Strong and Timbers in 30 toeing the company line. That horrifying “interview” with Merritt. The Willamette Week interview with Troy Perkins that was far more telling than anything coming from the FO.

There’s this feeling I’m having a hard time describing. I have all these things I want to say and am struggling to put them into words.

People are talking about a boycott.

My head hurts. My heart hurts.

What does this boycott look like? Is it really a boycott if we all still show up at Jeld-Wen on gameday?

I’m currently landing pretty solidly in the concessions boycott camp. I cannot fathom not being in the stadium to cheer for my boys, but I can certainly do it without a beer and a hot dog. Money speaks.

We’re in the middle of discussing this on Twitter, as we have been for a week. “So, I’ll spend $20 to support the boys, but not $7.25 for a beer? I guess I don’t understand the logic,” a fellow RCTIDer tweets to me. Sigh.

I’m not sure I’m the one to explain it, but here goes.

I’m a season ticket holder. I see those tickets as an agreement with the team that I will be there, that I will show up and support them, win, lose or draw, in all weather, against any opponent.

An agreement with the team that I will support them.

This does not mean that I will offer my undying support for every ill-advised, poorly-timed, absolutely ludicrous decision made by the front office nor will I stand idly by as the FO attempts to spin the story to make those decisions look less ill-advised, poorly-timed and ludicrous.

Yes, I’ve contacted my ticket rep. At this point, I’m stunned that he even responds. I’m sure, when he opens his email in the morning and sees my name, there is a deep sigh as he reaches for his coffee. I know that ranting at him (venting to him?) isn’t going to change the course of the season. It isn’t going to unseat Gavin. It isn’t going to stop the ridiculous spin.

But we have to take any opportunity to express our frustration, don’t we?

How far are we willing to go?

My guy in the FO, when I asked him a month ago, said that the normal rules still apply. Distasteful and/or offensive displays might get you a talking-to. Yet the rumor is still circulating that any anti-Gavin display is going to earn you a ban.

Again, how far are we willing to go?

I’m trying to understand all of this. I’m trying to get a handle on how and what I feel.

It comes down to this: Gavin has got to go. If a GWOut t-shirt gets me hauled out of the North End, so be it. I’ll be with a hundred others in the same situation. If a GWOut two-stick gets others kicked out, they can stand with us on the sidewalk.

A moment (or several moments) of silence during the match? This is where we are divided.

What message does it send? What does it say to our boys?

It says we care.

It does not say we do not support them. Quite the contrary. It says we care enough to make a statement. It says we are united in our passion for this club.

Aside from that, through the magic of Twitter and Facebook, we have the ability to alert them to any protest ahead of time. A few words of explanation and I’m sure they’d understand.

But are we there yet?

Are we willing to stand silently, to hush those around us who may not understand, to spread the word beforehand not just among fellow supporters, but also to those members of the team who are most accessible to us? Are we willing to do this?

Some of us are. But collectively? I’m not so sure.

What will it take?

I’m not an organizer. I’m not normally a protestor. I’m barely a blogger.

But I’m ready for whatever happens. And something needs to happen.

I’ve been warned of the repercussions, the possibility of ejections and bans. I’ve been offered advice, as though I were going to step in and be the protest organizer. I’m not, but I’ll pass along the advice.

Stay sober. Stay serious. If it’s important enough for you to launch a formal protest, it’s important enough for you to keep your wits about you.

Have photographers present. You can’t swing a scarf in the North End without hitting a camera or a smartyphone, but those wielding them need know the whens and wheres in order to properly capture not just the protest, but whatever aftermath there may be.

If you’re ejected, go with dignity. We’ll meet you at BE afterward and Chris Cooper will probably buy you a beer. If you’re banned, shout about it long and loud to anyone who will listen. Social media is your friend. No one should be denied access to their club because they have expressed an opinion.

I sincerely doubt that it will come to this. Any sort of protest, organized or otherwise, should cause the FO some frustration but I would hope that, even in turbulent times such as these, an expression of opinion would not bring down the ban-hammer. But this is the same FO that sent out a survey about reserved seating in the North End and was shocked when the response was swift and harsh. They appear, at the moment, to be tone deaf.

As I am wont to do, I’ve talked to some of our TA elders about the current situation with the club. I keep hearing the same things over and over. We’ve been in some pretty crappy places before. We’ve had some difficult, wrenching seasons. The difference now is the scale of things. Bigger stage. More at stake. Many, many more people involved. This is a much harder ship to steer but we can hardly expect it to right itself now that it’s been taking on water for so long.

Again, I’m not an organizer. I can’t encourage you to participate in whatever protest happens. But I’ll keep you up to date if there seems to be a consensus on what that protest will be.

Make your own choice.

 
6 Comments

Posted by on August 16, 2012 in Timbers

 

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Upgraded: a mess of a post after a mess of a day

07 Aug

I don’t even know where to start. Seatbelts are in order as I have no idea where this is going to go and it might be a bumpy ride.

Has it really only been a month since Spenny’s departure? It feels like a decade.

And here we are again.

Troy Perkins.

Dammit, Troy Perkins.

Apologies to the surviving Timbers, but Troy was our one constant. He was our rock, our warrior. The man had his face kicked off for us and came back with absolutely no hesitation. He came back with a fierceness that I cannot imagine any of the rest of us would have been able to muster. When asked for my starting XI, I only ever give ten names because I only have one keeper I trust to put out there match after match.

Troy Perkins. He belongs to Montreal now.

But he will always be a Timber.

What comes next? This is a question I ask and am asked on an almost daily basis.

There is no simple answer aside from this: I don’t know.

We can look back and say, sure, we knew Spenny wasn’t long for Portland. Those rumblings had begun months ago and we collectively assumed he’d at least finish out the season. But we knew he was going.

But Troy? Troy was untradeable. That’s not even a word. Spellcheck tells me it isn’t but you know what I mean. They could have traded anyone else and, while I might have been surprised or angry or whatever, it wouldn’t have floored me like this has.

There is rage. There is this overwhelming feeling that, as so many of us are waiting for the next announcement, our front office is throwing in the towel. Or maybe they did weeks ago and I just didn’t notice it because I was still waiting for a miracle. A turning point. A watershed moment.

Well, here we are. This is our turning point, such as it is. That realist girl from the last post? She’s pretty sure this is where our season ends. I kinda hate her.

I reached out to one of the players today to offer a word or two of encouragement. It’s something that’s easy to do with this team as many of the players are on Twitter or Facebook and are super-responsive. I think it’s important to do that sometimes, to let them know that, despite whatever bizarre behavior is exhibited by the front office, we will still support them. We will still believe in them. We will not falter in this.

I won’t give you his response except to say that it leads me to believe that more change is coming (shocking, I know) and that the players who are still here are on edge.

I don’t want that. I want my guys focused on playing soccer, on playing for the badge, on playing for us. Trading Troy Perkins makes that impossible.

I get how this works. There are no guarantees that a player will not be traded. It’s a part of the world in which they live. But there are some guys you just don’t trade and when one is traded, I can’t help but think of the (poor word choice here) impact it will have on the rest of the squad.

Sigh.

I still believe.

There was a very brief discussion (hardly a discussion, really, more just a few angry tweets) on Twitter about the mantra “Believe Beyond Reason.”

Believe Beyond Reason, I read, is stupid. It “implies you don’t expect results.”

Not true. I expect results, I’ve just managed to stay hopeful longer than you have this year, Angry OG. It’s no slight to you. We’ve very different experiences with this club. You’ve been around longer, you’ve been more deeply involved. It is because of the work you’ve done that I’m here and I recognize that.

Whether you like it or not, I’m still, despite the idiocy of the last month, believing beyond reason.

I want the star above the crest. I want the hardware. I want the parade. I want the gathering in the square. And we will have all of those things.

But we won’t have any of them with Troy Perkins.

There’s a lot of speculation romping around on Twitter and Facebook and all the various other outlets. Who goes next? Who might be on the way here already?

I will be stunned if Kris Boyd returns for a second season here. Truth be told, I’ll be surprised if he’s still here for the Vancouver match at the end of the month.

Kalif might be next, but I think the first out will be Eric Alexander. Fair warning to those around me: this will trigger an all-out meltdown on my part.

Is there really anyone left that’s untradeable? Chara, perhaps? But if Perkins can go, surely Chara can, too.

***

When John Spencer was fired, my reaction was to go to the Bitter End to mourn. I drove toward the stadium and parked on 20th. There were satellite trucks there from every local station but I quietly made my way around them to walk over by the team store and look out over the field. I reached out as I walked and touched the brick of the outside of the concourse.

I’m nothing if not sentimental. I did the same today, though there were no cameras, no reporters, no flurry of activity. It was just me and the stadium, a bit of architecture I’ve come to think of as a cathedral.

I was angry a lot of the day. I won’t lie. I’m guessing I’ll spend a lot of time angry over decisions made by the front office in the coming weeks and months.

But being there calmed me. It reminded me that I’m in this for the long haul. As long as the Timbers play, I will be there. Troy is gone. Others will come and go. But I’m not going anywhere.

And, for a minute, it was okay.

***

I’m going to hang with the guys from 5mTKO tomorrow. The podcast will be up on iTunes sometime Friday.

 
5 Comments

Posted by on August 7, 2012 in Timbers

 

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Go get ’em!

17 Jul

My dog has been pacing for the last fifteen minutes. Back and forth, up into the kitchen, down the hall, back to me. He’ll stand and look at me for a minute, a look I can only classify as “forlorn.” And then he’s off again. Round and round he goes.

I just told him the Timbers match tomorrow is at 1 p.m. He is deeply, deeply disturbed by this.

I didn’t think he’d react this way when I told him. He doesn’t usually watch the games. Honestly, I think he might be a Blazer fan. But, as he is unable to speak English, I don’t know for sure.

The more disturbed he is about the whole thing, the more troubled I become.

I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I’ll DVR it and stay off the net for a few hours when I should be working anyway.

But really. Who am I kidding? I’m going to be completely worthless until I know the outcome.

It’s that important.

Maybe it didn’t seem like it would be that important when MLS put out the schedule so long ago. One game in the middle of the season played at a time when a great number of Timbers supporters will have to follow Twitter updates or sneak a livestream onto their work computers. Meh.

But this could very well be pivotal for the Timbers. Every game is a must-win, but this? The first road game post-Spenny? After whatever it was that happened on Saturday?

My dog is still pacing. I just set my DVR.

I posted on Twitter/Facebook yesterday about my attempt to explain why Saturday’s loss wasn’t the fault of Timbers keeper Troy Perkins. It’s a difficult concept for some. He’s the goalie, right? It’s his whole job to make sure the ball doesn’t go in, right? Right?

Well, sure, but it isn’t really that simple.

What I like most about this team is that they are incredibly accessible. So, when I posted about trying to explain that Troy was not entirely at fault, a response came directly from one of the players, a defender, who simply said this:

It was not his fault at all. We let him down.

I have never loved a player more than I did the minute I saw that post. This. This is just one of the many reasons I love this club so deeply, so madly.

And this is why I will be a basketcase for most of tomorrow afternoon.

As I said in the Boyd post last week, I expected the next chapter of the Timbers story to be written by Kris Boyd. Then he went out, got us two goals and was named Man of the Match. I’m not sure he’s done writing yet.

What I’ll be looking for (when I finally get to watch the much-delayed match) is a defense with something to prove. They know they screwed up and at least one of them has owned up to it in what I would consider a very personal way. Heart of a lion, that one. Sometime soon, I’m sure I’ll be writing about something spectacular he’s done.

So, if you’re reading this, Unnamed Timbers Defender, go get ’em. You’re welcome at Sunday night dinner anytime.

Edit: Clearly, I wrote this last night so get off my case already about the match being today. Sheesh.

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2012 in Timbers

 

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