TRUE BLUE: Fan For Life Through Good, Bad Times

by Derek Constable

There aren't a lot of jobs available for a 14-year-old kid outside of paper routes and mowing lawns, but when I first got my working papers in 1996 a close friend of the family gave me a chance to make some money answering phones and filing paperwork for him as a clerk for his tax business.

George P. Roth was a life-long Giants fan and long time season ticket holder who shared his four seats at the Meadowlands with my father and uncle for over a decade. He was a tax consultant by trade in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., but lived and died with his favorite sports team in East Rutherford, N.J., each Sunday that they took the field from Seat 21, Section 108.

George had no children of his own to take to the stadium or to talk football with but he loved every minute of the time he got to spend as a father figure to my dad and uncle, and as a grandfather to me. As a kid, I always knew the team we rooted for in my house was the Giants, but it wasn't until I went to work for George that I began to take a personal interest in the team.

His office was filled with all kinds of memorabilia and not just the average stuff like posters and coffee mugs, he had wooden plaques with the team photos on them from '86 and '90, a ticket stub from Super Bowl XXI ... but my favorite treasure of all was the endless library of Giants Weekly magazines he kept stashed in a closet there. He made me organize them one time and it took five whole days but from that point on I immersed myself in the post-Simms era of Giants football.

'We' were underdogs who'd been to the mountain top in Superbowl XXI and XXV, but who were struggling to find our way back after losing key leaders like Phil Simms and L.T. A family franchise, handed down from father to son just like the seasons tickets which would one day be passed down from George, to my dad, and then to me.

From that point on I followed the team like it was my job, reading the sports section of the newspaper much more than any textbook and working on my fantasy football draft each summer rather than my required reading for Honors English.

Trips to Giants Stadium became an annual pilgrimage for me and my Pops and for the first time in my life I not only saw Dad as a regular guy, I also understood why coming up to him with homework on NFL Sunday wasn't always a good idea.

These days I get just as crazy as him when it comes to blown calls by the refs, a fumbled football from the running back or a dropped pass by a wide open receiver. As fans we live and die with our team, through the good years and the bad -- just like with family.

When the team is doing well it feels amazing, too good to be true, like it can never last, and when they're down you think things can't get any worse and they'll never get better...but they do. They always do.

That's what being a Giants fan means to me, sticking by your team even when they screw up or go through a rough patch. Believing that they can win on any given Sunday, even when the odds are stacked against them. It may hurt more when they lose, but it makes the good times feel that much sweeter.