My Favorite Teams Share One Common Theme: We Are Fam-I-LY!

This tale starts sometime back in 1947 in Brooklyn, NY.

I was not alive then, but without the US having success in ending World War II, the story of Jackie Robinson might not be what it is today.

Without Jackie Robinson taking a risk, facing the critics and racist alike, my outlook might be totally different on what my favorite teams would look like.

So for the courage of Jackie Robinson I devote the theme of this story to his memory and his legacy and his No. 42!

If you want the short version I have more than one favorite team. Here they are:

1977  Denver Broncos

1979  Pittsburgh Pirates

1981 Mitchell Marauders

1990-91 Colorado Buffaloes football

1997-99 Denver Broncos

2003 Mountain Vista Golden Eagles

2004 Boston Red Sox

2007 Colorado Rockies

To find out why I love those teams you have to take the time machine with me to Southern Colorado in early 1970. 

There you see is where my personal perspective on sports grew.  Colorado Springs is far from being the sports capital of the world, though it is home to the mighty Air Force Falcons.

I saw my hometown boom from a population around 130,000 back then to now more than triple that number less than 40 years later. 

My family had just returned from overseas as my father was in the service and stationed out of Germany.  He just returned from the Vietnam War prior to our return to the States.

My father was never big on sports.  It was something I always felt was a real shame, and yet the lessons I learned out of that were so deep and meaningful.  For him it was rooted in the fact that as a youngster playing baseball with the local kids, he threw a bat after a hit and knocked out the teeth of a young girl that was standing nearby. 

So for him, sports came with a horrible price.  He never followed or played sports any time following that incident because he felt so bad about it. The fact is my father saw life as being larger and more important than sports.

It’s an opinion I agree with to this day, yet I love the good sports can bring down to my core.

I knew from day one I was destined to be a bit of a “homer”, so my favorite football team was the Denver Broncos and I was aspiring to become a CU Buff someday.  Due to how poor the Broncos were back then, some kids in my neighborhood would defect to the most popular teams like the Raiders, Dolphins, Steelers, and Cowboys.

I wasn’t having any of it though, if I was going to die; it was going to be with my boots on when it came to my favorite football team. 

The Denver Broncos were essentially what the Chicago Cubs are known for being, the loveable losers, only this time it was of the football world.

I intentionally started watching the NFL at an early age because I knew many people liked the game and I was determined to know it.

Seasons come and seasons go.  I never really cared about the Super Bowl until Super Bowl X in 1975-6.  Even then I hated the Cowboys and Steelers for always being better than the Broncos. 

So it was almost a given at that point in time that the Broncos had a long way to go and it was best to follow the Denver Nuggets on the radio or look forward to the Major League Baseball season.

Denver had one of the greatest and most over-looked running backs of all-time in Floyd Little. Floyd was out of Syracuse and led the NFL/AFL in rushing from 1968-1973.  When he retired he was the seventh all-time ranked rusher in the NFL. Little was one of only three players to ever wear No. 44 for Syracuse. 

That number was also worn by Jim Brown and Ernie Davis.  It wasn’t until 1976 that things started heating up for the Broncos franchise.

So as the Broncos were never in the playoffs the only real thing I’d look forward to was the baseball season because I knew I could play and not worry about my size.  The benefit of spring and summer being baseball season is just the icing on the cake.

In the early 1970’s the Chicago Cubs still had high hopes, the Pittsburgh Pirates had Roberto Clemente whom I was fortunate to see play a game or two on live TV, the Oakland A’s were amazing, and the Reds and Dodgers were starting to develop one intense rivalry. 

Since there was no baseball in Colorado at the time, the team for me was the Los Angeles Dodgers.  I looked on the map as kids will do and figured which team was closest to home. 

Sure I could have been a Cardinals fan like my uncles, but I had to be a little different in that regard.  I was going against the grain a bit coming from a family with some strong ties to the midwest.

My brother and I liked to pick teams from a list, sort of like a draft.  So since I liked the Dodgers he couldn’t.  Since he liked the Pirates and the Phillies, I couldn’t.  Since I liked the BoSox, he couldn’t. 

Since he liked the Orioles, I couldn’t, and so on down the line.  It’s still sort of the unwritten rule some four decades later.  Because baseball was so rich then and I was very much in favor of the eventual expansion I eventually grew to like about half the teams in Major League Baseball. 

I think I knew back then that Los Angeles was more of a place I’d rather live or visit so it was a natural fit for me.  Given the fact the Dodgers had the likes of Steve Yeager, Davey Lopes, Steve Garvey, Rick Monday, and Ron Cey rounding out one of the greatest infields of all-time, it was a done deal, or so it seemed.

So many of those summers the rivalry to look forward to was in baseball.

Over a period of years the Cincinnati Reds always found ways to beat the Dodgers when it mattered most.  Then the Reds won back to back World Series in 1975 and 1976.  It was devastating for Dodger fans after having a team that could definitely compete with the Reds.  Dodger blue had failed on more than one key situation.

I noticed my grandma went from being sold out for Dodger blue to giving in and pulling for the Reds in the World Series.  My world was really rocked.  I didn’t know what to think.  Here my grandma was rooting for the same team I thought we both hated on the same level.

My sister had said, she thought Johnny Bench was cute, this, that, and the other then my grandma sort of played off that.  Are you kidding me?  Here the Reds are closing in on a title in 1976 and I’m looking for a release because there is no way I was pulling for the Yankees.  So as that season was ending I had turned to focus on football. 

Things started to heat up a pinch in Denver.  The Broncos had a good season and wound up one game away from the playoffs in 1976.  The Denver Broncos fired John Ralston after they lost their final game in a blowout at the New England Patriots at the end of the ’76 campaign. 

The fallout from the players was that they felt they could not get to the next level with John. Tom Jackson, now of ESPN fame, was one of the players who felt that way initially.  He later regretted it, more out of the fact that the Broncos had a large number of players hand picked by John Ralston.

Denver eventually hired Robert “Red” Miller to take the Broncos to the next level.  He immediately traded quarterback Steve Ramsey in exchange for Craig Morton to the New York Giants and the beginning of the Orange Crush era for the Denver Broncos was underway.

What made that team so unique to any I had ever seen up to that point in time was that they were more than just a professional football team.  This team actually cared for one another outside of football, it was obvious.  In the professional sports world that is very rare, even then it was not very common. 

The Orange Crush Denver Broncos developed chemistry early on in training camp because they knew they had the talent on board to take the next step.  The 1977 training camp was also the loosest training camp since the Broncos had no pressure to rise up, they knew they would make the playoffs that year.

Down at my grandma’s house I’d sit on her porch in the sweltering heat reading the sports page, listening to training camp reports, and of course watching baseball games whenever they came on.

Later in 1977 the Dodgers began the playoffs again in pursuit of a World Series title.  The Dodgers made the World Series only to lose to the New York Yankees once again. 

That’s about the time my grandma gave me this piece of advice about the Dodgers.

She said, “I know you love them (the Dodgers), and I do too sweetie, but the thing about the Dodgers is this...They’re always going to break your heart honey.”

Wow!

My world was officially rocked and upside down now.  What’s a kid to do after a statement like that about your favorite baseball team?  So I started thinking, that maybe she was right; it was a stunning revelation that we knew to be all too true back then. 

I knew I couldn’t go for the Reds, even though I had a deep respect for their team.  My brother and I even met one of the Reds catchers who played for them back in the 1920’s at one of my little league games. I just couldn’t do it.  I could not bring myself to being a Cincinnati Reds fan. 

Do I pull for the New York Yankees?  Are you kidding me?  I’d rather jump off a bridge!

So that offseason I started looking through a huge stack of baseball cards and considering the list agreement my brother and I had, I had to make a big decision.

I was officially demoting the Dodgers down to two or three at least.  I couldn’t take the pain anymore.

That was a difficult blow, but I still had the promise of the Broncos season on the rise.

I can still distinctly remember a retired Floyd Little, two years removed from the game, going on The NFL Today pregame show on CBS.  They asked him a number of questions, and then they asked him who he thought would make the Super Bowl. 

Without skipping a beat, Floyd Little picked Denver and Dallas.  Brent Musburger, Irv Cross, and Jimmy “The Greek” all about fell out of their seats nearly chuckling.  All I could do was nod my head in agreement with Floyd and know in my heart this team was ready.

To this day in the Rocky Mountain region, that team’s legacy is still special because of what they accomplished.  Now think about that for a minute. The history books will forever tell you that the Dallas Cowboys won Super Bowl XII against the Denver Broncos.  Yet that one season transformed a professional franchise from being a loveable loser into being a force to be reckoned with for decades to come.

That was due in large part to the Orange Crush defense that had Randy Gradishar leading the way in tackles at one of the middle linebacker positions. 

The Broncos' defense was nearly a Pro Bowl team in it of itself.  Players like Tom Jackson, Lyle Alzado, Bob Swenson, Louis Wright, Gradishar, and Bill Thompson were among the best of the best of their era. 

The Broncos executed a defensive scheme that was a 3-4; it was highly situational and specialized. Joe Collier was the defensive coordinator and he knew how to make his defense solid and competitive. They routinely had a number of players rotating in and out on every down. 

This scheme caused the opposing offenses to bog down even after long drives. Cynics still write off the accomplishments of Randy Gradishar and the Broncos from that era. None have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and yet their defensive statistics still rate among the best ever for that season. 

It shows exactly how fickle and wrong sports journalist, the supposed experts can be.  On this issue, it’s non-negotiable.  The sports writers who have Hall of Fame votes have messed this one up bad.

The Orange Crush has never been given its due; it’s a sad reality of living in the forgotten time zone.  Yet the Orange Crush is still a top five defense of all-time.  Consider the Steel Curtain, the ’86 Bears, the 2000 Ravens. 

They all won championships; the Orange Crush Broncos did not. The Orange Crush defense nearly won a Super Bowl entirely on their own; something that still has not been accomplished by any other Super Bowl team with a good defense.

However, having said that, it has been speculated that Super Bowl XII was fixed.

There was some talk leading up to the game speculating as much.  Consider that the likes of John Keyworth a backup running back and Craig Morton among others were mentally intimidated the week of the game by given death threats over the phone.

During the game the Broncos lost out on two calls that would have added 14 points to their total.  The first call was a fumble in the end zone on the opening kickoff by Dallas.  Counting the number of players, there were ten Broncos in the pile and one Dallas Cowboy. 

A Denver special team’s player emerged from the pile with the ball for what appeared to be a touchdown.  The referees ruled touchback in favor of Dallas. 

Butch Johnson was also awarded a touchdown that by today’s standards wouldn’t hold since the ball touched the ground and he later dropped the ball in the end zone.

Late in the third quarter, with Dallas deep in Bronco territory, QB Roger Staubach rolled right, was a good yard away from stepping out of bounds when he threw a ball across the field.  It was intercepted by Tom Jackson and he had open sailing to the end zone. 

Then there came a late whistle, the referee’s conferred and said Staubach had stepped out of bounds in front of the Broncos sideline.  Not hardly.

If you factor in those plays being ruled correctly the final score would have been:

Denver Broncos 24

Dallas Cowboys 20

Give Dallas their due they were the better all-around team that year and that fateful day in New Orleans.  However, proper due and respect should be given to the Orange Crush.  They were great, truly great and that team had guys that would be in the Hall of Fame if they played in Dallas, Pittsburgh, or even New York.

Having had an opportunity to speak with Tom Jackson and Bill Thompson years later at the christening of INVESCO Field at Mile High, we all agreed on this one central point that made the Orange Crush so good. 

It was all about the love. 

Grown men acting as brothers who’ve got each others back. 

That’s family on the gridiron.       

Thinking back to those days with my grandma, I loved watching so many of those games with her.  She was a huge sports fan.  Weather it was football, baseball, basketball, golf, or tennis, it didn’t really matter. 

It was in part about being together. 

That’s family.

After the Broncos lost out in the Super Bowl, it was a horrible loss, and yet before the final seconds ticked off the clock, Broncos fans started chanting:

“We love you Broncos!  “We love you Broncos!”

Haven Moses on NFL Films said with tears in his eyes, “We thought we had let them down.”

From that point on, Denver loved the Broncos, and the Broncos loved Denver.

Healing takes it’s time, in sports and in life.

So maybe it’s a good thing that there is always a change of season.

I had time to think about which baseball team I was now going to adopt to become number one on my list now.  I had silently started to like the Pirates (one of my brother’s sacred teams) for some time now.  I think as a kid I loved the throwback look of the pillbox striped cap with the black and gold color scheme.

I now decided I was going to be a fan of the Bucs.  I had to tell my little brother and hope he wouldn’t flip.

So I told him, I’m changing teams and the Pirates are now my team.

“What?” 

It didn’t really register.

“You can’t that’s my team.”

So I said, “Sorry, I thought about it, I like them too.”

You’d have to know him the way I do, but it didn’t sit well with him.  So much so, he started looking for a new team.

He decided to promote the Philadelphia Phillies and the Baltimore Orioles since I wasn’t budging off the Pirate ship.

The 1978 season was a good year for the Pittsburgh Pirates as they finished up at 88-73, just a game and a half behind the Philadelphia Phillies as fate would have it.

However 1979 was a different story.  During that time I had collected more baseball cards and done some research and really liked my choice of the Pirates.  There was something strange and different about this team than any other baseball team I had seen. 

Sure the Big Red Machine was the toughest team I had seen, and the Dodgers had good camaraderie, and the Yankees were after one thing, winning championships.

These Pirates though had the “It” factor.  They had known there were other talented teams out there, but they believed they had a plan.  They certainly had a great manager in Chuck Tanner, who seemed to pull all the right strings at just the right time.

During the change in uniforms Willie Stargell decided to give out stars to his teammates to put on their hats every time they did something significant to help the team.  It was sort of old school high school football stickers on the helmet, only this was baseball. 

The stars became known as the Stargell stars.  It was the piece of merchandise fans and players wanted to have.

While Stargell and the Pirates wanted to play in the World Series and they believed they could, there was something stronger going on in the clubhouse.  This motley crew of misfits it seemed found a way to come together as a team once again.

Stargell was just the leader that team needed and part of the way he forged the culture of the team was with a song by Sister Sledge called “We Are Family.”

For Stargell and the Pirates organization it was sort of a reflection to their recent past when they won the 1971 World Series with Roberto Clemente.  It was also a time for the franchise to start rejoicing again for the first time since Clemente’s terrible death on Dec. 31, 1972. 

Roberto’s plane went down off the coast of Isla Verde, Puerto Rico.  Clemente was on his way to deliver aid to a Nicaraguan town devastated by an earthquake when the aircraft crashed shortly after take off.

Clemente had served as a mentor to Willie Stargell in his early years with the Pirates.  Just as many of Clemente’s teammates had forged a bond of friendship with him over the years.  They became the remnant that carried his legacy into the future.

By the time the 1979 season came around, only three players were left over from the 1971 World Series championship team.  They were pitcher Bruce Kison, catcher and best friend of Clemente’s Manny Sanguillen, and first baseman Willie Stargell.

For this group that also consisted of Omar Moreno, Dave Parker, Bert Blyleven, Phil Garner, Rennie Stennett, Bill Madlock, Kent Tekulve, Bill Robinson, John Milner, Tim Foli, and Mike Easler among others the theme was always the same.  A bond of many threads cannot fail, especially if it’s treated like family. 

While they were among the best teams with the bat, they did not have the best pitching in the league, though all of their starters were serviceable in their own right.  They also had the best manager in baseball at the time in Chuck Tanner. 

The Family as they were widely known at that time were about to face their toughest test. 

Stargell knew he had to lead by example if this team was going to go anywhere.  In Game One of the NLCS the Pittsburgh Pirates were on the road facing the Cincinnati Reds (ironically enough for me anyway) for the right to go to the World Series.

In a tight 2-2 game the Pirates got the shot they needed when they had to have it. I can still remember hearing the call on the radio. The Pirate bats had bailed them out once again as they so often had during the regular season. The Pirates took that game against the remnant of the Big Red Machine 5-2. 

Game two was another tight game won by the Pirates with a run in the top of the tenth.  Centerfielder Omar Moreno scored from second base off a Dave Parker single.

Game three wound up being a blowout by the Pirates, winning the game 7-1 and the series 3-0.

The team Willie Stargell and Chuck Tanner had shaped into a contender was on its way back to the World Series set to face the same team they beat in 1971 the Baltimore Orioles.

This World Series however would become an enigma and nearly a tale on how not to win a championship.  On a soggy night for Game One, the Pirates made errors early in the game to complement the Orioles hitting. 

The Pirates were down 5-0 after the first inning.  They continued to chip away at the Baltimore lead but came up short and lost the game 5-4.

The Orioles failed to defend the home field in Game Two and lost a tight game 3-2.  With that type of momentum, it seemed the Pirates would cruise since the series was moving back to Pittsburgh.  Baltimore had the stronger pitching on their side while the Pirates had the bats. 

The Orioles went on to win Game Three relatively easily 8-4.  They followed that up the very next day chipping away at Pirate leads of 4-0 and 6-3 to win the game 9-6.  That made it two games in a row the Orioles had won in Pittsburgh and now lead the World Series three games to one with Game Five the following day.

Literally overnight the series turned into a split series.  The Orioles pitching started to fail where it had been reliable and the Pirates bats exploded where they had been silent as they got the pitching they needed.  The Pirates cruised in Game Five by a final score of 7-1.

In the critical Game Six John Candelaria out dueled Jim Palmer and the Pirates won the game 4-0 in front of a stunned Baltimore crowd.  The series was finally tied up for the first time since game two.

The weather for Game Seven was very similar to Game One and felt like a bad omen for the Pirate faithful.  Baltimore got an early lead at 1-0 and it stayed that way until the top of the sixth when the Pirates took the lead 2-1. 

About that time Orioles manager Earl Weaver had seen enough. He started to vent at his pitchers as he became very reactionary trying to play every pitching matchup with a new pitcher every two-thirds of an inning or less. In the top of the ninth Willie Stargell iced the game with a deep fly ball that sailed out of the park, just barely, for a two run home run.

The celebration began after the final out and the dream had come true.  Not by having the best pitchers or the best athletes or the best fielders.  The Pirates called themselves the Lumber Company. That company over time became a family. 

As the final out was made, the Sister Sledge song started ringing out over the PA as Pirate faithful that had made the trip stormed the yard in Baltimore.

“We are Fam-i-ly”

“We are Fam-i-ly”

“We are Fam-i-ly”

Mission accomplished!  The dream to leave a legacy was now realized and is now a legacy that stands in history forever.

There are others that I have seen since and each one was unique, though none of them have had the overall message the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates had.  Here is a short on a number of others I have seen since then.

The 1981 Mitchell Marauders High School football team won its third state championship over a period of seven seasons.  Maybe not that big a deal when compared to other programs in other states.  This team however went undefeated, and won the class 4A Colorado State Championship in an era when 4A was the top classification.  

They were also nationally ranked at a time when those sorts of polls were just starting out.  Coach Jim Hartman was known for getting the most out of his undersized players for the most part, and his staff found a way to keep the perfect season together and beat Columbine 14-7 in the state championship.

I was a freshman in the program at the time.  It was a program and a group of people who are all special to this very day. 

The 1989-91 Colorado Buffaloes football team was special to the core.  It had a special head coach in Bill McCartney who wore his personal religious beliefs on his sleeve as well as his determination to win at CU. Colorado was working to overcome a disastrous decade of losing football following the Chuck Fairbanks era. 

It was a tumultuous time as well.  Football players were constantly in the police blotter and there were fights involving players.  Many times the players themselves were targets of racism or others picking fights with players. 

Having personally witnessed a couple of incidents, it was not solely the players fault and was usually instigated by someone not associated with the football program.

Nonetheless, Coach McCartney used discipline on and off the field and an “us against the world” mentality to help his team understand they could do something special.  Along that journey, starting quarterback Sal Aunese contracted stomach cancer in 1988 and subsequently died in the middle of the 1989 season. 

This made the bond among the players stronger over time.  The Buffs played Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1, 1990 and lost a close game 21-6. The following season, CU overcame controversy during their regular season and beat Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl on January 1, 1991 by a score of 10-9 to win the National Championship.

The exploits of the 1997-99 Denver Broncos are well documented, but the thing that standsout about this group is that they endured defeat.  These Broncos were supposed to reach the Super Bowl during the 1996-97 season. 

The Jacksonville Jaguars beat the Broncos in Denver and reached the AFC Championship the following week in New England. This loss still stands as possibly the worst defeat the Broncos ever endured outside of the Super Bowl.

Somewhere during the 1997 training camp, Terrell Davis was asked if the Broncos could get over the hump and reach the Super Bowl and win.  Terrell simply said “Why not us?”  So it was written, so it was done as the Broncos reached the Super Bowl for the fourth time under John Elway and eventually won for the first time in franchise history.

John Elway and Tom Jackson played together and symbolically made the perfect link from the past to legitimize the Orange Crush team of 1977 as well as John Elway’s Hall of Fame career. This team was one of the strongest teams in the modern era ever seen.

This group of players also had a unique bond with their coaches and the local media. It was special. It may have been slightly dysfunctional at times, but it was a family.

The 2003 Mountain Vista Golden Eagles freshman football team did something I’ve never seen in football before or since.  As a coach on this team, they were challenged to score 35 points per game. 

The Golden Eagles went into halftime of each game with nothing less than a 33-point lead at the half.  This young group had an amazing run and went undefeated as well.  They were a family.

Big Papi and the 2004 Boston Red Sox had a run that took a lot of heart to both endure and to overcome. No other team in playoff history did what they did in coming from a three games to none deficit on the brink of elimination to win the ALCS and the World Series.  That was a dysfunctional family, also known as the idiots, but family nonetheless.

Did I mention they also broke the curse of The Bambino in a big way?

The streak of the 2007 Colorado Rockies will remain a part of baseball history forever.  This team went from being a doormat for the better part of 22 games, to the toughest team to beat of all-time during that stretch.  An absolute anomaly at that!   They were then swept by the Boston Red Sox after a long hiatus prior to playing in the World Series. 

What stands out is during that little window of time they beat teams because they believed in what they were doing.  They believed they could do it.  They were tight as a team, and loose on the field.

They went from trailing everyone in the division to qualifying as the wild card on the final day of the season, in part thanks to the Milwaukee Brewers defeating the San Diego Padres and forcing a one game playoff between the Padres and Rockies in Denver.

The Padres looked like they would be the playoff team and end the streak, in what is now the greatest game I ever saw. The Colorado Rockies had fought to a 6-6 tie in the 13th inning when the Padres scored two runs off the bat off of Scott Hairston’s home-run in the top of the inning. 

The Rockies countered in the bottom of the inning with three runs being scored off sure Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman. The last of which was a headfirst slide by Matt Holiday that ignited a celebration like no other in Coors Field and lower downtown Denver. 

The fifth best regular season comeback of all time was completed and the World Series was reached by this youthful team that rallied around their cause. They were a family.

Certainly there are other stories out there no doubt; these are just the ones that meant something to me personaly.

I guess the moral of these stories is that making your team a family might not make your team an eventual champion, but it just might make your team close.

I think that’s why players, coaches, fans, and writers love that charge that they get out of sports. 

In a way, whether related or not.  The connection exist in a simple statement.

We Are Fam-I-LY!