In the near future the RCA Dome, former home of the Indianapolis Colts, will be demolished as the Colts begin their tenure in Lucas Oil Stadium.  More ceremoniously, the aged and illustrious Yankee Stadium will come down so the Yankee fans with more money than sense and a greater desire for prestige can finally get those luxury boxes they have been pining for.  The end of such edifices will remit to memory a lot of great moments for fans. 

            I remember a play during a regular season game against Pittsburgh when Peyton went deep to Marvin off of playaction on the first snap of the game.  That celebration was unbelievable.  The loudest I have ever heard the Dome was when Robert Mathis sacked Tom Brady on the first play of last season’s match up.  It was deafening.  My ears rang for days.  I also remember the one I missed, when we hosted the AFC Championship game against the Patriots in what became one of the biggest knock-down-drag-outs of recent history that no one remembers.  Perhaps the most desperate, gut-wrenching thing I ever witnessed was the Chargers game in December of 2005 that ended the Colts perfect season and opened the eyes of how to attack the Colts offense.  The Colts trailed the entire game halfway into the 3^rd quarter and were down 16-0.  The defense had played well against the methodical Drew Brees but they had given up a few big plays.  Then Manning came out and five minutes later the Colts were leading.  The Chargers kicked a fieldgoal to regain the lead but we were back in it.  With about two minutes to go, though, the Colts stagnated and Michael Turner had an 80 yard run to seal the game.  People were freaking out like it was the end of the world.  Hot Tub and I were more concerned about the offensive line.  The guards had been exposed like never before.  The left guard could not get back in time to keep Merriman off of Manning’s blind side.  Merriman was lining up extra wide.  That kept him as the guard’s assignment, otherwise he would have been Skeeter Glenn’s guy and he could have handled it.  If we had been up we could have run at that gap but we were down and had to pass.  Merriman forced a big loss on a grounding call and killed the key drive.  The writing was on the wall.  HT and talked on the way home about how Belichick  was smart enough to see that and how Rosey Colvin was going to cause trouble.  We still had Super Bowl hopes, though.  As Fate would have it, Bill Cower watches film, too.  The Steelers beat the snot out of us in the first round of the Playoffs and we never saw the Pats.  It was the last time Joey Porter mattered.

            These locations are places of discovery, places of personal development, where the truth finds you out.  My high school did not have football, an egregious crime indeed, and a lot of my friends wanted to play.  After I graduated I resurrected our schoolyard games by going to our Little League field and painting lines on it.  We would play at night during our town’s fall festival so everyone would be there.  Those were sacred moments for me that wouldn’t have been as good anywhere else.  I often wonder which moments were better, the halcyon days of my youth baseball, or those cold-weather bloodlettings of my early 20s?  It is tough to say but I do know that I have never hit anyone as hard as I hit Gib during the 4^th Apple Bowl.  We had gotten down in the first half and come out like gang busters in the second.  The other team was trying to run out the clock but their ground game couldn’t move the ball against us.  They were dinking and dunking their way down the field using the passing game.  They found something in the slant pass that was working.  I was playing end at the time and shifted back to middle linebacker.  I knew the slant was coming.  I shifted to my left to invite the pass to my right.  Gib lined up on the offensive left and I knew he was the primary.  They snapped the ball and the QB moved into a short drop.  I hopped once and took off towards the slant pattern.  I knew it was going to happen.  I was going to saw him in half.  He would fumble it or tip it up for the pick and that would give us a chance to get back in it.  He made his cut and he was right in my line.  The pass came.  It was too high.  Gib was going to have to jump.  It was in slow motion.  It was poetry and angels singing.  It was like a bad rugby pitch.  It was a hospital pass and I was holding the phone.  At top speed I got low and launched myself at Gib’s chest.  He was just meeting the ball.  IT WAS GOING TO BE A TURKEY SHOOT!  My shoulder drove into his chest.  The impact was tremendous.  I felt it in the base of my spine.  I wrapped an arm around his back and one around his thigh.  I levered him over in the air and drove him down into the hard October dirt.  I went over the top of him and got a face full of familiar sand and grass.  The only sounds I could hear were my pulse thundering in my ears and the “hinnn” of Gib’s wind and vinegar being forced out of him.  I jumped to my feet to receive my accolades but there was nothing.  Arford, playing safety, walked up and gave me a butt pat.  “Nice hit,” he said dejectedly.  I turned around to find Gib peeling himself off the ground with a grimace on his face and the ball still clutched in his left hand.  There was no way he could have caught it.  I had blown him up.  There was no way he could have hung onto it, but he did.  I will never forget the look on his face.  Gassed, he had no notion of achieving any sort of victory.  “Jesus, Paine, what a hit.” He hissed.  “What a hit?” I thought to myself.  What a catch.  We lined up and ran the next play.  The game went on but I was broken.  For that one brief spell, my will was shattered.  I have played a lot of games of baseball and football on that field, and the smell of the infield sand and that short, rye grass that covers the outfield are always easily accessible in my mind.  Still, the memory that lingers closest is the taste of the dirt and grass in my mouth after that hit and the joy of that collision right up until the moment that I was forced to realize defeat.

            Another fresh place in my mind is the Bloomfield park where so much basketball was played.  It was generally played late at night, when the temperature was cooler and we weren’t working, and we had a lot of fun under the two lights, one directed at each backboard.  How many games of 24 win by 4 (by 2s and 3s as God intended the damn game to be played) did I play between the ages of 16 and 19?  How many went to 32-28?  I can’t say.  There were actually two courts at the park.  One was on a good flat piece and had both the lights pointed on it.  The other was a crappy patch of asphalt laid out on the side of a hill that was useless as a court.  At one point someone decided to be benevolent and refurbish that crappier court and pour concrete and set up nicer goals.  They then decided that they should take one of the lights that covered the good court and point it at the new court.  It effectively ruined basketball at the park.  Now there were only lights on half of each court.  That brief moment when the court was really going strong and the quality of play was really good is lost.  Now that we are older and living in different places and doing different things the chances of it coming back are zero.  So that place, not the structure but the confluence, is gone forever.  (The picture is of the court that so many games were played on.  A tornado took down two ancient trees that had spent so much time trying to give us a little shade in a humid Indiana.  I am glad that they took those new goals with them, they were an affront to the court itself.  Its too bad they won't replace them with the old goals we used to play on, those dudes were broken in just right.)
 

            I won’t get weepy when they tear down the Dome, and Cobra Brigade will never be the same as it was when Jack and Buck and the Captain were here.  I will, however, try to keep my part as close to where it should be as I can get it, and attempt to fill in the spaces with what I can.  I won’t advertise myself or the new restart.  I will try to keep content up and recent and cast a wide net for the things you will see.  I will rely heavily on my friends back home to email me articles and news about IU basketball and football.  I will sit back and throw out the stuff and hopefully those that liked what they saw will come back and play a bit.  Feel free to browse at the merchandise.

            I won’t tell lies about why I am back.  I am desperate for sports dialogue.  I don’t make friends quickly and moving to Minnesota has been isolating and, to a great extent, demoralizing.  I shall endeavor to maintain a positive outlook at all times, though.  I simply need the place to talk about sports and to lecture on history and politics because I have no where else to do it and no one else to do it to.                  

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