Camp and Circumstance
Jordan Mackay goes to Camp Cowboy.
(Page 6 of 8)
Happy Campers
I thought I knew why Cowboy fans would brave heat and traffic to be roped off eighty feet from a bunch of men practicing a game incomprehensible to most other people of the world. I figured that seeing a professional athlete in person is the same as seeing a movie star. There’s just something thrilling and weird about meeting someone in the flesh whom you’ve seen countless times on a screen. We non-famous humans find comforting confirmation that these familiar images exist in the same tangible, fleshy, damp world that we do. But that’s nothing secret or profound. I wanted to find out from the fans if there was something else, something that I’ve missed, some deep cultural knowledge that I never received because instead of P.E. in sixth grade I took choir. But there wasn’t any secret. The fans were out there to see the handful of guys on the team whose names they knew and to maniacally scream those names at the top of their lungs all day long.
Actually that’s not. For instance this one fan, when I asked him why he was there, dictated the following speech into my tape recorder:
Can I answer your question, too, what you asked for the first question, why I’m here today? I’m here mainly to see how the people support Michael Irvin and how Michael Irvin is going to react. Looks like he’s holding his own. That’s why I came today. Really, that was the main person I came to see. And to shout if I see him close, “Irvin, are you going to show up to play for the intensity of the game or for the millibucks that you gotta pay back? Which one?’ I’m supportive of him. I think the guy got a raw deal on that. I think people took advantage of his high profile athleticism and what he stands to pay. The man is a good man, has a good heart, he’s showing it, you know. He’s only human. And as a human being you make mistakes in this world, but you’ve gotta be man enough to face them. I think he’s done that. However, the media don’t seem to let him go. You’ve got to have a lot of heart to keep a hold of yourself, to keep your sanity, when people are just making up stories about you. And that’s tough. I think the players need to be protected by the league, you know by the NFL. They need to come up with something to protect them, you know, because they have families and their families also get hurt, you know, and the children have to go to school, you know, and people talk about that and that’s what we the people have to take into consideration, too.
Squatting
Most fans were not so verbose. To the question, “Why are you here?” I would most often get a response like, “To see Emmit run,” or “To see how big Nate Newton really is,” or as one young woman put it, “To get Troy to sing happy birthday to me and see if he’ll marry me.” This teenager was standing in a cluster of fans wedged against a fence near which Aikman was sitting in his Club Car after practice, mobbed by reporters like ants on a crumb. By the time I joined the fray it was too late—I couldn’t hear a word Aikman was saying, only the cries of the girls by the fence, “Troy, come on Troy, wish Amy a happy birthday. Troy. Troy. Troy.” Then they launched into a spirited version of “Happy Birthday” as if to coax the unwilling (and, in fact, oblivious) Aikman into joining in.
That refrain, “Troy, Troy,” would become for me the emblematic anthem of Camp Cowboy, and would be the single most memorable sound of my experience. I heard it sung in many voices: from the drunk and increasingly apoplectic calls of heckling college students, to the sunny and expectant invitations of women, to the plaintive moans of the teenage boys behind the fence as they would helplessly watch Aikman’s Club Car drive by on the way to the cafeteria. There were calling fans everywhere and they all wanted something—an autograph, a conversation, a wet rag, an acknowledgment. It’s a wonder that the football team gets anything done at all; it’s a mystery to me why the team doesn’t just go to some small town and practice in peace. Actually, it’s not a mystery. Fans will find them anywhere.
Some of the loudest of the “Troy” shouting came from a specially designated set of bleachers labeled in bright colors, the “Kids’ Zone.” When I first arrived the benches were flush with kids holding shiny favors and clamoring around a couple of cheerleaders who were there in uniform to amuse them. (I would later hear a cheerleader tell a television reporter that their most commonly asked question by children is “are you the real cheerleaders?”) The kids seemed happy enough in their special section and would periodically erupt with the pandemic mantra, “Troy! Troy!” [a pause] “Emmit! Emmit!” [pause] “Michael! Michael!” Later when the Cowboy’s grinning mascot was around, the children would add “Huddle! Huddle!” to the incantation.
In a perverse and inexplicable way, I found myself empathizing with the players and the distress they must feel every time they have to pass by one of these whiny kids. Aikman can’t sign all the autographs and the crowds are insatiable. I saw Michael Irvin make a rare and unexpected stop near one of the fences. A group of youngsters ran up with memorabilia as soon as Irvin got out of his car. He signed and talked for a few minutes (one kid borrowed my pen) and then drove off. After he left a kid whirled around with his newly autographed #88 jersey and cried, “I can’t believe he stopped, dude. I thought he was gonna keep on going. Then he signed my jersey. This shit’s worth money!” A minute later, a television reporter who had been watching asked the kid for an interview and wanted to know what he thought of the Cowboys having camp here. “Man, it’s fun. I love the Cowboys and stuff, you know, and I’m sure proud that Michael Irvin signed my jersey for me, you know. I really appreciate it and he signed my hat too.”
My Library
