Nothing But Iron: Of Ice and Men by Steven R. Lagman, M.D. January 27, 2008 "Did you go to the game?" a friend asked the next day. "Yes," I replied. "Sorry to hear that." Well meaning condolences, but hardly indicated. I am not a victim, but a man of great privilege. A great privilege, you ask, to endure the bitter cold only to see the Packers lose the biggest game of the millennium so far? No, a great privilege to be there. You see, Lambeau Field is less a stadium than a canvas upon which is painted the sights, sounds, sensations, conversations, all the important colors of the rainbow–white, green, yellow, blaze orange–and, on this day, a smattering of blue, frozen cups of beer, hand-made placards, pleas for miracle tickets, 4 jerseys, glittery Elvis costumes, bikinis and other foam replicas of cheese, visible clouds of exhaled vapor and the emotions of that which happened and that which almost happened. I did not bear witness to the painting; I was the paint. To this minute I remain captivated by the thrill of having been a part of it. Like all Packers fans I was disappointed with the loss, but the loss does not keep this game from being one of the classics. Anyone who fails to appreciate that wasn’t there, wasn’t sober or wasn’t wearing enough layers on his head. Sunday’s NFC title game not only captured the essence of Lambeau Field, it personified the green-and-gold-collar culture of the Green Bay Packers tribe. I armed myself with camera and good lenses, so I could share the memories and recharge them when they would begin to fade. If I should have regret, I am sorry, because I do not. You want to know if I was cold. My manly self wants to say no. The manly self wants to boast of a shirtless disregard for the elements. The manly self wants to spin tales of bring-it-on-Mother-Nature toughness and uncommon resolve. Yes, I was cold. I was cold despite three sets of pants, two shirts, a vest, a parka, two hats, two sets of gloves, double socks and warming pads for my hands and feet. I had a beer at Badger Bob’s tailgate party, just across the street from the stadium. Within a couple minutes, I noticed that there were flecks of ice forming in the bottle. Even in January beer must be kept in coolers. There is no ice inside, but the coolers keep the beer from freezing solid in the ambient air. Even though it cost me precious degrees of life-sustaining core body temperature (how’s that for exaggeration?), the partially frozen beer tasted good. My cheeks turned red. I noticed they were still red when I got up for work the next morning. The wind stung at first, but by halftime pain had been mostly supplanted by numbness. So, yes, it was cold, but it was worth it. I would go a hundred times again if given the chance. If offered free tickets to a heated luxury box, I would instead pay my way every time in order to sit outside. Outside is the experience. Cold, you should know, is relative, and preparedness did make a difference. This cold was hard to ignore, at least between plays, but it could have been worse. Two below zero at Lambeau did not even make the bottom three on my least comfortable athletic event list. Because I was wet and underdressed, I felt colder in the freak deluge of Wisconsin’s game at Arizona four seasons ago. Hard to miss the irony in that. Much worse were the soggy collapse of highly-touted UW at Northwestern in 1994 and Randy Moss’s rainy coming out party at Lambeau in 1998. The latter two fall into the wouldn’t-do-that-again category. I wasn’t a victim at those games either, but I was damn close. Said another way (to borrow from a banner I made for the 1996 NFC Championship), Sunday’s game at Lambeau was a dry cold. If I had time to waste, I would regret for the following reasons: 1) I wanted the win because I had the perfect idea for a Super Bowl banner: The enemy of Perfect is Good, with a Patriots logo P and a Green Bay G. 2) I wanted the win for our friends Kate and Shaun. It was Kate’s first time to Lambeau. 3) I wanted the win for my Arizona family, who would have been thrilled to have the Super Bowl bound Packers as guests in their city. 4) I wanted the win for the few fans who were lucky enough to have Super Bowl tickets. Imagine their dismay when Lawrence Tynes split the uprights in overtime. 5) Mostly, I wanted the win for Brett Favre and Donald Driver. My analysis of the game starts and ends by congratulating the New York Giants. They won at Tampa Bay and Dallas in good weather. They won at Green Bay in some of the worst conditions football has to offer. Is there anything that phases these giants of mind and heart? How could I not congratulate them and still consider myself a worthy fan of football? Their formula was simple: They played better. Outran us. Out-covered us. Out-caught us. Out-blocked us. Out-tackled us. You might even say they out-coached us, but I can’t say that. I’m just a sportswriter. They didn’t score a lot more than we did, but it was enough to earn tickets to Phoenix. Tynes’s to-hell-with-the-goat 47-yard game winner was analogous to the fumbles-to-riches 201-yard performance of Packers Ryan Grant the week before. Deserving of respect for sure. Congratulations to the New York Giants. Is there anything the Giants cannot accomplish? The 18-0 Patriots are ridiculously good. Most likely the Giants will make it interesting before the Pats make their usual lethal adjustments to complete their perfect season. The script is obvious: The half time show will have flags and streamers and out-of-context high-profile performers. The commercials will be funny. Moss will get his ring. I will barf into my pretzel dip before turning off the TV with 8:04 left to play. Life will go on as we turn our sights to conference hoops races and March Madness. On the other hand, consistent with the theme of many NBI’s before this one, most likely doesn’t always happen. If it did, the Cowboys would be in Phoenix and the Giants, by now, would be well acclimated to vacation life. Though the NFC has a well-earned distinction as the weak sister of the NFL, I think its side of the bracket has at least produced the best possible opponent for the task of confounding the should-be team of destiny. I will watch, just in case. Ponderable: 1) Will Favre return? Should he return? Yes to both questions, unless his body is too broken and painful to endure another year and his mind buys into it. I repeat what I have said in the past: Favre gets to leave on his own terms, when he is ready. I will miss him if he retires, but I would much rather keep watching him play. 2) Was winning the overtime coin toss (i.e. losing overtime wind advantage) that we all cheered so enthusiastically a curse in disguise? It’s an intriguing question when one considers the interception and long field goal that soon followed. 3) Not that such things can be easily changed, but I wonder if Green Bay, in a game of great of implications played in extreme weather against a persistent opponent, was hurt both by the inexperience of youth and the compromised endurance of age. 4) Was the fan in the wheelchair thinking about Green Bay’s loss, or was he thinking about how nice it would be to walk back to the car after the game? 5) Did the surprised New York fan I congratulated go back and tell his friends that people in Wisconsin are friendly? Lastly, congratulations and thank you to the Green Bay Packers. It wasn’t the best possible season, but it was so much better than we imagined it could be. [Click here for more photos. ] ____________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column. This issue is dedicated to Kate and Shaun, who will marry each other in June, to nephew Troy, who mistakenly credited the author with being one of the three bikini-clad women shown on television and to the Grandma Sandy and the Mielke family, who fed us artichoke and quesadilla dips and hot homemade soups after the game. ©2008 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.