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BY BOB WILLIAMS
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Here we go again.
New York Football Giants tickets have been part of my family's life for 75 years. Seventy five years! Which makes my family — the Williams family — among the longest ticket holders in Giants history.
We've gone from two seats in the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium in New York City to a pair of seats here at Giants Stadium smack in the middle of the Meadowlands. Yesterday's game was the last regularly scheduled football game here. Next season we move again — to a brand new stadium right next door.
So here we go again.
Seventy five years may sound impressive, but I must tell you right now that I'm not a real one-hundred-percent-dyed-in-the-wool Giants fan. I'm a fair weather fan.
If the weather's too cold, I don't attend. If the weather's rainy, I don't attend. If the weather's too hot (believe me, a pre-season August game in broiling Giants Stadium can suck out the oxygen from even the best of fans), I don't attend. If its snowing outside, I don't attend. In fact, lately, at my age, if a home game's played too late at night, I don't attend.
My father, on the other hand, was the ultimate Giants fan. And I guess that's where I inherited this Giants allegiance. He bought his first Giants season tickets when the Giants played at the Polo Grounds — probably in the late 1930's. Before long, the Giants moved to Yankee stadium.
My father, Fred P. Williams, was newspaper Linotype operator during the week (he died on the job at the News York Post). But on weekends, he would listen on radio, and later watch on television, nothing but baseball or football. Or both. And if the Giants were playing at home, everyone who knew my family knew that my father would attend the game. I'm talking the 1950s here.
I mean, if it was pouring that Sunday morning, my father would put on a raincoat and go to the game. If it was snowing, or even a blizzard, he would put on a heavy parker and go to the game. If the temperature outside was two degrees, he would add long underwear and gloves and go to the game.
Now that's a football fan!
When I got to be a little older, and somewhat understood the game, my father took me to my first Giants football game. That's when I discovered how he could be such a great football fan week after week, season after season.
You see, our seats at Yankee Stadium were in the mezzanine, on about the 35 yard line. Not bad. We had a steel girder partially in the way. But my father explained to me that it was the row that made the difference. The row we were in was far enough back to be covered by the upper deck overhang.
So come rain, sleet, snow — whatever — my father went out into the elements for only about a block — the block he walked from our house to the bus. Once he boarded the bus, he was protected from adverse weather —- on the bus, on the ferry (we lived in Staten Island) and on the Lexington Ave. subway line all the way up to Yankee Stadium. At the stadium, he was protected through the whole game.
My father was in the stands at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941. Midway through the game, the public address announcer (a young Arther Daley, who went on to become a sports columnist for The News York Times) began calling all uniformed military personnel to immediately return to their units. Pearl Harbor had been bombed earlier that morning, Giants fans later learned. But that detail was never mentioned during the game, and the game continued to its conclusion.
About 10 years ago, I brought my youngest son, Jonathan, to a pre-season luncheon that the Giants throw every August in Manhattan. After the speeches and meal, Jonathan rushed to the dais to get player autographs. He recognized Giants owner Wellington Mara, and struck up a conversation. When an excited Jonathan told Wellington that my father was at Yankee Stadium on that infamous Dec. 7, Wellington began to tell Jonathan all about the game that had been played that day. The two were having a grand old time: my son, in his early twenties, and Wellington Mara, in his eighties.
They talked Giants talk, like regular fans, for 20 minutes. Everyone had left the ballroom. Mara had bodyguards, but he motioned them away until he and Jonathan finished chatting. It's often been said that Giants fans came first with Wellington Mara. I saw it firsthand. And I never forget that incident.
When the Giants moved here in 1976, I lost seating yardage, so to speak. I still had two seats in the mezzanine, but I was now on the 25 yard line — and with no roof over my head. Oh, well.
Roof or no roof, that location didn't last long.
Back then, my brother and I split the Giants tickets. His name was on the mailing label. One summer he didn't send in our ticket payment. He said he had forgotten. The Giants had a season ticket waiting list of thousands. They never ever had to remind a ticket holder a second time about payment. And they certainly didn't remind me and my brother.
The bottom line: we lost our mezzanine location. . . .and our section . . . .and that side of the field. But the Giants business office treasurer called me personally. Because we had been longtime Giants season ticket holders, he explained, we wouldn't lose the tickets. He said he'd give me another location. Then the other show dropped - seats in the upper deck, end zone.
Upper deck? End zone? I saw red. My brother and I didn't talk — and I refused to go to a game — for years!
Well, one day my older son, Chris, wondered why we weren't going to any Giants games. He knew I had season tickets. I explained what had happened. He wondered if we could at least try the seats, so I agreed to take him. But I was dreading the move.
We drove to Giants Stadium and were directed to section 301 in the upper deck. Lo and behold, my seat numbers, 10 and 11, were in the third row, directly in the middle of the goal post uprights. Third row! No seats were even in front of us. Just a televison camera. What a view! When a player kicked a field goal, you stood up and thought you could catch the ball! Man alive, I thought, this was certainly a different way to watch a football game!
I grew to love the end zone seat location, and I never asked to have it changed.
Over the years here at Giants Stadium, we came to recognize the same fans in our section. It was a friendly section.
One season, another Giants fan who had the seats next to me gave his seats away to someone else — a non-Giants fan, we quickly learned. Seems this new guy hated the Giants, so when we played Philadelphia, for instance, he showed up wearing a Philadelphia shirt and helmet and proceeded to loudly root for Philadelphia — and against the Giants. And so on and so forth through Dallas and San Francisco and every other team in our division. I finally had to tell this guy to stay home, because Giants fans in the rows behind us showered the guy with beer, soda, water, anything they could throw — and I got hit too. I think a nearby Giants fan threatened him, and we never saw him again.
We had a unique rooting section. We had Crazy Tony. For as many years as I could remember, every time the Giants scored, Crazy Tony — we all knew his name because it was on the back of his Giants uniform shirt — would hop up on a railing and lead end zone fans in a cheer:
G - I - A - N - T - S — GIANTS! Once, maybe twice in a row. It would always bring a smile to everyone's face.
Like Yankee Stadium, that's all gone now. When the final game ended yesterday, the Giants losing 41-9, it was kind of like a wake in section 301. A lot of handshakes. A lot of photos, especially with Crazy Tony. A lot of goodbyes. The last game in Giants Stadium was a torture, to say the least.
Come next season, it'll be a new Giants Stadium. New fans to meet in our new seating section. But for those of us who follow and cheer on the football Giants, one thing will never ever disappear. Giants memories will be passed down from generation to generation. And those memories will last forever.
