The same lusty crew will be back today, drinking Iron City ordered especially for them, to watch the Steelers host the Ravens.
Sunday, December 26, 2004
By Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
RALEIGH, N.C. -- The license plates throughout the parking lot of Sammy's Tap & Grill depict the Wright Brothers' original plane in this "First in Flight" state, but the most important transportation for the people inside is "The Bus."
The college coeds serving drinks ask what "y'all" would like, but the customers ordering I.C. Lights wonder whether "yinz" think it's a Super Bowl year.
Heinz Field is 500 miles to the northwest and the Pittsburgh Steelers another 150 miles beyond that in Cleveland on this Sunday. Yet from the cluster of black and gold in this wide-decked former Shoney's restaurant, you'd think Jerome Bettis himself was on hand to autograph Terrible Towels.
It's another typical autumn Sunday in the boundless Steeler Nation, and 100 or so transplants to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle are in Sammy's to watch the Steelers and Browns on satellite TV. During a tumbling run across the goal line by No. 36, two hundred arms reach high like referees, in sync with their roar.
"Yeah, baby, in your face! ... We will not be denied!" yells Bob Smolensky, 55, among the dozens who are watching one of nine televisions outdoors on a crisp afternoon -- with wife, daughter and grandson -- because there's no space indoors. He used to work in Downtown's Gulf Building, but now is employed at North Carolina State University, located just a couple of long Roethlisberger throws up Avent Ferry Road from Sammy's.
Twelve hours earlier, the place had been full of recent and soon-to-be college graduates flirting in soft drawls, playing bar games like Golden Tee and listening to music. Now it's even more crowded, only it's with families who are sharing the Pittsburgh idea of quality time. The women who make up one-third of the crowd understand a stop-and-go is meant for scoring, not shopping. For the men, nothing is more comely than Bill Cowher's jaw.
Grouped in a row inside the front door, beneath a "Steel Triangle Fan Club" banner that outlines the Golden Triangle's skyline for a double entendre, are people happy to shout out the following hometowns: Penn Hills, Rochester, New Castle, New Wilmington, Bellevue, Martins Ferry, Ohio.
Ohio?
Close enough, as long as you're rooting for the right team.
"Everybody here is proud to be from Pittsburgh and wants to make everyone aware of it," explained Dominic Viola, 33, a former Keystone Oaks High School baseball player who is now a North Carolina scout for the Baltimore Orioles. "Everybody is here because this is how they keep their connection to the city."
While all Steelers games are telecast in Pittsburgh, people wanting that option in other television markets must purchase a special NFL satellite package for about $150 a season. Most instead find a place like Sammy's, which dedicates 16 televisions to Steelers action every week.
"It's always more fun when you're with a bunch of people rooting for your team," said Ray Hornack, head of the Steel Triangle Fan Club, which has 100 members paying annual dues of $25.
The money is used to buy Steelers memorabilia, which is raffled off in the bar at halftime, and to support a local charity in Raleigh.
He said the club got kicked out of another establishment near Raleigh's Lake Boone a few years ago. A supermarket next door complained that the fans were too rowdy and taking up too many parking spaces. There must be some phrase, after all, that goes: "You can take the Steeler fan out of the 'Burgh, but you can't ..."
The same lusty crew will be back today, drinking Iron City ordered especially for them, to watch the Steelers host the Ravens.
Steeler fans also will gather in hundreds of other public watering holes today. They'll be among retirees at Spectators Sports Bar in Fort Myers, Fla.; with a heavily Hispanic crowd at the Kings-X watering hole in El Paso, Texas; joining software engineers at Zachery's in Millbrae, Calif.
The Steelers' fan support around the country is legendary. Television commentators point out the unusual visibility and decibel level of support for the Steelers in other teams' stadiums, only some of which is produced by current Pittsburghers traveling to follow their team.
The unusual volume of Steelers fans at away games can be explained by so many ex-Pittsburghers outsourcing themselves around the country due to economics; so many of them retaining intense Pittsburgh loyalties because of deep Steel City roots; and so many whose emotions have hinged on the Steelers' success ever since the Super Bowl years. The team also has more than its share of dedicated followers who've never even been to Pittsburgh, thanks to its championship image from the '70s.
Eleven years ago, Ray Clark, 38, formerly of New Castle, wandered into Sansone's West Oaks Bar in Houston, noticed a few other people in Steelers garb, and they welcomed him. If he's black and they're white, no big deal. And if some of the 50 or more who gather there every week now are white-collar college graduates and others are blue-collar laborers, so what?
"We're all family," said the restaurant manager, wearing a gold steel-bar helmet. "We're all from the 'Burgh, and we all come together."
The Steeler Nation may be strong, but it's hardly cohesive. The Steelers organization makes no effort to organize or connect with the various groups out there. The extent to which things become formal depends on whatever group of guys -- and women, since there are plenty of those wearing Ward and Webster jerseys too -- starts gathering at some bar where the staff is willing to turn on the Steelers game.
Al Kleber, an Atlanta businessman also known as "Pittsburgh Al," believes he was the first one to make such an arrangement after settling in Georgia in 1981. Kleber convinced the owner of a place called Dirty Al's -- no relation -- that if the tavern dedicated its satellite telecast to the Steelers, he'd spread the word to a sufficient number of other expatriates to make it worthwhile.
Kleber succeeded -- to excess.
"It'd be so packed, fire marshals would come and stop people," Kleber recalled. "Then there was a riot at Dirty Al's one time from a bunch of Cleveland fans showing up for a Cleveland-Steelers game. We got barred from Dirty Al's."
Now he knows "at least seven bars" in and around Atlanta for Steelers fans.
People find such places by viewing a list on www.post-gazette.com; by checking www.blackandgoldbrigade.com, which belongs to a fan club with chapters around the country; or by e-mailing nick.nery@lycos.com, run by a Scott salesman who says he has collected information on about 50 clubs around the country, most of them independent of each other.
One of the strongest organizations is the Pittsburgh Steelers Fan Club of Baltimore, started 13 years ago and claiming nearly 2,800 members who pay a one-time fee of $25 to join. It has a big summer picnic and mailings and a Web site so everyone can keep sharp in the off-season. The club is affiliated with five different bars, the most notable being the Purple Goose Saloon.
The saloon is full of Steelers plaques, portraits and neon signs. The waitresses wear Steelers shirts. The kitchen produces a version of a Primanti Brothers sandwich. It's been like that for a dozen years, back to a time when Baltimore had no football team and the then-manager of the Purple Goose was from Pittsburgh.
All this occurs within five minutes of Downtown Baltimore, in the city's Morrell Park section, where owner Charlotte Hairsine said she doesn't need or want anyone else's business on Sundays.
"This is a closed bar for the Steelers on Sunday," she said. "You cannot come in here with Ravens or Browns colors."
Just across the street, however, sits a Ravens bar. That place will be crowded today as well, no doubt.
And if a Dirty Al's-style showdown should break out afterward in the street, perhaps no one will be surprised. Hey, it's a 'Burgh thing.
Back to main story:Scattered Abroad / Many of the thousands of Pittsburgers who left year to return
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