Game Girl

Ravens, Redskins. Ho-hum. That's about how I feel about tomorrow's "rivalry" game -- the so-called "Battle of the Beltway". The media, always quick to coin a new phrase or create controversy, has been trying to drum up support for what has become an almost annual Ravens/Redskins pre-season game and frankly, I think it just falls flat.

I know a little something about this particular topic, living as I do in fragmented Anne Arundel county where Redskins and Ravens fans co-exist somewhat peacefully, in pockets, all over the area. When I moved out here from Northern Virginia, the very first thing I did was to conduct an informal, unscientific but highly significant (to me) poll of the local sports fan base. "Redskins or Ravens?", I'd ask...incessently, some might say. And I began to get a read on the lay of the land here. Ravens fans live mostly on the northern side of the county while Skins fans tend to reside in the south and east quadrants. Annapolis itself, to my untrained but persistent eye, tends more towards the purple crowd, but go 3 miles south to Edgewater and as the lady in the liquor store once told me, it's about 10 to 1, Redskins to Ravens. My daughter attends school at St. Mary's, one of the oldest schools in the area and located right in the heart of downtown Annapolis. Monday mornings during school drop-off last season were a lesson in humility for me, that's all I'm going to say about THAT. All my trash-talking about the Skins to all those Raven fans and all I got was laughed at for 16 miserable weeks. UGH. But I digress.

I have some personal knowledge of the split, too, because I married a Baltimore fan (notice I didn't say RAVENS fan...it took him a while to convert from his Colts "man-without-a-team" persona he wore like a hairshirt for 15 years). And my two brothers-in-law, their wives, and just about the whole "Bawlmer" clan I married into is obviously die-hard Ravens. And also -- and this is important -- die-hard ANTI-Redskins.

Any Redskin fan will tell you that really, they don't have any beef with the Ravens, or Baltimore itself, per se. I mean, what's not to like and respect, except maybe the fact that their uniforms are purple? (And that's really not their fault, I suppose. All the good football colors were already taken when they came along.) But talk to any, and I do mean ANY, Ravens fan...young or old, city or country, newly converted or old-school Colt holdovers, and they'll tell you this: they LOVE the Ravens with a passion only matched by the HATE they harbor towards the Redskins, their fans, and the whole DC area in general. Sort of the ugly-stepchild syndrome, except whenever I say that to my brothers-in-law, they always counter with, "See, spoken like a true ego-centric Reddskin fan" so perhaps I should find another metaphor.

My point is this: Ravens fans hate the Skins, and Skins fans are at worst ambivilant and at best respectful of the Ravens and their fans. Here's the deal: their organization is stellar. Their stadium rocks. Their defense is impervious. Their players are tough guys who play hard. And bottom line, they win. Lately, Skins fans can't say any of those things. We're living in the past, talking trash like it matters, while the Ravens keep plugging away, winning games, and sometimes stealing our fans right out from under our noses. And they're LOVING every minute of it. Apparently, this hatred has something to do with the fact that when the Colts left Baltimore, the Redskins were a winning franchise and we (supposedly) rubbed their noses in our succes. Talk to any Baltimore fan and he'll tell you two things: he hates the Redskins and their fans, and he loves the fact that we're in the toilet at present because we were so obnoxious to deal with for so many years.

So, what we're left with is a one-sided rivarly that just doesn't seethe or boil in any real sense. And even die-hard Ravens fans who hate the Skins know now that our team isn't any real threat to them -- anyone who watched what they did to us last November knows that. Ravens fans might hate the Skins and their fans, but they are secure in the knowledge that their team, at present, is better in all phases and it's not likely to change anytime soon. Shanahan is a good coach, but he can't work miracles.

I'm interested to see how Saturday night plays out, only for the simple fact that it is the second pre-season game and I'd like to see how our starters match up with one of the best defenses in the NFL. But the fact that that particular defense currently resides in Baltimore...eh, I can't get too excited about that part.