The Loneliest Lions Fan: Sixty Years of a Fan's Frustration

By Dennis Merlo

Sports brings unrivaled passion, not just to those who play the game but also to those who are rabid fans. As an avid seventy-year-old fan and supporter of Detroit Lions football over the past sixty years, this equates to decades of unmatched torment. Respectfully, I challenge anyone to opine on a more painful sports journey throughout this period.The Lions organization mentally and psychologically drains every ounce of emotional well-being that resides in the heart of any Lions fan.The dubious history of the Lions lasts six decades and can play like a Shakespearean tragedy or a night at the local comedy club. Some of the events are insanely bizarre; some of the organizations' decisions leave you completely dumbfounded. However, it's always interesting and entertaining. As often as you hear a Lions fan utter, "That's it, I'm done with the Lions," they always return.Detroit Lions fans must be born with a sadistic gene in their bodies. You don't need to be a Lion's follower to enjoy this story. If you love sports, you'll fully relate to the roller-coaster ride that defines this embattled organization. If you're a Lion's loyalist, the book reawakens all the crazy memories, plays, players, coaches, and pivotal moments of this unique journey.As a reader, this writing offers content that is lighthearted, eventful, and engaging. Just don't expect a happy ending; after all, these are the Lions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886540710

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Loneliest Lions Fan

Sixty Years of a Fan's Frustration

Dennis Merlo

Copyright © 2022 Dennis J. Merlo

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 979-8-88654-049-9 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-071-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Bibliography on Dennis Merlo's Lions Story

About the Author

Introduction

Sometimes you cry, sometimes you laugh, sometimes you want to kick the TV in. Other times you want to kick yourself for continuing to watch this crap. You get mad yet continue to be amazed for all the wrong reasons. You want to strangle them; you want to hug them… This is the essence of being a Detroit Lions fan!

The San Diego Chargers played in their lone Super Bowl in 1995 and were crushed by the San Francisco 49ers 49–26. Most Lions fans would give their life savings for that experience. Some might pay large sums simply for another playoff win. Only once in the Super Bowl era (in 1991) did the Lions have a playoff victory, and no team has fewer playoff wins in the last sixty-plus years than Detroit!

Am I complaining? Once upon a time, many years ago, I lived and died with this stuff. At age seventy, I now try to laugh it off and find myself pretty successful at that. My earliest recollection of Lions football is from about 1960. They last won championships in the 1950s. I do laugh when a caller on a local sports talk show laments; I am twenty-six years old, thirty-eight years, or even fifty-three, and finishes by saying, I've been a Lions fan all my life and have had to endure all this misery. The truth is that no other fans have been as relentlessly long-suffering as those in my age group. Those seventy-five years and up can still relish the Lions' achievements of the fifties.

As I began writing this book, my wife, Sandy, told me not to be too negative about the Lions. Seriously? These are the Lions, not Mother Teresa. They are just one of only four teams failing to reach any of fifty-six Super Bowls, and two of those organizations (Jacksonville and Houston) are expansion teams from the late 1990s.

Detroit has a reputation as a tough town. When you've been a Lions fan for over sixty years, enduing every conceivable heartbreak, it absolutely toughens your spine. A native Buffalo fan once bemoaned to me that his beloved Bills had lost four straight Super Bowls in the nineties. Lions fans would take that in less than a heartbeat. Just a year or so ago, a Chicago acquaintance told me how his Bears have basically sucked for the past decade. To this, I politely told him that he would need to sit in a Lions fan's chair to fully appreciate the definition of sucking. Yet despite all the losing, the ride along the way has been riveting and unique. And yes, so much fun!

My thanks to Bill Dow, whom I consulted during this literary endeavor. Bill is a long-time freelance sports writer with the Detroit Free Press. Thanks as well to my friend Steve Miller, who put his English Minor to work in helping me edit my writing. A special shout-out to my close friend Chuck Virant. Through the years, there is nobody I commiserated with about Lions football more than Chuck.

Maybe the best way to illustrate fan frustration with the Lions is by referencing the Netflix series Ozark. In the series, a Mexican drug lord discovers that a financial planner (Marty) is stealing the cartel's money using a money-laundering scheme. Marty's family relocates to a summer resort community in the Ozarks, and Marty must repay a debt to ensure his family's well-being. The family takes residence with a long-suffering older man (Buddy), who is dying of heart disease. Marty's wife asks Buddy to tell her what it is like to experience such agony and suffering. He replies, It is what it is. It's like watching the Detroit Lions sucking. Even a fictional movie character knows!

For those who are Lions fans, I imagine you will recall a thousand other insane moments not included in this book. For all the rest, I hope you get a feel for just how excruciatingly difficult it has been to ride on the Lions train. Please enjoy, and thank you for reading my humble account of the Lions' football history. And yes, I'm still a fan.

Chapter 1

Thanksgiving Day 1962

I'm thinking, Quick, turn up the volume on the radio, as I stand at the kitchen counter in Grandma's house. It is Thanksgiving Day, and family voices are drowning out the radio broadcast. The Detroit Lions just completed a big play, but all the noise left me unable to discern it. To compound matters, both Grandma and Mom were calling the family to eat the Thanksgiving feast. In those days, when it was time to eat, you ate. No electronics, just family.

The issue was that it was about two o'clock in the afternoon. What's wrong with two o'clock? The major problem was that there remained well over an hour in the Lions' home game against the Green Bay Packers. As much as I treasured our Thanksgiving meal, I had already fallen in love with Lions football.

In 1934, George Richards owned the Lions. That year he came up with the imaginative idea of the Lions hosting a game on Thanksgiving Day. The Detroit Tigers baseball team was the primary draw at that time. Richards's concept was designed to bolster interest in the Lions and attendance at their games. His marketing ploy was an immediate success. The '34 game sold out, and fans were turned away at the gate.

Thanksgiving and Lions football has become synonymous to people across America. An almost sacred devotion exists among Lions fans in Michigan to that day's events.

As for me, Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year. I was born on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1952. Even though this holiday doesn't fall on the twenty-seventh each year, my family celebrates my birthday on Thanksgiving Day itself. I look forward to enjoying turkey, my birthday, and the Lions game each Thanksgiving. Candidly for me, the Lions have become less enjoyable over time due to their habitual losing on that day. But as singer Meat Loaf states in one of his songs, Two out of three ain't bad.

In 1962, our family gathered at my grandparents' house. It was just the immediate family: my parents, grandparents (dad's side), three-year-old brother Alan, and me. Dad and Grandpa were rabid Lions fans, and they easily indoctrinated me. In '62, all home football games were subject to a television blackout within a seventy-five-mile radius of the game's location to protect home attendance. So Dad, Grandpa, and I gathered around the radio, fixated on every word. I'm laughing to myself as I write this. There was such a limited number of sports on television in that era. But even then, Mom and Grandma had this crazy notion that the boys watched way too much sports on TV. They're probably laughing to themselves in heaven about today's oversaturation of televised sports. God love them.

On this day, I regretted not bringing my transistor radio along. It would have been discreetly hidden in my pocket, and I'm certain I would have excused myself a time or two during dinner to get an update on the game. Instead, this exuberant ten-year-old fan suffered from being unaware of what was taking place on the field. I feared missing the play of the year, and it was almost as if life itself was passing me by.

It was such a special game! The Lions' radio voice, Bob Reynolds, was not simply announcing a game. He was exhorting the Lions to glory with remarkable passion and glee as he described the Lions' performance against Green Bay that afternoon.

The vaunted Packers were 10–0 coached by the legendary Vince Lombardi and seeking to become the first undefeated team in National Football League (NFL) history. To this day, many consider Lombardi to be the game's greatest coach. Green Bay had captured the NFL championship the previous year. Altogether,