Sentimentality flows at blue and yellow reunionBy RYAN KARTJE / STAFF WRITER
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LOS ANGELES – In the shadow of the Coliseum, a reunion, 22 years in the making, is underway on the blacktop of Lot 2.
Old friends pose for photos in matching blue and yellow jerseys, marveling at the path they took to get to this parking lot, toasting the occasion with cans of Bud Lite. So few here expected this reunion to ever happen, and yet here they are, dusting off their old yellow and blues, sharing stories of Dickerson and Deacon and Ferragamo with their sons and daughters, smiling wide at memories that, for two decades, dripped with gloomy nostalgia.
Today, though, the pain of the past has melted away. Under the canopies that make up this first, triumphant tailgate, there is only pure, unbridled joy. Tupac’s “California Love” rings out throughout Lot 2, and a spontaneous dance party erupts.
“We’re home, baby!” one fan yells, “The Rams are home!”
This is the day the NFL officially returns to Los Angeles after a two-decades-long drought, and while some may have questioned the fervor for pro football in the nation’s second-largest city, those doubts hardly seem to matter here. This is a celebration. An emotional release. A surreal welcome home.
For Mike Pugrad, it’s all of those things. The 58-year-old from Whittier hasn’t been in the Coliseum since opening day of the 1979 NFL season. As a young boy, his father – a Filipino immigrant who adopted the team when it moved to Los Angeles in 1946 – brought him to the stadium often, regaling mythic tales of Bob Waterfield and Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch. And so, on the occasion of that 1979 game, Pugrad brought his father along to repay him.
Now, a few hours before the Rams’ return, he looks down at a beat-up gold wedding ring on his left hand. “He gave this to me six years before he passed,” Pugrad says.
He pulls the ring off of his finger and looks up at the stadium in the distance. The Rams still remind him of his father. The team was their means for understanding each other. In his voice, you can sense that connection still. Pugrad remembers, in vivid detail, the first moment he watched the Rams run out of the Coliseum tunnel, in 1968, how his father nudged him and whispered in his ear. “Son,” he said, “that’s the greatest team in the NFL.”
He looks back down at the ring, his father’s words in his ear. “I wanted to bring something of his today,” Pugrad says.
Under a nearby tent, Max Stanley is wearing a far different homage to his father, Dave, who years ago instilled in him a love for the Rams, even while they played in St. Louis. Upon hearing about the Rams’ return to L.A., Stanley even named his new puppy “Kroenke” after the Rams’ owner. But Saturday, with his dad at his side, Stanley received the headwear he’d long been waiting for: a watermelon, with the name “Max-A-Melon” written on it.
Dave Stanley was a founding member of the Melonheads, a group of Rams diehards who began donning carved-out watermelons in 1985, as a sign of their fandom, and for years, he has wondered what it might be like to sit in the “Melon Patch” with his son.
“Now, I get a chance to be with him almost every week,” Dave Stanley says. “I can’t help but get sentimental about it.”
“You’ve got a little melon seed in your eye there, dad,” Max jokes.
The Melonheads were in the stands for that final, depressing end to the Rams’ first stretch in Los Angeles, on Christmas Eve 1994. A few of them still won’t utter former owner Georgia Frontiere’s name. Most say they never expected the Rams to come back.
Steve Goldstein, however, suggests he’s the exception. As they trudged through the parking lot that day, Goldstein insisted he buy a long-sleeved Los Angeles Rams T-shirt. He handed over $10 and told his friends that he’d wear it when the Rams returned.
On Saturday, Goldstein, now 56, came to the Coliseum wearing that same shirt, 22 years later. It was riddled with holes and frayed along the collar.
“I have to retire it after today,” Goldstein says. “It’s been through enough.”
Perhaps, after 22 years of waiting, everyone here in Lot 2 could say the same. But judging by the joy amid these yellow-and-blue masses, the wait has only made this moment sweeter.
“This is all I ever wanted,” says Tom Bateman, director of “Bring Back The Rams.” “They made it right. They finally made it right.”
What the future holds for the Rams in Los Angeles remains to be seen. Will the rest of the city welcome the Rams with open arms? Will they ever retain the status they once held in the Southland? For the moment, in Lot 2, none of this matters. There is too much to celebrate – fathers and sons, old wedding rings and frayed T-shirts, and a new era ahead.
In a few hours, as this reunion trickles inside the Coliseum’s creaky walls, past racks of “Welcome Home!” memorabilia and commemorative preseason T-shirts, the moment finally sinks in. A voice bellows over the stadium PA: “IT’S TIME TO WELCOME HOME YOUR LOS ANGELES RAMS,” and grown men wipe their eyes, thankful for the second chance they never dreamed they’d receive.
