Seattle and its Beast: A love story
Remember when you were growing up and your mom would tell you that you’re special? One of a kind. A true gift to the world. I hate to break it to you, but your mom is a pathological liar. It’s not that you aren’t great — hey, I think you’re awesome! — it’s just that you aren’t really that unique.
You and I might be mainstream blah, but each of us has surely had a glimpse of that truly rare breed of human snowflake. The type of person who is so wonderfully crazy that every single thing they do — straight-faced or for effect — leaves you rolling in laughter. These beautiful little disasters are a treasure. They’re the people who fill the rest of us with life. We become intoxicated with their effect — their antics are so blissfully batshit that we can’t help but wait on every new outburst with bated breath. By living their life to the fullest, they make our lives so much better.
In Seattle, we have our very own Skittle-colored snowflake, and God, we love him.
Yesterday, Greg Bishop of Sports Illustrated posted a wonderfully detailed examination of the player, person and anti-hero that is Marshawn Lynch. If you love sports, Seattle or larger-than-life personalities, check out Bishop’s article. This piece is a perfect example of why Bishop is one of the best sportswriters going — he’s able to place fan perspectives on the same pedestal as hardcore, clear-eyed evaluation; he weds the emotional with the analytical.
What emerges from Bishop’s article is the notion that Seattle’s relationship with Marshawn Lynch is complicated. After all, we love you when you’re on top, but when you’re 4–5? Well, that’s something altogether different. The defiant posture toward the media is endearing when you’re rolling, but feels more churlish when you’re not. The otherworldly weirdness is hilarious when you’re getting ready for the Super Bowl, but off-putting when your team is nose-diving.
And yet, Bishop’s piece leaves me feeling like Seattle is only considering Marshawn through the filter of this moment in time. That we’re all enslaved by the emotional yo-yo that is fandom. If you step back and consider Marshawn Lynch from a legacy sense, the picture gets a lot rosier.
I’ve long harbored suspicions that Marshawn is just smarter than the rest of us. Consider the following …
He’s gamed NFL media availability rules for years, parlayed confrontations with the league into millions of dollars of merchandising and endorsement deals, and set up a life for himself that basically consists of: touchdowns, candy, effusive praise and tens of millions of dollars. He’s secured such a position through outstanding toughness, elite balance and a personality that mixes Flava Flav’s wardrobe, J.D. Salinger’s reclusiveness, Gary Busey’s craziness and Captain Jack Sparrow’s all-around bizzaro, anti-hero allure.
God, I love him.
In exchange for this glorious career, Marshawn is asked to “just be Marshawn” and show up to work a few months a year in whatever weird-ass sweatpants-suit-with-mesh-shorts-on-top outfit he decides to wear on a given day. If Marshawn Lynch ain’t the American Dream, I don’t know what is.
God, I love him.
It’s funny that national sports media is more put-off by Marshawn than they are entertained. It’s mind-numbingly stupid that Fox/CBS/ESPN don’t have a sideline camera trained on Marsahwn all game every game. I know people used to get a kick out of Joe Namath and the fur coats he wore on the sidelines.
That’s cool, but Marshawn is a whole different level of wonderfully weird sideline sideshow. I can’t fathom how anyone can take their eyes off of whatever he’s doing in-between plays (be it eating Skittles, vomiting because he ate too many Skittles, eating more Skittles to settle his stomach, etc.). In a game that’s dominated by the bland, sanitized personalities of elite QBs, the glimpses we catch of “Marshawn being Marshawn” are a breath of fresh air.
God, I love him.
Yes, Marshawn is one of a kind, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to figure out exactly who he’s like. We tend to compare athletes to other players in the same sport. That doesn’t work in Marshawn’s case. Yes, there have been other off-beat personalities, other tough runners, but the natural comparisons still aren’t quite right.
I watch Marshawn on the field and I don’t see Earl Campbell, I see Allen Iverson. There’s a level of tenacity and fearlessness that those two play(ed) with that borders on psychotic. The world is filled with tough guys, but when you think of Marshawn Lynch and Allen Iverson you think full-body sacrifice, you think #poundforpound, you think once-in-a-generation want-to, you think of athletes playing with great vengeance and furrrrrrrrrius anger.
But it’s more than that. It’s not just their competitive fire and relationship to practice they share, there’s a level of aloofness that both have that also links them together. The world Iverson lived in was different — if he was playing today and if his sport provided similar loopholes, I think he’d be just fine taking the Marshawn approach to media relations. It’s not a perfect comparison: Iverson doesn’t have the goofiness of Marshawn; in fact there’s something that approaches sadness in Iverson’s persona. But still, I see so much of Iverson in Marshawn that it’s striking. Both have been absolute joys to watch play.
So yes, there are other Marshawn-like players in the world — be it on the field(/court) or off it. But the total package is truly one-of-a-kind. Which means that Marshawn Lynch is actually special. Not “Mom says I’m special” like the rest of us.
Years from now, when Marshawn makes his living as a tour guide on the Oakland equivalent of Ride the Ducks, we won’t find ourselves stewing about the plays that weren’t made, the games that were lost. We’ll be reminiscing about the good old days when we basked in the glow of a once-in-a-generation talent who made us laugh until we cried.
God, I love him.
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