This is why communities spend millions of dollars buildingballparks they can barely afford. It’s why they spend years hungering for brandnew teams after the old ones are stolen away.
Ravens 59, Dolphins 10.
Sunday’s victory felt like a flash of sunlight for a city yearningto come out of the darkness. It’s more than Lamar Jackson’s precision passing,or Mark Ingram’s slashing runs, or Marquis Brown and Mark Andrews leaving allthose pass defenders in the dust.
It’s the reminder that there’s more to Baltimore than thedaily homicide count and the political grubbiness and the sights of sheermunicipal decay.
It’s only a game they’re playing, and yet those guys in the Baltimoreuniforms remind us that we’re not alone. Thousands of us are rooting for thesame stuff at the same time. Even in the isolation of our living rooms, we canfeel it in our bones.
We need each other’s company. We crave shared experience. Weneed reminders that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.
That’s what sports give us – but not only sports.
At the same time the Ravens were beating the Dolphins, awonderful crowd gathered in the city’s Little Italy. Don’t tell me people areafraid to come downtown. Let them come to Little Italy.
The crowds were there for three days, by the thousands, forthe fifth annual Madonnari Arts Festival, that marvelous collection of chalkpaintings on the streets of the old neighborhood.
And there was live music, and outdoor eating, and places forchildren to do their own artwork. And some speeches, too. Mayor Bernard “Jack”Young was there and WJZ’s Denise Koch with some words reminding everybody ofthe city’s great diversity.
We need reminders that we’re not alone.
The city’s going through a tough time, but we’ve gonethrough tough times before. At the Little Italy gathering, a few of usremembered another tough time, in the years after the ’68 riots, and the CityFair gatherings that helped bring us out of awful psychological shadows.
You can’t have a gathering downtown, the naysayers told usback then. We’ll have riots, we’ll have violence. At that time in the city, younever saw people downtown after dark. That’s what drove the basketball Bulletsout of town, never to return, leaving us with long winter nights and nomunicipal gatherings to bind us.
But those Baltimore City Fairs helped bring a frightenedcity back to life for what we then called the first modern BaltimoreRenaissance. They were showcases for city neighborhoods and institutions andethnic traditions.
They helped spawn years of even more ethnic festivals,summer after summer. Whatever happened to those great gatherings?
They reminded us – we’re not alone. We need to bring themback again.
We live in the same metropolitan area, which means we haveneeds and desires in common. And rooting interests, such as those Ravens.
It’s not just the final score. It’s the beating of thecollective heart. We’re a community trying to find that heart, which has beenmuted for too long.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, most recently “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
At its annual meeting this year, the Baltimore Jewish Council will honor the late Harford County educator and longtime Holocaust education champion.
The former Colt, who passed away on May 25 at age 93, achieved immortality during a cold December day in 1958, writes Michael Olesker.
A new biography on the creator of "Doonesbury" misses the mark, writes Michael Olesker.
What does it mean to be fully present with each other and the sacred, asks Maryland-born cultural anthropologist Alanna E. Cooper.