Maybe the armband should come out of retirement

From the joy of the summer of 1966 to the despair of two summers later. I still look back on 1968 as the summer without baseball. Well, without as much baseball, anyway. My beloved Athletics were gone off to Oakland.

Yeah, Oakland. I've long harbored a festering loathing of that locale. And it was due to Oakland that I was just as depressed late in '68 as I was in April when there was no Opening Day.

I suppose most of you don't remember this, but late in 1968, the same folks who brought us the excitement of the Democrat Convention, brainstormed this Vietnam moratorium armband idea, where the anti-war activists could wear a black band, and thus demonstrate their support of the cause.

Well, the Chiefs wound up losing to Oakland, thus ending 1968 as depressingly as it began. So, I had my mother sew me a black mourning armband, on which was imprinted a Kansas City Chiefs arrowhead logo. I wore it the week of the moratorium because of the timing of the loss and it still rests at home in a desk drawer. People would glance at it and their eyes would narrow until they saw the arrowhead. I thought about getting it out of retirement when the Chiefs did what they did at Cleveland. But I resisted the impulse when I realized that: Tampa, Oakland, Baltimore, Tennessee, Atlanta and Dallas have all been to the Super Bowl since Kansas City. Also, so have: Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. Need I go on? How about: Philadelphia, Charlotte, St. Louis, the New England area, New York and Denver? Need more? Add Green Bay, Buffalo, San Diego, Miami and Los Angeles. The worst part of it, is that Los Angeles doesn't even have a team any more, and hasn't for 12 years. And that Baltimore is Baltimore II. Baltimore I is now Indianapolis. At least they haven't been yet.

Yep. Do you realize that when the Chiefs last played in the Super Bowl, the team from Baltimore was the Colts, and the Ravens hadn't even been invented. Neither had Tampa Bay, New England still called itself Boston, Nashville's team was the Houston Oilers, Charlotte was a pipe dream, St. Louis had the Cardinals and the Rams called the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum home. The Cleveland Browns were the originals, the ones who became the Ravens. At least Cleveland hasn't been. And it was Cleveland that ruined Kansas City's season for all practical purposes with their 3-8 team.

As recently as Thanksgiving, the Chiefs were 7-4 and victors over Denver. Then, with the playoffs clearly theirs for the taking, the Chiefs folded like a deck of cards and went into a spiral. As Lamar Hunt's health failed, so did the team's fortunes. Whatever happened to the win one for the Gipper routine? Guess the Chiefs missed that movie. They also must have missed the old adage that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Maybe they didn't get going because the games weren't tough enough. I mean, Cleveland. Come on. They even lost at home in December, something they hadn't done since 1996. That was the loss to Baltimore while Hunt lay dying in a Dallas hospital.

This season went bad way before Cleveland, though. You know as well as I do that the Chiefs should have lost to Oakland the first time. They looked excruciatingly horrendous at Pittsburgh and played as badly as a team could play against Miami.

I have lived and died with the Chiefs for the better part of 42 years. I have seen good teams and bad ones. But never before this year had I felt they totally let everyone down. And let everyone down, they did. All that was without Eric Warfield. I wonder what he did on New Year's Eve? Maybe I'll check last week's police reports.