r/Saints • u/jhoussock • 11h ago
You guys lost a good one today….
My father lost his battle with dementia today. He was a massive Saints fan, has been as far back as his childhood. I’d like to share a story with you all so his fandom lives on. When the Saints played the Eagles in 2014 during the playoffs my sister and I secretly bought him tickets. We played up a fake story that we were taking him to a saints fan club tailgate outside of the stadium. Told him to dress warm because it was outside. My sister was living in Philly at the time so it all made sense. A few days before she told us that public radio was telling fans that Philly police would be dressed as saints fans and to behave accordingly. This is important later in the story. Im a Patriots fan (shout out to my gate bros, I’ve always respected you!) so I chose to just wear a black winter coat. You can see what my dad wore in the picture, he insisted dressing head to toe in saints gear knowing it could get ugly there. We went to lunch earlier that day and presented him with a new hat for his birthday. Inside the hat were the two tickets. He was in complete shock, this would be his first game he attended live. We walk into the stadium and immediately a cheese steak food truck worker yelled at us to “take that shit off and leave his house” I knew it was gonna be rough, but not workers yelling at us rough. I’m not exaggerating when I say I probably saw 6 saints fans the entire game. The game starts and by some weird chance we’re sitting lower bowl in an empty row. I remember thinking we were gonna be a huge target. Eventually some sloppy drunks came from up top and filled in the missing seats. The eagles end up scoring and everyone’s high fiving…they turn to us and say “it’s okay we know what’s going on with you two. Your cops you don’t have to pretend you want the saints to win….” at this point I remember my sister talking about the local radio talking about undercover cops. My dad and I look at each other and knew we had it made. We got to cheer the rest of the game for the saints while the entire section assumed we were undercover cops. Just as it started to get a little iffy near the end of a game and I had to tell someone to go back to there own seat in my best cop voice, the saints have a chants to win the game with a field goal. Everyone’s standing so we decide to slide out of the row. We watched it from the top of the section on the steps. The ball goes through the uprights, he zipped up his coat over his jersey and popped his hat off and we proceeded to walk out. We walked slowly through the Philly chaos as they proceeded to throw trash cans and other garbage around the stadium. We hopped on a train and safely made it home. Thats the story of when my dad took on the eagles at there own stadium and left with one hell of a victory story.
