From Stranger to Supporter: Joining the SOBs (Part 2)

It was Sun, Jan 3rd, and I had just spent my last ounce of hung-over energy in relocating myself from my couch to my desk and fired-up my laptop. Naturally, the first thing I did was to start trying to gather any news that the New Year brought regarding the Philadelphia Union. In the course of my browsing, I ended up on SonsofBen.com where I proceeded to read the Code of Conduct and information about joining probably at least 100 times. No matter how many times I read it and how much I wanted to follow through, my attention kept shifting focus to an article that I had just opened; the subject of the article: MLS Collective Bargaining Agreement Meetings, the outlook: bleak. I couldn’t believe it; as many times as I read the article, the words just refused to make sense to me. Here we were so close to the payoff… so close to having our own team, and it was all about to be for naught due to a labor dispute. To say I was dejected would have been an understatement. Over the next few days, I can’t tell you how many times I would browse to the TicketLeap website and start filling in the forms or to put a Union or SOB scarf in my cart on the retail sites. I could never allow myself to pull the trigger, though. The indecision was killing me.

Days then became weeks; weeks became months, and before I knew it, we were days away from what should be our inaugural game, and all indications were that it wouldn’t happen. Panic began to set in.