As many of you know, I grew up in Baltimore and in my early years we didn’t have a football team. The Baltimore Colts skipped town in the middle of the night in 1984, shamefully relocating themselves to Indianapolis. Luckily, by the time I was able to be a free thinking football fan the Ravens had arrived in Baltimore (much to the chagrin of Cleveland Browns fans) and quickly took over the city. I remember that time, 1996, when everything started turning purple after the city staged a brief argument over the name of the new franchise. “The Baltimore Ravens,” was the winner, bringing Edgar Allen Poe back to relevance for an entire generation of football fans who may never have otherwise known his name. There may also be an entire generation that now believes Edgar, Allen and Poe are just the names of the Ravens’ mascots…but I digress.
Whether you’re a football fan or not ( and I don’t fault anyone who isn’t, there are some serious concerns around the sport) there is a lot of significance to the professional teams you grow up rooting for. I grew up 
admiring guys like Tony Siragus, Jermaine Lewis and Jonathan Ogden and was lucky enough to meet a few of them while I was still in my single digit years. Having a football team in Baltimore, and a good one at that, meant that in some capacity your city was on the map. It was a place to put your civic pride, long before you were old enough to even know you had any. Random Orioles and Ravens clippings covered my childhood walls; posters of Jermaine Lewis and Priest Holmes sent out for free with the Baltimore Sun, a front page newspaper print from when Eddie Murray hit his 500’th homerun at Camden Yards in 1996.
For me, walking into Ravens Stadium yesterday was like stepping back into my childhood. All those feelings of giddiness returned, like the time I got to meet Orioles pitcher Tippy Martinez when I was about 9 (turns out it was an event to promote Tippy’s new line of salsa…but who cares) and I had to stop several times to remind myself what was happening. The adult part of me knew how long we had been working and waiting to get into the stadium, how much work Kim and the Ravens staff had done to make it happen, how it had taken 3+ years to get to 300 people at a workout (290+ to be exact) and how on Friday we would be back to our regularly scheduled programming. But the kid in me was ecstatic. Shannon Sharpe had caught 5 touchdown passes in the 2000-2001 season just a few feet from where I was dying on the stairs.
Some of us like sports, some of us don’t. Some of us are from Baltimore, some of us aren’t. For some of us Ravens Stadium was a cool workout we got to do on a big stage. For others it was like being a kid again, revisiting that long suppressed giddiness you get from being a kid that belongs somewhere and has something to root for. Even if you showed up yesterday and for some god awful reason you’re a Pats or Steelers fan, I still think you could identify with that sentiment. Sitting with loved ones, cheering for something you could all agree on for a change.
But maybe more importantly than my own childlike feelings from yesterday, returning from that workout pushed me to continue to ask some bigger questions. What’s next for NP Baltimore? What do we do after that? The stadium was an incredibly tangible “We’re here and there are a lot of us!” moment for me, Pat and Bryson. If we can pull something like that off, what else can we pull off?
Especially at this moment in history there are lots of questions to be asked. I obviously believe in the potential of this NP movement, not just in regards to fitness, but in its capacity to bring people together. I watch really close friendships being formed, communities growing and supporting each other, friends sharing their knowledge, people down on their luck turning to friends they made at a workout. Our power isn’t in our ability to run stairs but in our ability to bring people together around something, much in the same way that Ravens football can.
So, to my NP_BAL community…what’s next? Where do we go from here? If you want the workouts to be tougher, formulate your thoughts and bring them to us. If you look around during the bounce and you don’t see everyone from your city represented, bring us your ideas and help us learn how to change that. If you want to bring the members of NP together to build a park on a vacant lot, let’s do it. If you think NP_BAL could play a part in making Baltimore the country’s fittest city, stay bold and let’s talk. If you want to help us host a workout at Camden Yards (and subsequently watch me break down in tears at the spot where Jeffrey Maier stole game one of the ALCS from the Orioles in 1996), let’s make it happen.
I promise, even your craziest ideas won’t get a flat no. That’s because being at Ravens stadium reminded how much I love Baltimore. Football has its many issues, but at the end of the day, the part that really matters isn’t about the antics or the salaries. It’s about having a reason to bring people together, whether that’s family or strangers soon to be friends. From there, it’s about what can be created from that togetherness. Think on it.
Stay bold . Thanks for making yesterday something I will forever remember.
Our e-mail is Novemberprojectbmore@gmail.com. Use it.
As always, “Take Big Bites Out of Life.”
Nick
Notes:
Tommorrow’s Workout: 6:30 AM, Wyman Park Dell. Location.
Buffs will be at tomorrow’s workout! We have a few extra so if you want one and didn’t order, tomorrow is first come first serve. $5! Just talk with us after the workout.
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