Et tu, ESB?
It was bad enough that most of sporting New York was already suffering from a massive outbreak of acid indigestion. For much of the latter stages of Sunday afternoon, 90 miles down the Jersey Turnpike, the Philadelphia Eagles were having their way with the San Francisco 49ers.
It was an ugly game to watch even if you didn’t have a bird in that race. If you are from New York, it was like watching your mortal enemy hit a winning Powerball ticket and then steal your wife. Watching any team from Philadelphia do well is a dyspeptic disaster; watching the Eagles roll through the NFC playoffs — a siege that started last week with a slaughter of the Giants?
Yeah. That’s enough to make you question why you watch sports in the first place.
Then, within an hour of the Iggles punching their ticket to Glendale, Ariz., a most curious thing happened at the normally classy address of 20 W 34th St., New York, NY 10001. That is where the Empire State Building has stood gracefully since April 11, 1931. It is a 1,454-foot, 102-floor building that has generally filled New Yorkers with pride.
We have roared with delight when King Kong was finally felled in both silver-screen versions starring the ESB. Hundreds of thousands of lovebirds have been influenced by “An Affair to Remember” (to say nothing of “Sleepless in Seattle”) whose essential plot point was to propose marriage on the building’s observation deck.
We are New Yorkers. This is the Empire State.
We love the Empire State Building.
And then they lit the damn thing up in green and white. Eagles colors.
Think about that.
Read it again.
THEY LIT IT UP IN GREEN. AND WHITE. IGGLES COLORS!!
And, well, the reaction was predictable. New York is ticked. New York feels betrayed. New York, which has long championed the Empire State Building as the greatest skyscraper in the world, has been … dare we say …
Cuckolded.
How did this happen? How could this happen? This isn’t a building that has ever given any pretense to being anything but a parochial treasure. It has New York’s own nickname IN ITS NAME for crying out loud. It is not the International Brotherhood Building. It is not the All-U.S.-Sports-Fans-Deserve-To-Be-Treated-Fairly Building.
It is the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING.
Gone to seed now. Gone to dust. This is sportsmanship elevated to absurd levels.
Apparently this wasn’t the first time, either. Apparently, five years ago, when the Eagles won Super Bowl LII, the ESB did the same thing. If anyone noticed, it certainly didn’t become a brouhaha, probably because most New Yorkers tried to pretend like a Super Bowl between Philadelphia and New England never happened.
There have been other close calls. Back in October, while the Yankees were battling their archenemies from Houston in the American League Championship Series, the ESB was lit up in orange — but that was an ill-timed salute to the Knicks, whose season was beginning. Back in 2004, a few weeks after the Red Sox came back to stun the Yanks in that infamous ALCS, the ESB was lit up red; the building quickly quelled the problem by explaining the colors were to celebrate the centennial of the subway.
Honest mistakes. Almost funny ones.
Nothing funny about this. Nothing funny about virtue run amok, and even if the folks who run the place later Tweeted sheepishly “that hurt us more than it hurt you” … well that is, to put it elegantly, BS. The Empire State Building lit up in Iggles green? In the famous words of “The Godfather’s” Tom Hagen …
“Why do you hurt me? I’ve always been loyal to you.”
