A plane crash and a happy ending

Yes, a private plane crashed into the upper deck seats.

Just a few minutes earlier and we’d have seen hundreds dead.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with this tale.

All things in good time.

Now then…

Christmas and New Year’s holidays mean one sort of thing to the average family.

Ho, ho, ho!

However…

To that small and often goofy legion of folks who cover sports events for a living, these year-end holidays mean something else entirely.

Chaos.

Games are scheduled at weird times and in odd places to satisfy TV, then in the NFL some matchups which are hugely important might be rearranged on short notice, depending on the participants.

The league has mostly abandoned that craziness, but for years you dealt with postseason games played on very strange schedules.

Same day, back to back, a week apart.

That doesn’t bother fans who will be lounging in recliners, but for reporters trying to sort out where they’re going – and then wading into the insanity – it’s a full-blown Excedrin experience.

Remember, this is late December and/or early January, so blizzards and canceled flights are always in the picture.

Toss millions of travelers into the mix, and sports journalists begin getting headaches a few months in advance.

THERE ARE plenty of wild stories I can share involving the holidays, but the craziest, I think, took place over one full week.

The whole thing was nutty, but I wound up dating a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, so it wasn’t all bad.

For context here, I was working for the Denver Post – but almost none of this bizarre week took place in Denver.

No, I had been sent to Baltimore in the last week of December to write an opinion piece on a game between the Colts – the old version before owner Bob Irsay slipped off to Indianapolis in the middle of the night – and the defending Super Bowl champion Oakland Raiders.

I was there in Baltimore, at the old Memorial Stadium, because the winner might be facing our beloved Broncos on New Year’s Day for a spot in the AFC title game.

It was almost impossible to write too much involving the Broncos in the Orange Crush days.

(Unless you were joking about too much orange in the city, as I had done a couple of months earlier — and thus received three serious death threats, which the FBI considered “credible.” But hey, I made it to Baltimore.)

On the field, the Broncs had turned their first-ever winning season into a magical journey through the playoffs.

As I was freezing in the open press box in Maryland, the Broncos were dispatching Pittsburgh back home.

THE HATED Raiders beat the Colts in what football people came to call the “Ghost to the Post.”

Oakland tight end Dave Casper had caught three touchdown passes from Ken Stabler on post patterns, so, you know, Casper the Ghost and all that.

Anyhow, when the game was over, I joined the rest of the media for a trudge down to the locker rooms in the bowels of Memorial Stadium — where the rats were big enough to be creatures from Jurassic Park — and did my predictable interviews on what the Raiders expected in Denver the following week.

Being the Raiders of Stabler, Jack Tatum, John Matuszak and Lester “The Molester” Hayes, they offered up some great quotes viciously insulting the Broncos. They’d given me exactly what I needed, and so I headed back upstairs to write.

And that’s when we saw the plane, having crashed into a row of seats on the opposite side of the stadium.

It was one of those moments when you truly don’t believe what your eyes are telling you.

Thank heavens no one was killed or even hurt. The drunk pilot was hauled away by a crew of Baltimore’s Finest, and hopefully he’s still in jail.

I’M NOT sure exactly why, but I stayed in Baltimore for a few days after that game, with my next assignment in Dallas — where the Cowboys were facing Minnesota in the NFC title game on New Year’s Day.

Baltimore was worth the time, even if I’m allergic to shellfish.

I actually met a real-life Mafia arsonist while sitting at the bar in the famous “No Fish Today” saloon.

He showed me how fires and explosions are set. Maybe I’ll publish a “How to…” book on it if my journalist career begins to drag.

Anyhow, my flight to Texas was booked for New Year’s Eve, and there were exactly six passengers on this mammoth aircraft.

It was kind of fun.

The flight crew invited us all into first class, served champagne all around, and even passed out little horns to celebrate the New Year — which the pilot cheerfully counted down as we purred along, somewhere over the Midwest.

The Dallas-Minnesota game the next day (again, this was to decide Denver’s opponent in the Super Bowl) was boring to the point that I wish I’d had the coffee concession.

The Vikes couldn’t have scored a touchdown if they played until the next morning.

DALLAS WON the sleepfest 23-6, but there was a pretty cool deal about that. You know how the Cowboys bill themselves as “America’s Team,” and whatever it is, they do it better than you?

Well, I didn’t have to write immediately, so when the game mercifully ended, I started toward the media lounge behind the working area.

A cold beer sounded spectacular.

Before I could take a few steps, however, one of the famous cheerleaders, who I guess had double duty that afternoon, intercepted me.

“Can I get you something?” she said.

Wow!

OK, then.

They even stocked Rolling Rock (these are the Cowboys, now), and the cheerleader — who introduced herself as Bonnie — bounced off to get my beer.

In just moments she was back, and handed me a nice pewter mug which she said I could keep as a souvenir of my experience with the Cowboys.

But how about THIS?

The mug was engraved…

January 1, 1978

NFC Championship

Dallas 23

Minnesota 6

OK, a nice mug. But this was 15 to 20 minutes after the game.

Only the Cowboys would take on the nearly impossible task of engraving these things so quickly.

“How in the world did they do that?” I asked Bonnie.

“It’s kind of complicated, the way it’s outsourced,” she replied.

So I said the only logical thing.

“Would you care to explain it over dinner?

She agreed.

“We aren’t allowed to date any players,” she said. “But I think a journalist would be just fine.”

And it was.

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday. Steve’s various tales from several decades in sports — “Moments, Memories and Madness” — run on Sundays.