By Caleb O. Brown
Snitch Staff Writer
5:29 left in the first quarter. The Vikings are up 7-zip against the rival Green Bay Packers. Veteran Packer fan Carol Krebs sits at Dutch’s Tavern wearing several strands of beads and a #4 Brett Favre jersey, her hands crossed in her lap.
“It’s not normally this quiet in here.”
She sighs and whispers, “It’s because we’re losing, that’s why.”
The stage at Dutch’s is bare, save the large pull-down screen telling viewers, whether they like it or not, “The NFC is on FOX.”
On the front row of Dutch’s makeshift sideline sits “Spike.”
Outside football season he’s known as Wayne Baxter. At Dutch’s he’s Spike, a fan permanently tagged with Packer tattoos on each arm, his wrists taped, his body draped in a #38 Packers jersey. Spike, not Wayne, rarely sits still in the green folding chair he brought from home as he shouts occasional obscenities at the screen.
Behind the bar sits the vaunted Grant-Lombardi trophy, a strange mix of a mannequin head, a cheesehead hat and Viking horns all painted up purple and green. Dutch’s has the honor of keeping the trophy, at least for now.
Down the block and across the street at Gerstle’s, Viking fans — the so-called Derby City Norsemen — can’t wait to deflower Green Bay’s newly renovated Lambeau Field with a severe thumping for the Packers.
Norseman Ken Rowan spent part of the first half yelling “Take that, Packer fan!” to one of the few Green Bay backers in Gerstle’s. As Eddie Johnson splits the uprights with a 46-yard field goal, making it 17-3 in favor of the Vikings, Rowan is grinning from ear to ear.
“I hate the Packers so much,” he chuckles, schadenfreude smeared across his face. “They won a bunch of championships when it didn’t matter, and now they think they’re gods.”
Behind Dutch’s, fans throw around a football, lamenting their poor Packers first-half turnovers.
“Brett’s throwin’ at things that don’t exist,” Spike says. “He’s havin’ a horrible day. No sooner do we get some passing and we get picked off.”
12:30 left in the third. Vikes fans bellow “Oooh!” as the Packer quarterback’s bad day continues. Favre is sacked.
Mike Summers, a Norseman, says he can smell the trophy making the one-block trek back to Gerstle’s but wants to wait a little longer before making any predictions.
“It’s in our grasp, but there’s still time left.”
1:30 left in the third. Packers drive for a touchdown, but the Vikings are still up by 16.
The green-and-yellow crowd at Dutch’s begins to chant, “Spike! Spike! Spike!”
He swaggers onto the stage, puts on his Packers helmet, pauses, then throws down a green and yellow plastic football, cueing the cheers of his fellow fans.
Spike and his wife, Candice, got married in Dutch’s Tavern. It was, Candice says, a “Packer-themed” wedding.
Vikes fail in a charge toward the end zone, but a field goal makes it 30-11.
Fairweather Packers fans begin to drift out the front door.
9:23 left in the fourth quarter. A desperate Packers fan screams, “Don’t huddle up, you don’t have all f***ing day!”
Elizabeth Naze, decked out in her Green Bay earrings, says — despite the score — being at Dutch’s is almost like being at Lambeau Field. She’s from Green Bay and has lived in Louisville for about six months.
“I’m less homesick when I’m here,” she says.
Even though she’s sensing the outcome will not be to her liking, Naze still finds Louisville’s Vikes fans to be “far more tame” than those up north.
“They get a little mean,” she says. “They’re actually worse than Raiders fans.”
Steve Johnson, a longtime Dutch’s Packers fan, now resigned to the outcome, says, “They’ll be here in three or four minutes.”
Two Green Bay touchdowns in the fourth quarter have changed Ken Rowan’s tune. The Norseman is sipping a beer and rhetorically preparing himself for the worst.
“This is way more intense than it should be,” Rowan says. “We outplayed them for three quarters. Now we suddenly have a game on our hands. If we lose this, it’s a fluke. It’s just a fluke.”
But the Vikings hang on, and as the clock ticks down to 30 seconds with Minnesota up by five, Norseman Dan McGowan blows the horn, beckoning his brethren to trek to Dutch’s to seize the prize.
Down and across Shelbyville Road, a purple throng chanting “Here we go, Vikings! Here we go!” makes its way into Dutch’s.
“Give it up!” yells a fan, as a bartender takes down the trophy and hands it over. The rowdy fans grab the symbol of supremacy and shuffle back to home base.
Sports broadcaster Dave Jennings, a Packers fan who spent the game with gloating Vikes fans, says the game isn’t really the important thing.
“Football’s back, that’s what matters. Win or lose, at least I’m not watching the World’s Strongest Man Competition on ESPN2.”
