When A Fan Base Turns On YouThis week is the nine-year celebration of my wife and me travelling to China to meet and adopt our first child.
I know a lot of you remember that time, too, because you held our hands through the five years of waiting for our adoption packet to make it to the top of that stack.
Five years later we did it again, and one of the things that I remember about flying from Beijing to Changsha in 2010 and to Zhengzhou in 2015 was the vast, seemingly untouched areas in between filled with mountains, forests and waterfalls that were all big enough for us to see from above 30-thousand feet.
It was spectacular.
I remember, in particular, one place we flew over nine years ago that was right out of a movie set—a perilously high land bridge that seemed to be at least a thousand feet high and stretched for half-a-mile. Again, I saw it from an airplane window from over five miles high, but it seemed to be only about 10 feet wide. It was covered in greenery, but on either side were the cold, hard, gray cliffs that ushered death to those who failed to navigate between them.
My Hannah’s “Gotcha Day” made me think of that place on the other side of the earth.
Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky gave me a living example of what it’s like to be on that walkway.
You could put a lot of people in place of Trubisky for this discussion. Frankly, You could type the name of anyone who has experienced stardom for a short time and then had it slip away into that blank space.
Quarterback Johnny Manziel, pitcher Mark Prior and linebacker Brian Bosworth are three that immediately come to mind. They were stars whose light shined bright as day, and then disappeared into the darkness almost as quickly as they appeared.
And when it goes away—the fame, the love, the affection of a town and fan base who once embraced you as their prince—I wonder if it feels like standing on that land bridge in China.
In middle of nowhere. The wind swirling, pushing you this way and that. You fight to keep from being thrown off one side or dragged off the other. No hand rail to steady you. No net beneath.
It must be the loneliest feeling in the world.
Mitchell Trubisky is now smack-dab in the middle of that bridge. The wind is howling. It’s starting to rain.
After going 12-4 last season, the Bears were considered a serious contender for the NFC’s seat at the Super Bowl table. Their defense was intact, healthy and ready to dominate again. The offense had drafted a running back seemingly better suited to their style. They closed their eyes and pointed to a name on a page to find a kicker — and it actually worked.
The only spot in doubt is the only spot that really matters — the quarterback.
All summer long, the experts and talk show hosts were spouting phrases starting with “if Trubisky,” as if he was the only variable. Every time it happened, Trubisky got a shove in the back farther out onto that bridge.
Now, six games in to this season, he stands all alone in a place so beautiful to the eye from the safety of a passerby five miles high, and yet in reality so terrifying and isolated.
A city and a fan base has sent him there and left him for “dead.”
The hugs and accolades are a memory.
The reality of the ‘now’ is pain and doubt.
All this young quarterback can do is keep walking across that bridge. To take one step, and then another and then yet another with the goal of seeing the other side and then enduring until he gets there, accompanied only by his own thoughts, the memories of cheering crowds, and that howling gale.
These are the things that define us — these moments.
With adversity all around him, what will he do? How will he act? Can he steady himself and prove himself worthy of the reward at the other end of that land bridge?
Or will he fall and land next to the shattered remains of countless others who failed that same journey?
