5 Reasons for Baltimoreans to Root for the Green Bay Packers

Editors note: Dundalk Patch received a virtual mailbag of nasty (and occasionally threatening) e-mails following our column from Steeler fans prior to the Ravens' playoff game against their arch rivals. For the Super Bowl, we've decided to take a different tack.

Rather than take a negative approach to rally fans against our least favorite professional sports franchise from western Pennsylvania, the crack staff at Dundalk Patch has culled the Internet and come up with "5 Reasons for Baltimoreans to Root for the Green Bay Packers."

1) Joan Jett loves the Packers – The woman who wrote “I love Rock n’ Roll,” spent her formative years in Maryland and is an Orioles' fan. But when it comes to football, in an interview with Esquire magazine in 2009, Jett described herself as being a life-long Green Bay fan:

“One of those images you see as a kid — I might have been six or seven — it was a Sports Illustrated cover. Everybody was completely muddy, so muddy you couldn't see who was wearing what uniform. One guy had a swipe across the helmet where the mud was wiped off, and you could see part of the G through it. For some reason, as a kid, just seeing that G, I became a Green Bay Packers fan. Isn't that weird?”

No, Joan, we don’t think it’s weird. We feel in love with the old Colts playing in the dirt and mud at Memorial Stadium. Since you’re rooting against the Steelers in the Super Bowl, you’re forgiven for not being a Raven’s fan.

2. All bays must stick together – Green Bay sits on a sub-basin of Lake Michigan. While it’s certainly not the Chesapeake and doesn’t produce blue crabs that we’re aware of – still it’s a bond. All "bays" must stick together and as one Green Bay blogger noted: Packers coach Mike McCarthy arrived in Green Bay after coaching in San Franciso. San Francisco, of course, another great bay city.

3. The Packers don’t have a jerk for a quarterback (anymore) - In Baltimore, we like our quarterbacks stoic and tough – straight-arrow type leaders. Johnny U. is the model, of course. Joe Flacco has proven himself a good quarterback, too, and not a jerk off the field.

Brett Favre (alleged deviant texter) is gone from Green Bay and Aaron Rodgers is playing great and hasn’t been accused of anything perverted or criminal. At least not yet. Please contrast Rodgers, with Steelers' quarterback Ben Roethlisberger –suspended earlier this year after twice being accused of assault by young women.

4. The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned franchise in American professional sports major leagues –  No Robert Irsay or Peter Angelos ego here. And when the entire stadium – and city – owns the team, as in Green Bay, there’s little chance a moving company will pack it up in the middle of night.

It makes Green Bay, a city of only 102,313 people as of the 2000 census, a little socialist, but hey, it seems to work for them.

5. Antonio Freeman – the Baltimore-born and raised former wide-out is in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, earning All-Pro honors and starring on the Packer’s Super Bowl XXXI team in 1988. He attended Baltimore’s Polytechnic Institute and later starred at Virginia Tech.

Freeman caught a then-record 81-yard touchdown pass in the Packers' Super Bowl win over New England.

Bonus - Frank Schmitz, a retired Baltimore City police officer, lives in Eastwood and works as a security guard at Shoppers Food Warehouse on Eastern Boulevard, where at least one Dundalk Patcher buys most of his groceries. (See photo).

Despite growing up in Baltimore, he's been a lifelong Green Bay fan since watching the Packers play the Colts at Memorial Stadium as a boy. He just liked the green and yellow colors, he says. Frank, who is a real nice guy, adds that he always roots for the Ravens when they're not playing Green Bay.

We like Frank, and if he's rooting for Green Bay, that's one more good reason for us to do the same.

Go Pack!