Courtesy Hamilton Spectator:

I’ve watched this team for decades and it’s never been this wretched.

I’m in my early 50s, and I remember listening to the Ticats on radio when I was eight, laying on my bedroom floor. I had season’s tickets when I was a teenager (paid from my Spectator paper route profits) and sitting in old Section B when it was merely long rows of planking that would bend precipitously when we got to cheering.

I saw Tommy Joe Coffey kick the field goal in the rain into the west end zone (with its thousands of green wooden, bleacher-style seats) for his historic, all-time CFL scoring record.

I saw punter Cam Fraser come out of retirement to replace an injured Joe Zuger (and could he still launch them!) and I sat in the press box with my friend, the late Jeff Dickins, the Ticat beat writer, when Rocky DiPietro caught the pass that put him first in all-time in CFL receptions. I cheered too loudly — a press box no-no — and embarrassed Jeff.

When my two daughters came home from the hospital after being born, TC dolls were placed in their cribs. Those tattered, much-loved TCs are still in use today.

The real Tiger-Cats look just about as worn and frayed as my daughters’ dolls.

The Ticats, even before they stepped foot on the field to begin the 2007 season, were losers.

Since the merger of the Wildcats and Tigers in 1950, sparking the Ticats’ modern era, the Ticats had won 440, lost 441, tied 17 and had three overtime losses. Our 2-15 debacle has come down heavily on the wrong side of the ledger.

Those early decades of dominance (the 50s and 60s) have been followed by ineptitude and mediocrity interspersed with only occasional flashes of brilliance. (Such as the Lancaster-McManus-Flutie years of 1998-2002, when we had the most exciting team in pro ball, offence and defence.)

The bedrock of Ticat football — the winning, rock-hard defence, that get-it-done mentality — is merely the stuff of myth, of legend. Or is it?

This is a thrilling time of year to be a fan in the lengthy continuum of a CFL season — striving to get a home playoff date (perhaps even a bye!), keeping your QBs healthy and watching out for the dreaded western crossover. Then there are the playoffs and the Grey Cup — the absolute best time of all.

Except this is a party to which the Ticats — and us fans — are not invited. Oh, yeah, we’re there, but we’re off in a darkened corner, moping and sulking. Envious.

For another year we’re on the outside looking in.

We’re reduced, again, to auditioning players for next year, to ponder the top-notch free agents we can bag four months from now, how we can reshape the coaching staff, the personnel office, to turn this travesty around.

It’s tough to sit placidly in the stands and watch.

How often have you seen a touchdown bomb against a busted coverage, with a Ticat defensive back sucking dust? Or a Ticat not tackling properly, taking the ball carrier too high and bouncing harmlessly to the ground, sort of like a grilled cheese sandwich thrown at a wall? Or stupid, selfish, after-the-whistle dead-ball fouls?

I mean, if my 16-year-old daughter can play flawless positional house-league hockey, why can’t pro footballers follow the basics in exchange for a $6,000 game cheque?

These days I’m in Box C. Sitting behind me in Row 11 is Lorne, whose allegiance as a young man was to the Wildcats, not Tigers. When he mutters his signature “That’s terrible!” you know it is so.

I have been tempted to just chuck it all. Sometimes I feel like I’ve wasted my money, so why waste my time too? But what then? What would fill the void? The way I figure it, the only thing worse than bad football, is no football.

And, so far, that’s the biggest difference in the Bob Young era. He’s not putting a gun to our heads and saying: You gotta come or I’ll walk away! Previous owners tried that and it got real old, real fast.

There have been occasions when Ticat management have been unable to cover players’ game cheques. The last time, the team went bankrupt. Young won’t bounce those cheques, and the swaths of empty seats (I estimate there weren’t more than 9,000 fans at the B.C. game) will give him incentive to turn it around, and fast.

So why stick it out? Because when the Ticats are winning, there is absolutely nothing better. Because Ivor Wynne Stadium is Hamilton at its rockin’, primal, tribal best. It’s what we are. And those legends and myths? They will be enough to sustain us until that day comes.

Gary Curtis is a Spectator copy editor. He has perhaps Hamilton’s largest collection of Ticat-wear, and has learned not to sulk after losses.