Superfans
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At a subsequent meeting at the Bitter End, a bar near Civic Stadium that became the group’s primary hangout, Taylor met with Lenhart, Wright, and others, and it was decided that the supporters would occupy Section 107 at the north end of the stadium. At that point, they were still called the Cascade Rangers, but the name would later change after some Portlanders who were also fans of the Scottish League team Celtic objected to being part of a supporters group that had the same name as the Glasgow Rangers, Celtic’s chief rival. Its new name: Timbers Army.
At the new Timbers home debut as an A-League franchise on May 11, 2001, the “army” was eight or so people behind the goal. It would get up to about fifteen by the end of the season and hover at roughly that number for a couple of years. But what Timbers Army lacked in size they made up for in enthusiasm, much of which clashed in both spirit and substance with the wishes of an ownership group calling itself Portland Family Entertainment. The flares and smoke bombs were a problem, as were the chants of “Hel-en! Kel-ler!” at female referees. And then there was the cursing, which often was more blunt than clever—for example, “You suck, asshole!” whenever the opposing goalkeeper executed a kick. Making matters worse, Section 107 was reserved seating, “So you’d get these families who wouldn’t know any better and buy tickets right behind us,” Wright says. “It was bad.”
Taylor acted as mediator between ownership and Timbers Army, a task made more difficult when Glickman’s financing dried up after the first season and the baseball and soccer teams were taken over by the Pacific Coast League. “All they cared about was baseball but kept hearing about all these problems with fans of the soccer team,” Taylor says.
Section 107 was just above one of the baseball dugouts, and Lenhart and his cohorts would jump on top of the dugout and dance around after a goal was scored. Ownership, in a friendly overture, installed a large wooden sign on the dugout announcing the spot as the home of Timbers Army. But it was also a safety measure: the sign acted as a barrier that, conceivably, would prevent the (typically) drunken 107 crew from tumbling off the dugout and onto the field. The sign didn’t last long. After one goal, Nevets and Co. kicked the sign until it splintered and broke apart, “and then we looked like the penguins on National Geographic jumping off the ice into the water,” Wright says.
In the wake of such incidents, Taylor would execute the delicate task of “placating these baseball people while telling Lenhart and the others, ‘Just keep doing what you are doing.’ ” He was their biggest advocate, even though they saw him as management. He was called a Nazi more than a few times. Says Wright: “Man, we were hard on Jim. I’ve apologized to him, to his wife. A lot of us were young, in our twenties, and we took it out on him. Looking back, he didn’t fall prey to the minor-league baseball bullshit, the T-shirt cannons and music during the run of play. He let us be the heartbeat of the stadium.”
In 2002, Taylor supported a request by Nevets and Co. to make Section 107 general admission, a vital decision that made it easier for Timbers Army to recruit and expand. “Buy them a pint and get them to the game,” was the saying. Timbers Army repaid Taylor by acting as the team’s de facto marketing department. They passed out pocket schedules Taylor gave them and also made posters that they handed out to local businesses. They were a diverse group, with a wide range of talents. Wright was a political consultant; Kellett, the journalist, helped get coverage in the local media; others were photographers and artists. When they wanted Timbers Army scarves or T-shirts or hats, they didn’t wait for the team to design, make, and sell them; they did it themselves. The author Katherine Dunn once famously said of Rose City residents: “Everyone has at least three identities.” Timbers Army members called upon all of theirs. “We did a lot of beer drinking, a lot of cursing, and we were idiots at times, but we also were professionals with diverse skills,” says Wright.
The group’s most vital skill was Lenhart’s ability to convince others to see something seemingly unimportant—a minor-league soccer team—as the most important aspect of life. A few early diehards once made a seventy-two-hour car journey from Portland to Vancouver to Calgary and then back to Portland so they could see the Timbers play two games. Away games were broadcast on a local Christian radio station; Jews for Jesus played just before the Timbers. Lenhart would host listening parties at his apartment in southeast Portland. (Listening parties!) The station’s tower was in a residential area outside the city and had to lower its signal at a certain hour of the night. “We would pray the game would end before they’d drop the signal,” Wright says. The small group of fans felt as if they were rooting for family or friends, which was kind of true. Taylor would bring members of the team to the Bitter End after matches to socialize with the fans. One night, a player drank too much with Timbers Army and got arrested for DUI on his drive home. “We felt terrible about that,” Lenhart says. “We were the ones who got him drunk.”
The small-timey-ness of it all was a bonding agent, as was the fact that the fans never knew from one season to the next if the team would exist. The baseball league that owned the team probably would have dissolved the Timbers if the naming-rights deal that Portland General Electric made for PGE Park didn’t mandate a certain number of events. Because Timbers Army was always on the brink of losing its team, it appreciated the Timbers even more.
After a 2004 story in the lifestyle section of The Oregonian described the fun the group was having, about fifty more people stood in Section 107 for the next game. Following a 2005 exhibition match against the English club Sunderland, during which more than thirteen thousand fans got to witness Timbers Army in full bloom, a couple of hundred more joined the party. It helped that the group was inclusive. Its motto has always been: “If you want to be Timbers Army, you already are.”
“There was a cement wall midway up the stadium, and at every game I would count from there,” Lenhart says. “If we got like five rows filled above the cement wall, I would be like, ‘Wow, progress!’ ”
As the ranks grew to about three hundred, a small faction emerged that favored the hooligan mentality prevalent in Europe, and for a short time some original Timbers Army members got swept up in it. Most of the problems occurred on bus trips to away games in Seattle. (Flyers promoting those trips referred to the destination only as “Shittle.”) One trip in 2004 included fights with Seattle fans and flares being thrown onto the buses. Home games versus Seattle and Vancouver necessitated a significant police presence—paid for by ownership—to assure that the visiting fans were able to leave the stadium safely. “It got to a point where a few [original Timbers Army members] got together and we decided we had to put a stop to it,” Wright says. The hooligans were marginalized until they got in line or left.
There was also some animosity between a set of fans who dated back to the NASL days and the twentysomethings who were controlling the direction of the group now. Lenhart respected the old guard in a way his contemporaries may not have, and he smoothed over hard feelings. He did this mostly over beers, reminiscing about the NASL, showing the older fans that the past was prelude to what they were building. This was not calculated. He did it because he enjoyed talking about the Timbers teams from his boyhood, and he still does. “They also saw how hard he was working and he wasn’t getting paid and it was just this labor of love,” Taylor says. “I would hear from Drum Man and a few other older fans—it was an eclectic mix—and they weren’t always happy, but they respected and trusted Nevets.”
Taylor left the Timbers in 2005 and returned to the Trail Blazers, removing the buffer between ownership and its most fervent fans. But Nevets and Co. didn’t tone down their act. One of their favorite targets was Chris Agnello, the coach during the forgettable 2006 season, when the Timbers finished tied for last. They would shout: “How many Ls are in Agnello?” and then add an L for each loss, which reached fifteen. Imagine how ownership felt as the team’s most committed fans were chanting “A-G-N-E-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-O” again and again.
The following year, a group headed by Merritt Paulson, the son of former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson, bought the Timbers and the Beavers. Finally, this was the well-heeled ownership group the Timbers had always wanted. Paulson announced plans to renovate the stadium and said he would pay the $40 million franchise fee if MLS accepted the Timbers. By 2008, attendance was up 25 percent from the prior year, to more than 8,500 a game, as people got on board before the jump to MLS.
In 2008, Paulson spoke with Wright about how Timbers Army, now nearly one thousand strong, could help with the push to get city approval and funding to renovate PGE Park. Wright and another 107ist started the “MLS to PDX” campaign and began working the city council. They organized marches on city hall and rallied people to testify at hearings. The swing vote on the five-person council was Dan Saltzman, a cautious politician with degrees from Cornell and MIT who hails from an old, moneyed Portland family. “Merritt knows we swung him,” Wright says. “If there is no Timbers Army, there is no third vote from Dan.”
At a press conference following the successful vote, City Commissioner Randy Leonard held up three Timbers scarves and boasted that he wore them with pride. One of the scarves was designed and manufactured by Lenhart and his friends. The design was first sketched on a napkin during a night of drinking at the Bitter End. It was sold at no profit, by the fans, for the fans.
On a warm evening a few autumns ago, Lenhart stood on the open-air concourse at the south end of Civic Stadium, which is now known as Providence Park. The plain concrete structure has been transformed into a gleaming MLS stadium that holds 22,000, and the neighborhood around it (called Goose Hollow) has also undergone a makeover. The once dark and divey Bitter End, where Timbers Army used to pound Hamm’s pregame while scarfing down an assortment of fried foods, was now a gastropub, with more than twenty beers on tap and fresh oysters on the menu. The Timbers have become one of the jewels of MLS, a mid-market team that succeeds on the pitch without spending lavishly on players and with a fan base so large and devoted that officials from cities hoping to land an MLS franchise make comments like, “The goal is to be the next Portland, to create that kind of enthusiasm around our team.”
Lenhart, on the other hand, remains unchanged. His look is still quintessential 1990s Portland. He is wearing brown cords and worn New Balance sneakers that are not quite old enough to be retro. The only significant difference in his appearance from the early days of Timbers Army is that he has swapped his flat cap for a green and black Timbers trucker hat. He wears it with the bill pushed up, an odd flourish that he somehow pulls off.
When Lenhart talks about himself (or about anything, really) he rarely assigns meaning beyond the obvious. It is not that he is averse to introspection, but he doesn’t go there naturally. Draw attention to some detail from his life, highlight the potential significance, and typically he will chuckle and shrug and remark in his slightly nasally voice, “I don’t know about all that.” But he loves to talk about the Timbers, about the history of soccer in the area, which is apparent as he leads a tour of the stadium, during which he is characteristically reluctant to take credit for what he helped create.
He points out the brick athletic club that towers over the south end of the stadium, where participants in a spin class can watch the game during a workout. He motions toward the section where visiting fans sit, the luxury box of Timbers owner Merritt Paulson, and finally a grouping of seats in the south-end corner known as the Old Folks Home. He sprinkles in bits of history, too, gesturing to the spot where Willie Stargell once hit a ball during an exhibition game involving the “We Are Family” Pittsburgh Pirates team from the late 1970s.
As we walk the stadium, a man in his sixties spots Lenhart and veers over to greet him. He seems like he wants to hug Lenhart, but Lenhart isn’t a hugger, and so the man stops short and immediately jumps into a story, as if he’s been saving it. He was going through some boxes recently, he says, and came across a jacket that had been worn by a Timbers team in the early 2000s. He asks Lenhart if he should break it out for a game. “That would be rad!” Lenhart says, and the older man’s joy in hearing this is tangible. Lenhart’s endorsement has made his night. It is the only sign during this pregame tour that Lenhart is more noteworthy than any of the thousands of other fans grabbing pregame food and drinks.
Rad is one of Lenhart’s favorite words. Everything in his world can be rad, from beer to T-shirt designs to people, and his frequent use of the word contributes to the impression that he is forever young. At the time of the game he was living up near Mount Hood, with his girlfriend, the life of a ski bum in a year with little snow. His passion is photography, but it was a career in progress. A different person might worry about money or the future, but Lenhart is always in the moment, and on that October evening he was in Providence Park, sipping a Fort George IPA, and the game between the Timbers and the San Jose Earthquakes would start soon, and, well, all of that was just rad.
“Ready to go to the North End?” Lenhart says about fifteen minutes before kickoff. He motions toward the opposite end of Providence Park, to the sections numbered 101 to 108 and 201 to 208. There, more than three thousand fans ring the stadium from bottom to top, and they are all standing and chanting. Their voices sweep across the stadium, every word clear, loud, and proud. “When I root, I root for the Timbers!” they chant, followed by nine claps. “When I root, I root for the Timbers!” There are no less than ninety-seven giant flags being waved and countless signs and scarves held in the air. Even from across the stadium, more than 150 yards away, it is an intimidating sight. Walking toward the group feels like paddling toward a giant wave.
Minutes later, when Lenhart emerges from a tunnel into the heart of the North End, the chanting is deafening. But a bigger problem exists: there seem to be no seats. The entire North End is general admission, $25 a ticket, and no space goes unused. Some fans line up the night before a game to make sure they get their desired seat. For a game against, say, the rival Sounders, that line will number in the hundreds. But Lenhart keeps walking, deeper and deeper into the mass of people, until he is just above Section 107, right behind one of the goals. He walks down the aisle, toward the field, and stops in the middle of the section. He turns, and, magically, there are a few open seats, as if surrounded by some invisible red velvet rope. Later, Lenhart would joke that people don’t sit there because it is right next to the seven drums that beat all game (and it is an ear-splitting experience). But that is not it. Though the vast majority of Timbers Army couldn’t pick Lenhart out of a lineup, they know that those few rows behind the goal are sacred ground. Sitting there would be like occupying the first pew at a wedding. You don’t go there if you are not family.
Lenhart joins in the chanting the minute he settles in front of a bleacher. “We are green. We are white. We are fucking dynamite!” he shouts. Later, it is: “Keep it up, Rose City. Don’t give up, no pity.” Other songs follow, some of which Lenhart helped write. Eight chant leaders are stationed at small platforms at the lower edge of the stands. These are the Capos, a term taken from Italian soccer. It would be hard to find a group more representative of the diversity and oddity of Portland’s populace than the Capos. Three have thick beards; one also sports a red ponytail. Another is a woman with her head shaved into a Mohawk. Their enthusiasm for their task is admirable, but everyone in the North End appears to know the chants and the cues already. The Capos are like conductors frantically waving batons in front of a stereo.
Within the North End are groupings of fans wearing the same shirts or sitting in front of a banner or holding the same custom scarves. The Jefferson Reserves (from Southern Oregon), Echo Squadron (from Eugene), Govy Brigade (Hood), Capital City Company (Salem), the Mount Bachelor Brigade, and others. People in specific sections created subgroups, and this happened organically. The team or the organization known as Timbers Army had nothing to do with it. “People have always kind of just done whatever they’ve wanted, and as long a
s it is not violent or offensive no one is going to stop them,” Lenhart says.
Comparing fans’ enthusiasm and dedication is treacherous work. Everyone believes the supporters of his or her team are the best, and admitting that someone else’s could be better is seen as some sort of betrayal. But it would be difficult for an objective person to sit with Timbers Army and not concede that the experience might be the best of any sporting event in America. Forget Super Bowls or NCAA Tournament games or the World Series. Apologies to Duke’s Cameron Crazies or Green Bay’s Cheeseheads or the denizens of the Oakland Raiders Black Hole. Atop any fan’s bucket list should be experiencing a game from the North End of Providence Park. The more rain the better.
Timbers Army is so enthusiastic and organized that NBA and NHL teams have called its leaders—officially called the 107 Independent Supporters Trust—and asked for advice on how to re-create the atmosphere of Providence Park. They often don’t like or even understand the answer they get, which is: “Go find your Nevets and then get out of the way.”
It is a fitting message given that Lenhart is now mostly in the background as the group he created grows in size and influence. In 2009, Wright and others realized that the model of “an army with no generals” wasn’t sustainable. For almost a year meetings were held (at the Lucky Labrador Brewpub), and from that emerged the idea of the 107 Independent Supporters Trust. Elections were held in March 2010 for the Council of XI, the group’s board. Lenhart declined to be considered for a spot on the council. “The thing about Nevets now is that he is an idea guy, really good at coming up with something, and then he just kind of lets someone else take the lead and he slips into the background,” Wright says. “He never wants to be out front more than he has to be.”
Timbers Army is now much more than a group of fans. The members do charity work, including a large effort to renovate soccer fields in parks and schools around Portland, and they have a vast merchandising apparatus. “We try not to get involved in politics too much,” Wright says. But they did make one exception: helping Dan Saltzman, the swing vote in the stadium fight, get reelected. Wright, the political consultant, believes that if Timbers Army started endorsing candidates, it would become one of the most courted organizations in the state.