Billy Sims has come unstuck in time

Somewhere on the road to Tralfamadore, I find myself lost in space, wonderin' where the Lions are.

A few weeks before he died in the fall of 1980, my father bought me a Honolulu Blue Billy Sims jersey. 

It was Billy’s rookie season, and he and the Detroit Lions were taking the league by storm. The previous year, they’d finished a woeful 2-14. Pops had actually taken me to see one of those two measly victories, when they beat the Atlanta Falcons at the Pontiac Silverdome. 

I was 11 and incredulous that the guys in the seats behind us were rooting for the Falcons. I didn’t know you could do that!

After a trip to Harper Sport Shop to procure the coveted Number 20, we stopped by our local record store and scooped up a copy of “Another One Bites the Dust.”

But even after a miraculous 4-0 start to the 1980 season, not even Jimmy “Spiderman” Allen could spin a web to the Super Bowl. After my father left us in October, the Lions bit the dust themselves and, of course, they missed the playoffs.

I was lost without my pops, and I was lost in Detroit.

In an aimless attempt to somehow find my way home, I wore that Billy Sims jersey to football practice every day at Balduck Park for the next three years.

And despite my lack of grit on the gridiron, our little Pop Warner football team somehow made its way to the Silverdome to play a game on the unforgiving Astroturf.

(It did not end well.)

Somewhere in time, there’s a little Syrian kid on the east side of Detroit, riding his father’s old red Schwinn up and down East Outer Drive, clad in his shoulder pads and Billy Sims jersey, his blue Riddell helmet dangling off the handlebars, well on his way to Tralfamadore. 

And somewhere that little kid is trying to tell me it’s OK to drink the Kool-Aid. 

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Dave Mesrey is a freelance writer from Detroit. Bylines in the Detroit Metro Times.