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When I think of my dad, one of the first things I think about is that night in the rain in 1974.

It wasn't just raining at Legion Field. It was gushing. I was 11 years old and it seemed we'd drown in that wall of hurricane-induced water. It hit concrete and poured down the stairs like some kind of waterfall.

There we were, Dad and me, huddled on aluminum seats with garbage bags over our heads, watching the Birmingham Americans beat the Chicago Fire in the upstart World Football League.

Just me and my Dad. And 54,870 other soaking, screaming idiots.

Birmingham Americans kicker Earl Sark

He would never leave a football game early, my Dad. It wasn't a matter of the ticket price, or of getting full value for the entertainment dollar. It was about doing your part and showing your support. It was a matter of pride.

In yourself. In your team. In your town.

So we sat and we watched, and in the final moment we were rewarded when a kicker by the name of Earl Sark (yes, I had to look it up) booted a field goal to put out the Fire.

It was glorious. And it is even better in memory.

My Dad and I loved the time together at the Americans games, and the Vulcans games the next year. I kept a scrapbook of those teams, and I cried when that league folded.

We went on to cheer for the Stallions in the USFL a few years later. We visited a couple of Birmingham Fire games and even went to one of those Barracudas games, when the Canadian Football League tried to expand south. But in honesty the fun started to slip away after the USFL. In the old days Birmingham could boast that it succeeded even if the leagues failed. By the time the XFL came along that was no longer true.

The thing that was missing was the pride. Not the pride in the team, or in the effort, but in the city itself. It was gone, like the Americans. And it was impossible not to see it.

By the turn of the 21st century, it seemed that Birmingham's only professional sport was Birmingham bashing, and it was practiced by residents in the city and in its suburbs. We were champions of that, here in the city of perpetual promise and eternal disappointment. Nobody was there to cry when those other leagues failed. Because nobody gave them a chance to succeed.

So now, as I look around my city, I want to cry again. Not because teams and leagues have come and gone. Not even because my dad has gone.

I want to cry because, for the first time in a long time, that sense of pride that was so glorious in 1974 is back. I swear it is. Not at Legion Field in the rain, perhaps, but at Regions Field and in entertainment districts across the city. In restaurants and theaters and museums and bars, in businesses, and on the campus of UAB and Birmingham-Southern and Samford and Miles.

Stop long enough to listen and you can hear it crashing down in waves. Civic pride, for the first time in a long time. That's what it looks like, Birmingham. That's what it feels like. That's the way it sounds.

I'm glad I stayed through the storm to witness it again. I only wish Dad could see it, too.