Dear Buffalo,
Hey there, my name is Dorothy. You remember me, right? Dorothy Gale? Dropped a house on a witch?
You loved me back when the 1939 movie version of "The Wizard of Oz" was on television each year. But I can understand why you might not like me so much anymore.
I'm a big Kansas City Chiefs fan.
In my defense, I am from Kansas. Like, famously from Kansas.
Sure, the Chiefs play in the Kansas City that's in Missouri, but there's another one right next door, and it's in Kansas. We have two Kansas Citys, just like you have two Niagara Fallses.
Look, I understand why you folks are none too pleased with my Chiefs. They've knocked your Bills out of the playoffs three times in recent years. (One of them was that whole 13-second fiasco, on which I am too polite to elaborate.)
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But it hasn't always been this way. The Bills are 8-2 coming into Sunday's game against the 9-0 Chiefs. The last time the Bills started out with that record, in 1993, they ended up playing the Chiefs in the AFC championship game – and the Bills won, 30-13, to reach their fourth consecutive Super Bowl.
Joe Montana got knocked out with a concussion early in the third quarter, when he got sandwiched by Bruce Smith and Jeff Wright. As one sign hanging in Orchard Park that day put it: "Going to Atlanta through Montana."
Two years earlier, the Bills had pounded the Chiefs, 37-14, in the divisional round of the playoffs, also at Rich Stadium, as it was then known.
So, we Chiefs fans know what it feels like to be on the other side of these things. (Those Chiefs, by the way, were coached by Marty Schottenheimer, who played for the Bills when they lost to the Chiefs at the Rockpile for the right to go to the first Super Bowl, following the 1966 season.)
A big difference, of course, is that while your 1990s Bills lost four Super Bowls, our 2020s Chiefs have won three – so far. And for that we have you to thank. After all, the Bills traded the draft pick to the Chiefs that they used to select Patrick Mahomes. And he has been, you'll excuse the expression, a real wizard.
But such things are a two-way street. Marv Levy coached the Chiefs before your Bills nabbed him. Marv famously said, "Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?" which is really just another way of saying, as I famously did, "There's no place like home."
Make that no place like home field. Sure, the Bills lost to the Chiefs at home in last season's playoffs, but it's always better to be home than not. That's why Sunday's game at Highmark Stadium looms large. It could go a long way toward deciding who gets the AFC's top seed on the (yellow brick) road to the Super Bowl.
Forgive my Oz gags. How can I resist? Our coach looks like the Cowardly Lion. Yours looks like the Scarecrow. (I'd make a joke about him not having a brain, except, you'll remember, I'm too polite for that.)
Where does the Tin Man fit in all this? Well, as the Wizard of Oz told him: "Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable." And who understands this better than Bills Mafia?
I'd like to close with another word of thanks. I owe a lot to Buffalo – and this time I don't mean the Mahomes draft choice. I'm talking about "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," the greatest song of the 20th century. (Don't take my word for it: the .)
Judy Garland sang it (as me) on my Auntie Em and Uncle Henry's Kansas farm. And yet I have to admit that maybe "Somewhere" belongs more to you folks on the Niagara Frontier than to us Kansans.
First, the genius who composed the song of the century was none other than .
And second, to get from one Kansas City to the other, you merely have to cross State Line Road. But to get from one Niagara Falls to the other, you head somewhere over the Rainbow ... Bridge.
Yours truly,
Dorothy