My Everton #172: Instantly At Home

My Everton shares first-hand accounts describing the most-treasured memories of fans, players, and staff both past and present. 

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My son’s godfather is a lifelong Blue from Northern Ireland. There were subtle encouragements from the start. 

At six months old, my son was gifted his first Everton kit. Beyond that, though, nothing was really pressed on him. I guess it was understood that he would come to see the light on his own. 

That first vision happened the summer my son turned six. We made sure to be in the stands for a pre-season friendly versus Arsenal in Maryland.  

The boy was enamoured of the blue smoke during the pregame; by Z-Cars; by the other Blues that accepted us free of scrutiny or judgement, simply because we had come to support Everton. 

We were instantly at home as we joined in the chants pistoning out into the Baltimore night: 

“…and if…ya know…yer history…”

I remember watching my son that night, in the Toffees’ end of an American football stadium converted for the occasion, genuinely awestruck by so much. 

There were the effortless crosses that seemed effervescent in the soup of a Mid-Atlantic summer. 

There was the way Pickers seemed to set himself on springs before leaping into a save.  

There was the visual red-blue iconography of the two most tenured sides in England’s top flight. That was enough to grab me, even. 

The experience inked a much stronger impression on my son. Everton lost that friendly 2-0. But, that night, they won a fan for life in a little boy from Baltimore. 

He dropped basketball like a hot potato and started focusing on football. He hasn’t turned back.

When he asked his godfather for his first shirt, he wanted Myko’s 19. In a sea of Messi and Ronaldo shirts amongst kids his age here in America, my son proudly wears royal blue. 

As he’s started playing competitively as a goalkeeper, his go-for training sessions is a retro Neville shirt we got him for Christmas. 

Eventually I got to be a Blue, too.  During the season, my son had me subscribe to get the matches on my phone.   

So it was, in the odd Saturday morning ceremony of football supporters in America, I pulled up Everton-Leeds in February of 2023. The two of us sprawled out in the living room and watched together. 

When Captain Coleman connected on that unlikely, sideways strike at the 64th minute, we levitated. On my tiny phone screen, the Gwladys Street End erupted. 

The Goodison Roar unleashed complete. As if we caught some springs from the Gwladys on an internet delay across the Atlantic, we were lifted off floor 5,000 miles away. 

I felt in that moment a Goodison jump; the unified rise; the collective hinge in a moment of joy and celebration when a goal is scored. I don’t think I’ve seen a celebration among sports supporters so instant or heartfelt as when the Toffees get one in.

In the moment during the Leeds match, I felt a surge of pure belief. Surely, I’d grown too old and too weary to feel such things from sports.  I certainly did not expect to find it watching a relegation six-pointer on a sleepy Saturday.

I expect that belief, seeded in watching Everton fight to stay up on an otherwise gloomy, gray day in Liverpool, will stay with me as long as I follow football.  

I also own a strong belief that as my son forges his own path in life, we will always be Blues together. 

We will at least have that one thing in common as we endure the trials of his growing up and growing into his own.  I suppose this Everton evangelism is just one of many proofs that we picked the best for godparents.

It is not lost on me that our common ancestors left the Liverpool docks to come to America, years before Reverend Chambers formed the first squad at St. Domingo’s.  What a pilgrimage it will be when we circle back to Merseyside.

It may take some time yet, but we will make it to stand in Hill Dickinson someday. We’ll find our brick on the Everton Way.

We’ll declare we know our history proper enough and maybe spring up with the crowd to celebrate a victory. 

No matter what, we will make it home as Evertonians.

By Travis Nagy, Evertonian