No matter how many birthdays you've had, Sunday's Detroit Lions game against San Francisco is once-in-a-lifetime-so-far.

Yes, the Lions won the NFL championship in 1957, which beat not winning it. But playing the 49ers for a spot in Super Bowl LVIII in 2024 is bigger and grander than that, and a heck of a lot more fun.

Nobody but linebacker Joe Schmidt was wearing a Joe Schmidt jersey when the Lions thumped the Cleveland Browns 59-14 on Dec. 29, 1957. Nobody but chickens was giving much thought to chicken wings. Taylor Swift's mom was 12 days from being born.

It was a primitive time, without local television coverage of NFL games in Detroit or most other league cities. There were only 12 teams, compared with 32 today, and with much of the country apparently still unexplored, the Lions played in the Western Conference.

Among the many things more notable than pro football were baseball, heavyweight boxing and Miss America, and if you can name the current champions of all three of those things you deserve a packet of sea monkeys, which were 1957's most popular toy.

If the '57 Lions were honored with a victory parade, I can't find a record of it, and there was certainly no one at the Detroit Free Press writing a Lions Diary.

Until this month, the Lions had gone 32 years without winning a playoff game. Now they've won two, in Detroit, while TV broadcasters gush about what's here instead of sniping at what's missing.

Forgive us for going perhaps a trifle overboard in terms of attention, but this isn't just a bunch of inordinately large men leaning on each other while some smaller guys scurry around them.

It's an economic driver and a uniter and heaps of fun, even for someone like me.

I was a sportswriter years ago, and that feeling of neutrality has been hard to shake. I'll watch a spectacular play at Comerica Park and clap politely and say, "Oh, nicely done," as though I'm wearing a top hat and a monocle at the opera.

But these Lions have me roaring — and stocking up on chicken wings, which, for the record, first showed up on the menu at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, in 1964.

If there's something you'd like to know about the Lions that doesn't involve the games, or something you notice that amuses or enchants or infuriates you, or someone who deserves attention and isn't getting any, hit me up at NARubin@freepress.com.

I'll see what I can do. And I will continue to maintain that what the Lions are doing in 2024 is more gripping than what they did in 1957, when they were expected to be good and the trophy sat on the shelf next to the ones from 1952 and '53.

Winning now is harder, the pressure is higher, the rewards are greater, and Taylor Swift is watching.

Janet Krietemeyer Keeler of Eckerd College in Florida put a stopwatch on the Kansas City Chiefs’ game against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night and determined that Swift, whose beau plays for the Chiefs, was on camera for exactly 24.09 seconds.

Her exposure this season has annoyed some football fans, or even enraged them, which seems like a lot of grumbling for less elapsed time than another pharmaceutical commercial. Me, I’d love to watch her watch the Lions in Las Vegas on Feb. 11.

That would be mammoth. Titanic. Gargantuan.

But first, they have to win Sunday in Santa Clara in their biggest game ever — so far.

Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lions Diary says game against 49ers Sunday is Detroit's biggest ever