 |
|
GenePool
Humor
Patriotic Fervor
I just want to clear a few things up before proceeding to discuss the NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS WINNING THE FRIGGIN' SUPERBOWL.
First off, I am not what you would call the best sports fan in the world. By that I mean I do not bleed for my teams, I don't live and die over waiver wire transactions or random offseason trade minutia, and I don't pay attention to them when they suck. This is simply for the sake of my own sanity. I have heard the people who take their professional sports teams this seriously and it's self-evident they are suffering from severe brain damage. Take the Red Sox for example. If I did not stop watching them when their season started to go south-- and their season goes south every year-- I would be a babbling sociopath, because that's what following the Sox continuously does to people. For instance, last summer they went from a lovable, scrappy team to a pouty bunch of malcontents so fast it was as if they'd been replaced by the Bizarro Sox and nobody noticed. I could have kept up, but it was too depressing. When the apple of your eye goes rotten you simply have to throw it away before it starts stinking up your whole house, you know?
I can pinpoint the exact moment I became a root-when-they-win fan. (I can't call myself a fair-weather fan because for me, this implies I might root for another team instead, when what I really do is just ignore the sport entirely when my team is losing.) It was in 1978 when a weak-ass pop fly down the third base line off the bat of Carl Yastrzemski ended the Red Sox season. I was ten. I cried for a couple of hours and then simply ignored all professional sports until 1986, when the Sox teased me again.
I still can't talk about that year.
What you will notice is that I missed the 1981, 1984 and 1986 Celtics championship seasons (Celtics in '86 ended before Sox in '86 began.) I really feel terrible about this, but in defense of my budding teenage self, I was after all a budding teenager and had other things to worry about. Girls, for instance.
What I recall from watching football as a child was "how come Grogan keeps throwing the ball where nobody can catch it?" That's about it. I did watch their first trip to the Superbowl, but that was such a blowout the Pats final score was, I believe, a negative number. That experience was not enough to further my interest in the sport.
(Don't even talk to me about hockey. I'll watch the Bruins if they're in the playoffs, but only if there's nothing else on TV and I'm non-ambulatory for some reason.)
It wasn't until the late Eighties that I became a regular sports fan. This by itself is a minor miracle because there was no local sport worth following at that time. The Celtics were getting old or dropping dead on the court (or, in Len Bias's case, dropping dead right after getting drafted,) the Sox were, well, themselves, and the Patriots were a poorly coached collection of boorish lunatics.
I'm explaining all of this so you can understand that the PATRIOTS WINNING THE FRIGGIN' SUPERBOWL marks the first time in my life that a team I followed from the start of the season onward has won something. And I don't know how to cope with it. I'm so accustomed to having seasons end badly that I'm completely unschooled in the art of appreciating a world championship.
It doesn't help that this was easily the most surreal season I think any championship team has ever encountered. the rallying cry for this edition of the Patriots was "Are you KIDDING me?" Look at this list and tell me this story wasn't scripted by "The Replacements" screenwriter. They:
-- lose their quarterbacks coach in the preseason when he dies unexpectedly;
-- lose their pro bowl quarterback in the second game-- Bledsoe is nearly killed-- and replace him with Beaver Cleaver, who proceeds to lose only three times for the rest of the year;
-- have their best receiver for only one game all season because it turns out he is a bona fide nut job;
-- win one game when an unconscious player retains possession of the ball;
-- use plays that their offensive coordinator steals from his nine year old son-- and having them work;
-- win another game when an errant pass bounces off the knee of a defender and into the hands of one of our receivers, who runs it in for a touchdown;
-- find themselves with five regular season games to go needing to win all five and have mighty Oakland lose four of their last six in order to get a first-round bye in the playoffs-- and then having it happen.
That's just the regular season, and there were so many incredible moments I've forgotten more than a couple.
Then came the playoffs, which were even more bizarre. You know that snowstorm that hit the area the night of the Oakland game? It's the only one we've had all year. How's that for timing? And Vinatieri's 45 yard field goal-- considering he kicked it as time was running down, leaving him no chance to set himself, clean a space for the kick, or figure out exactly where the goalposts were-- was the most clutch sports play I have ever witnessed.
Are you KIDDING me?
(And don't start whining about "The Call." Yeah, it was a bad call-- although it did follow the letter of the rule-- but it didn't exactly give the Pats the ball on the one yard line. If Oakland wants to curl up in a fetal position rather than finishing the game, that's not the ref's fault.)
I kept waiting for it to end. That's the thing about being a root-when-they-win fan; I was expecting them to start sucking, or at least to eventually lose one. It's a survival instinct. It's what keeps me from being one of those guys who wait on hold for two hours to tell a radio host that they should run Smith more from the "I" position against a 3-4 defense in short yardage second down situations because the defense is sitting on the slant routes and everybody knows it.
I expected us to lose in Pittburgh. That surely was the place where it would all come crashing down and we would be left with peppy sports page articles about how far the team had come, and how they weren't even expected to reach the playoffs after all, blah blah blah. Then the script writer threw us another plot twist: the Steelers are a little too hard on the Beaver and in comes Bledsoe to lead the team to victory.
Are you KIDDING me?
With the team off to the Superbowl, I decided it was time to force my children to watch. I'd been ambivalent about actively encouraging them follow the Pats up to this point because I kept expecting it to end, and I didn't want them to be the ones crying in their rooms after the Yaz pop-up. But this was going to be different. I didn't care any more that the Rams had the best offense since Attilla the Hun, the best defense since the English Channel, and more pro-bowl players than Canton, Ohio. I was no longer guided by reason; faith had taken over. The Patriots were going to beat the Rams, and by God my children were going to witness it.
So before the game I sat them both down and explained the rules. (I covered the basics and skipped errata such as, say, what constitutes a "tuck.") Apparently, this was also useful information to my wife, who I have been trying to get to watch football with me for most of our marriage. It never occurred to me that she didn't already know these rules. Then the game started, and I crossed my fingers and several other body parts and hoped that I wasn't about to scar my family permanently.
Two miraculous things happened that night. My non-football-watching family watched an entire game of football, and the Patriots won.
Are you KIDDING me?
Nothing makes sense any more. Suddenly "Boston Sports Fan" equals "Happy," which makes about as much sense as "Two" equals "Three." I've been listening to the lunatic fringe callers on talk radio all week and none of them have anything to discuss except how great they feel. Even the hosts are beside themselves. They giggle for four straight hours on air. Nobody minds.
Today I heard a writer who has been following the Patriots since their inception admit that he's waited a week to write about this season because he was sure something bad was going to happen and he didn't want to look foolish. Never mind that the Pats had already won everything they could win, because surely there was another shoe somewhere, and it simply had to drop. It always had before. This is how we've been conditioned.
Meanwhile I'm picking up every single scrap of information about the Patriots season and joyfully living in the past. I have no idea when pitchers and catchers report, and I don't even care because the only important date on my calendar is February 28, the day NFL Films releases the Patriots Season videotape. I plan to watch it over and over until Vinatieri's winning field goal permanently supplants the "ball between Buckner's legs" play that has been on a continuous loop in my brain for sixteen years.
None of that stuff matters any more. This time Yaz didn't pop up. The New England Patriots won the friggin' Superbowl.
Wow.
© 2002, Gene Doucette
| |
|