At the gym this morning, I got to talking with an acquaintance named Nate. I don't know much about Nate, except that -- like most of the guys at my gym -- he's a fanatical Boston sports fan.
Although I've lived in Boston for more than a decade, I'm just about the opposite of a Boston sports fan. Full disclosure: my new book contains an essay called Red Sox Anti-Christ.
Nonetheless, it was impossible for me to deny that Boston is enjoying what may be the most mind-boggling run in modern sports history.
Not only are the Red Sox in the World Series for the second time in four years (thanks to an epic comeback against the Cleveland Indians), and not only are the 7-0 Patriots looking utterly invincible, and not only have the Celtics managed to assemble a trio of all-stars (Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce & Ray Allen) to rival the Big Three of yore, but even the Bruins are off to their best start in years. Oh, and the Boston College Eagles are ranked Number 2 in the nation.
Huh?
So I'm sitting there with Nate and I can't help but say to him, out of sheer, grudging fellow sportsfreak admiration: "It's a good time to be a Boston sports fan, huh?"
"I guess," Nate muttered.
"What do you mean 'you guess'?" I said.
"We haven't won anything yet," he said.
"Yeah, but come on. Everything's going your way. Even the Celtics look like they have a shot."
"I'll tell you what I miss," Nate said. "I miss the Eighties. Bird. Parrish. I loved those guys."
"Wait a second," I said. "Right now, all four of your teams are lighting it up. The Sox have shrugged off their rep as chokers. If Tom Brady gets any better, he's going to ascend to heaven before the Pats get to the playoffs. The Celtics pulled themselves out of the crapper. This is your time to shine, baby. It's never going to get any better than this!"
Nate nodded. Then he said, in what was clearly a reluctant tone (really more of a sigh than a declaration), "True."
What I'm trying to convey here is something I've experienced over and over as an exile in Boston: the bizarre emotional dementia of the local fans. In blunt terms: these folks cannot simply enjoy the success of their teams.
Red Sox Nation is the most famous example. No matter what the Sox do in the first game of the World Series tonight, the faithful will find something to whine about. (And more so, they will feel that they are doing their duty by whining.)
I realize that complaint is the lingua franca of fandom, and that the partisans in Philly and New York and Chicago can be pretty unforgiving also. But having lived and rooted in half a dozen major American cities, I can say with assurance that the Beantown faithful are, by far, the most pathological of the lot.
They have all the passion and knowledge you could ever want. No argument there. But they're also tragically attached to their own martyrdom. If you gave the diehards truth serum, I suspect at least a few would admit to some disappointment at having won the World Series after '86 years. They used to be Major League Baseball's most famous hard-luck case. Now, they're just another big-market bully with cash to throw around.
Oh sure, the fans still complain. But it's just not the same.
And so, oddly, even as an avowed Red Sox hater, I sometimes find myself rooting for the team. If triumph is the worst punishment they can suffer, let them suffer all week.
Steve Almond is the author of the essay collection (Not that You Asked). He loves all his friends, even those who root for the Red Sox.
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Boston would not be Boston without New England Transcendentalist Angst.
Let's bring the curse back and Bill Buckner's ground ball. Those were the days.
JCP - That was good.
LOL... well, the Sox fans sure give the Cubs fans a run for their money when it comes to fear of winning. Something to do with true victimology, I think! After being beaten for so long, one just can't trust the chance that a few moments of good feelings might set you up for a fall!
Steve- your column is spoken like someone who truely isn't a sports fan. How 'bout this- if Huff Post was the only website or news organization in the country and they're only going to allow one article this year. Oh, gosh Steve- yours didn't make it! But- hey, I hope it's good enough for you that alot of your friends liked it. Now let's let this happen for 10-20 years and every year Steve, your friends tell you "This one is better than ever! They'll definitely use it!" And every year you get the pat on the shoulder "Almost Steve. Maybe next year." Eventually even you would realize that all that encouragement along the way isn't the salve that heals you.
Any sports fan know that you ain't won it til you actually won it. That's even begun to dawn on Yankees fans. Winning the "Woulda Shoulda Coulda" award doesn't amount to a pitcher of warm spit.
As a Boston sports fan, I can honestly say I'm about 70% as emotionally invested in the Red Sox playoff run as I was in 2004, and about 50% as emotionally invested in this Pats season as I was in 2001. Listening to the broadcasts (I still have them all on DVD) of the Sox and Pats championships still gives me chills. Tonight, I might watch the Sox game, if I'm not too busy studying for an exam tomorrow. This wouldn't have happened before 2004, or 2001 for that matter.
As a Yankee fan, I have enjoyed pointing out to Boston that after winning in '04, they no longer have an identity. They are just another big market team with a lot of money that has a recent championship. They are the '02 Angels, and the '05 White Sox. Should they win this one, they can be the '97/'03 Marlins.
And for Yankees fans, we don't care who wins when it ain't us. All the other teams are our bitter rival. Just ask one of the Yankees' biggest fans -- that eternal optimist, Tom Brady.
2000.
What? You think he's gonna go back to fielding shattered bats? More power to him - he can definitely afford the $50k fines as long as there's always someone desperate enough to pay him the GDP of a small Eastern European country for half a season's work. ;)
"Just ask one of the Yankees' biggest fans -- that eternal optimist, Tom Brady."
Maybe you guys can pay him to take some time off to go to one of the series games so he can run some videotape of Jason Varitek calling pitches or something. Your pitching staff can use all the help it can get now that the ol' $22 million Rocket's gonna be flying back to Katy, TX.
In New York, baseball is a business. In Boston, it's a religion. As in Puritanism. And nobody was more pessimistic than the Puritans. As a Puritan you're obligated to feel sour about something, even winning.
Boston is more obsessed with the past than New York too. New York puts up new buildings, forgets the old. Boston still has that colonial charm. Ivy-laden Harvard. And Fenway Park, built in 1735 (witches were pushed off the Green Monster to see if they could fly).
Yeah, Boston wins the series finally, and someone gets killed in the celebration. What sort of curse do you imagine that brings?
It must be like religion--the lord must have been running out of ways to torment you and now, like JCP says, you even lose the eternal loser tag. Except the last 12 years or so in the division.
The ultimate irony is the New York City kid in the lineup. He'll learn ya somethin'
'bout winnin'.
Oh, you mean the guy batting in the 200's at 8th in the lineup who drops popflys?
And you'd be where without him?
No. He meant the kid from Washington Heights who earned the WS MVP in 2004.
Having lived in Boston for three years before settling in NYC for decades, I totally agree about the whining and constant crankiness, not just of the fans but their sportswriters, too. Let it go, Beantown. It's only a game.
It's what happens when you combine Irish blood and Catholicism. Life long pessimism.
It bodes ill for the Red Sox. Rudy said that he's rooting for the Red Sox-now that the Yankees are out of it.
Gee, as if New York City didn't need another reason to hate Giuliani as much as we hate Johnny Damon up here...
You don't have to live in Boston to be nutty about the Red Sox. I'm from New Orleans and I'm about as crazy as they come....go, oh please, go Sox!
Lyn LeJeune - The Beatitudes Network Rebuilding the Public Libraries of New Orleans and The International Blue Book Campaign at www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com
Hey, at least we're not a bunch of bandwagoners in New England...unlike the fans in some other parts of the northeast...
Sure you are. The wheels are square, tho.
nah, the bandwagon is just up on cinder blocks in the front yard...
No, we used the cinder blocks to build a shed for Ted Williams' head. He wanted us to hold onto it so we can clone him if the Yankees are ever a threat again.
At least they're not falling off...
You can't say that just yet. You gotta get rocked to sleep first...
Steve, you're clearly unfamiliar with what another writer named Stephen as said about the subject, this one being King: here in Boston, we EXPECT things to go to hell on us. We expect traffic to snarl, the train to be late, the drive-thru guy to botch our order. We can also accept losing so long as the Yankees lose, too.
"No matter what the Sox do in the first game of the World Series tonight, the faithful will find something to whine about. "
just like the modern Soreloserman Dem party:
"they stole the election"
"Bush blew up World Trade Center"
"Halliburton, Karl Rove, Big Business,............"
No wonder MA is a perennial blue state.
Ok, I HATE Boston sports, but I hate conservative trolls more. You wanna slam MA? Ever have a tea party in Texas, a*&hole? Go find your own country. This one was founded in MA.
Oh, and we don't complain about Karl Rove anymore. Haven't you heard? He's been "outed." As you may have suspected, he truly IS a fiendishly clever political genius, but has actually been working for the Democratic party for six years. See, we feared the GOP was actually building a real movement that might last, so we enlisted our own special evil genius, Karl, to find a complete idiot to install as president, and then advise him to stock the government with utter incompetents, such that the whole conservative movement would be set back about 35 years.
Mission accomplished BEEYATCH!
You can take your Soreloserman comments and lickspittle shine Hillary's boots, 'cause they were made for walkin all over you chump! Hahahahahah!
Go Rox!
There's nothing I hate more than when politicians "slam" someone for being from Massachusetts. It may be a bastion of liberalism, but they make it seem like Logan International is the type of place where Democratic senators are caught trying to solicit gay sex.
The rest of the country could learn some real lessons from Massachusetts, past and present. Leaders in healthcare, leaders in education, leaders in gay rights, leaders in technological advancements. Massachusetts is the reason this country is what it is, from the Boston Tea Party to the best and brightest college students, to the next medical advancements.
There should be a referendum to ship Alabama and Mississippi's 15 total electoral college votes to Massachusetts.
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Posted October 24, 2007 | 01:39 PM (EST)