Wednesday, June 12, 2002 Updated: June 13, 12:17 PM ET
Believers
By by Bill Simmons
Just 11 months ago, before the Boston sports scene joined forces with the Juvenation Machine, a trendy bar called The Place opened downtown with a unique gimmick: At the tail end of every night, it showed a slickly packaged, 15-minute video of Boston sports highlights. And every night, The Place just stopped. There was Havlicek stealing the ball, Orr soaring through the air, Bird draining a three, Fisk waving his home run fair ... just one fond memory after another, finishing with a flurry of highlights as Aerosmith's "Dream On" bellowed in the background.
People couldn't get enough of it. When local TV anchor Bob Lobel played the video on his Sunday night sports show, the response was so overwhelming, his station ended up re-airing the video multiple times over the following months.
There's a lesson here: We were living in the past. Weaned on greatness in our formative years, we Boston fans longed for the good ol' days, when the Celtics and Bruins played until June, when the star-crossed Red Sox made their occasional World Series run, when even the Patriots were interesting.
The hopes of Red Sox Nation rest on Pedro's shaky shoulder.
Looking back, we were like a jilted boyfriend who kept sifting through pictures and letters after a breakup, checking voice mail every two hours in the faint hope that she'd called, visiting old haunts, pining for the one-in-a-million chance that she would show up at the door and say, "Take me back." That was us. We were the jilted boyfriend.
So when things finally turned around last winter, nobody knew quite how to feel. Is this really happening? Did the Patriots just win the Super Bowl? Are the Celtics a legitimate contender? What's so right with the Red Sox? For a while, we were immersed in a collective state of disbelief.
Now, in the afterglow of the Super Bowl and the Celtics' valiant run, with the Red Sox looking capable of staving off the Yankees, disbelief has given way to belief. Fenway may be unchanged. But we're different.
Hey, you couldn't blame us for being such jerks. We had just endured a 15-year run that included the Red Sox blowing the 1986 World Series; Bias and Lewis dropping dead; Parcells going to the Jets; the dreadful Pitino Era; the Pats nearly bolting for St. Louis and Hartford; the death of Boston Garden; Clemens and Vaughn leaving for greener pastures; Bird and McHale suffering eventual career-ending injuries; the Bruins failing to win a Stanley Cup with Bourque and Neely in their primes; Bledsoe never quite fulfilling lofty expectations; Larry Andersen for Jeff Bagwell; losing out on the Tim Duncan Sweepstakes; the publication of The Curse of the Bambino; Paul Pierce nearly being stabbed to death; Boggs, Bourque and Clemens all winning rings with non-Boston teams; the Pete Carroll Era; the hated Yankees winning four World Series in five years; and the unprecedented 2000 season, in which no Boston team made the playoffs.
Did I leave anything out? By the time 2001 rolled around, we were racked with more self-pity and doubt than Woody Allen and Larry Sanders combined. Nothing personified the new-age Boston sports mentality better than the Whiner Line, a segment on WEEI's drive-time sports radio show that featured a string of nasty messages from disgruntled callers. When Rick Pitino dubbed us the Fellowship of the Miserable during his legendary "Larry Bird's not walkin' through that door, fans" speech, it was his one shining moment in four years. The Ricktator was right: We were miserable.
Looking back, things weren't nearly that bad. The B's went to two Stanley Cup Finals (1988, 1990). The Sox made the postseason five times from 1988 to 1999. The Celts were borderline contenders in Bird's final two seasons (1990-91 and '91-92). The Pats lost to the Packers in Super Bowl XXXI. ESPN Classic regularly shows two Boston-related playoff games from the '90s (Game 5 of the 1991 Pacers-Celtics series and of the 1999 Indians-Sox series). And we enjoyed an array of memorable characters during that time, including Parcells, Bledsoe, Neely, Clemens, Mo, Martin, Pierce, Bourque, Reggie, Pitino, Manny, Antoine, Thornton, Oates, Nomar and the sublime Pedro Martinez.
Other cities gladly would have traded places over that stretch, but we saw it differently. With no college program to unify the region, with no pro team that rose above everyone else, with no Garden mystique, with Fenway Park decaying by the day, with a championship drought extending into another decade, we had nothing to make us feel remotely special anymore. Except our storied history.
So we clung to it. I found myself popping in old Boston game tapes, especially during the NBA playoffs, when the Celtics were nowhere to be seen. During one summer night in 1998, I went out drinking with some buddies; we ended up back at my place at 3 a.m., watching Game 5 of the 1987 Pistons-Celts series. After enough beers, it almost felt like the game was happening live: Parish belting Laimbeer with a right hook ... Larry stealing the ball from Isiah, then dishing to DJ for the go-ahead basket ... the Garden rocking and swaying, ready to collapse. Seemed like a million years ago.
Our own sports scene rendered impotent, we sought out Boston-related threads in the national scene. We rooted against the Jets with Parcells and Martin. We rooted against the Yankees dynasty. We rooted for Flutie's Bills and Bourque's Avalanche. We rooted against the Lakers just out of principle. We rooted vehemently against Clemens, our ungrateful superstar who went on cruise control during his final four seasons in Boston, left for Canada and bigger money without giving Red Sox fans anything beyond a cursory "Thanks for the support" -- then reclaimed his dominance in Toronto and New York. During the 2000 World Series, we rooted for the Yankees and Mets to engage in a bench-clearing brawl with casualties.
A weird mentality began to take shape, dueling "Woe Is Me" and "The Sky Is Falling" complexes. Conditioned by years of failure, frustration and misfortune, we expected the worst, almost seeming happier when things went badly, like we were living some sort of deranged, self-fulfilling prophecy. When the Red Sox fell short against the Yankees in the 1999 ALCS -- a series marred by shaky umpiring and bad breaks that went against the Sox, as well as their own poor play -- there was a sense of inevitability. As strange as this sounds, the negative karma probably affected the actual games, the way a gambler who constantly dwells on his bad luck can derail an entire blackjack table. We were a collective head case, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. And usually it did, with a resounding thud.
Then the Patriots came along.
They snuck up on everyone, partly because of Sept. 11, partly because the team had been written off after Drew Bledsoe's injury. But during a November game in Foxboro, when the Patriots gave the vaunted Rams all they could handle, you could feel everyone thinking, "Hmmm." And for the next two-plus months, they brought us along for one of those "I know this might end soon, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts" rides that makes sports so much fun. Even if they'd lost in Round 2 to the Raiders, nobody would have complained. We were playing with house money.
The Snow Game changed everything. Trailing by 10 points in a howling storm, Tom Brady rallied the Pats with an array of short passes and misdirection plays, capped off by the team's biggest break in 40 years: instant replay's reversal of Brady's fumble in the final two minutes, followed by Adam Vinatieri's knuckleball field goal that soared through the snowflakes for 45 glorious yards. Once they completed the comeback and defeated the Raiders in OT, a black cloud lifted. Never, ever, ever did the Patriots win these games. Quite simply, it was the happiest Boston sports moment in years.
We believed. Adamantly. For the first time in years, we gave ourselves to a sports team, touting them to anyone who would listen, even as they headed to Pittsburgh as eight-point underdogs. After they dispatched the Steelers, we vowed they would surprise the Rams on Super Bowl Sunday. And they ended up pulling off the second-biggest upset in Super Bowl history -- in one of the three greatest Super Bowl games of all time, no less.
Nobody could believe it. Our beloved Patriots, the black sheep of the sports scene for four decades, had erased 15 years of failure in one fell swoop.
Once we regained our swagger as fans, our delirious, incredulous euphoria spread to our other teams. For the first time in FleetCenter history, the place consistently rocked during NBA and NHL games, capped by the Celtics' unexpected playoff run this spring. When Derek Lowe (Derek Lowe?) tossed the first no-hitter at Fenway in 37 years, we believed anything was possible, even the Celts coming back from 25 points down with 13 minutes remaining in Game 3 of the Nets series. If you closed your eyes during some of those Celtics playoff games this spring, you would have sworn that Boston Garden had been reincarnated. Fans remembered how a little noise at the right time can make all the difference, how a little unconditional love can push players to the next level. It was 1986 all over again. We were part of this, too.
Paul, you can always catch the Nets next year.
After the Celtics exited the stage, having far exceeded anyone's expectations, our attention turned happily to the Sox. Unlike with the past two Red Sox teams, you want to root for these guys. The Chicken Little Complex has given way to the Grady Little Complex -- put a smile on your face, show a little faith, keep your spirits high, don't overreact, enjoy yourself -- and it's a perfect marriage between likable players and satisfied fans. Everyone seems to feel the same way: Hey, if the Patriots can win the Super Bowl, anything's possible, right?
Right. When Manny Ramirez broke his finger during a home-plate collision, nobody panicked. When the star-crossed Lowe gave the Sox a starting tandem as good as Clemens and Bruce Hurst, we acted as if we had expected it all along. When Pedro worried that his arm felt "heavy" during a late-May start in Toronto, nobody needed to be talked off the Tobin Bridge. Even as bullpen problems loom like an October Achilles' heel, they haven't spawned the typical degree of urgency and panic on Internet message boards and sports radio shows.
We actually have faith in these guys, mainly because they have earned it. They seem totally unflappable, like a cruise ship gliding along. When TV cameras pan the dugout during games, somebody always seems to be goofing around or giggling. After each victory, bubbly Carlos Baerga sprints out to the mound and high-fives everyone in sight, the baseball version of Mark Madsen. There doesn't seem to be a bad guy on the team, a group that thrives on making the Little Plays -- first basemen scooping throws out of the dirt, infielders turning impossible double plays, role players coming up with big hits. There's a lot to like.
Not only is Johnny Damon a superb leadoff hitter, he's also Boston's best centerfielder since Freddie Lynn. Catcher Jason Varitek might be the most underrated player in the league. Manny will be back soon enough to join Nomar and Shea Hillenbrand and Brian Daubach in the middle of the lineup. Anchored by Martinez and Lowe, the rotation is sound, and now that he's rediscovered his fastball, Ugueth Urbina has become a more reliable closer than Mariano Rivera.
Confident? Hell, yes, we're confident. Maybe the ultimate test came a few weeks ago as a rumor surfaced of another baseball strike in August. As recently as last year, the mere possibility that
a once-in-a-generation Red Sox season could be derailed before the playoffs ... well, you can imagine what would have happened around here. Not now. We're treating the potential strike like a nuisance, a conundrum that will somehow resolve itself before it's too late. The greatest Boston sports run since 1986 couldn't end because of a players' strike. No way. Not this year.
And if it happens ... hey, so be it. We have the Super Bowl champs, NBA and NHL teams with bright futures and a trunk load of memories from the past eight months. You couldn't ask for more.
Drop into The Place these days, and you'll notice they've tinkered with the Boston sports video. It now starts with a graphic that reads, "TO APPRECIATE THE PRESENT ... " followed by clips of Vinatieri's Super Bowl-winning field goal, Lowe's no-hitter and Game 5 of the Sixers-Celts series. Before segueing to the good ol' days, another graphic pops up: "YOU MUST REMEMBER THE PAST."
We do. It's just that the present is pretty cool too.
