My colleagues were well aware of my passion for sports, thanks to numerous occasions of what they regarded as absolute lunacy. Like writing a prayer for a Red Sox championship and inserting it in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Or bolting Managua midrevolution to reach Panama City, where I could watch the NCAA basketball Final Four. When my friends asked me–and they inevitably asked me–would I ever considered being a sports reporter, I always gave the same stock answer. “Sports are I what I do for fun,” I’d say. “But not what I want to do with my life. They’re just not important enough.”
Nothing I have seen or done in a decade now of covering sports has changed my opinion that sports are not very important, at least in the cosmic scheme of things. But what I have come to understand is that while sports may not be innately important, they are, in fact, very important to a great many people. (And I guess that should have been rather obvious since that group has always included me, much of my family and most of my friends.) In virtually every region of this country, there are legions who simply live and die with the local pro, college or even high-school teams.
So it was not all that surprising that in the aftermath of September 11, much of this nation’s emotional catharsis and its patriotic rebirth was played out in our stadiums and arenas. Nowhere was this more obvious than in New York. It was rather amazing to watch the city’s star athletes, in what was an extraordinary turnabout from their traditional behavior, grasp the magnitude of the civic tragedy and connect with their fans in the most genuine, heartfelt fashion.
That was evident with athletes from every pro team in the area. But the most dramatic embodiment of the city’s heightened connection with its teams was the New York Yankees, a ballclub that was far grander in defeat this past season than it had been in victory the several previous years. With its succession of miracle rallies and magical comebacks in the league playoffs and the World Series, the Yankees came to symbolize the city’s true grit and its innate resilience. The Yankees were the emotional balm at the very center of the civic healing.
I live in Boston, a city where the tragedy didn’t exact anywhere near as huge a toll as in New York. Still, the loss of life here was considerable. As was the pain. And without a visible scar of the devastation, it was hard to find a rallying point around which to heal. There was a lot of guilt here that Logan Airport should be the launching pad for such a national horror. And while few doubt it could have happened anywhere, from any airport in this country (and, of course, did at Newark and Dulles), Bostonians recognized a painful truth: that our decadent local politics with its heritage of mindless patronage played a critical role in facilitating the tragedy.
Boston was a city desperately in need of some kind of civic booster shot. And on September 11, there appeared no way its sports teams could contribute anything toward that. Indeed, Boston’s pro sports teams were at what was likely an all-time nadir. The Red Sox were in the midst of their usual September swoon, only this one was almost unprecedented for the magnitude of the players’ whining, sulking and collective ill will. The hockey Bruins and basketball Celtics were projected for dismal campaigns. The Celtics, once the greatest pro sports franchise in the country, hadn’t seen the playoffs since the Larry Bird era ended a decade ago. And the Bruins, once a perennial playoff team, had missed the postseason two years straight.
Most dismal of all were the prospects for the New England Patriots, just five years removed from the Super Bowl. The NFL had already scheduled the Pats for a bye in the season’s final week, a designation that goes to the one team that nobody can conceive of having any relevance to the playoff mix. It was a dubious distinction, but one with which few Bostonians were ready to quarrel. When the September 11 tragedy temporarily halted the NFL season, the Patriots were already 0-2. And even worse, at the end of the second defeat to the despised Jets, fans had seen the team’s one superstar, quarterback Drew Bledsoe, laid out and rushed to the hospital with serious internal bleeding. The cumulative effect of all this sports pathos was numbing. Local sports columnists began to dub the town “loserville” and the succession of miserable failures cast a pall over Boston that perfectly matched the national mood of mourning. My friends, my fellow sports fans, would call up and just groan. No one could find relief, at least not in our sports world, from the anxieties of a nation suddenly in peril nor even those of parenting teenagers.
Now three months later, to virtually everyone’s amazement, Boston has shed that “loserville” label with a vengeance. Both the Bruins and Celtics are contending for first place, in their respective eastern conferences. And the Patriots are, most inconceivably of all, rested from their bye week and hosting the Oakland Raiders-prime-time TV this Saturday night. The uplift it has provided this city, amid the dreary dog days of winter, is palpable. I can’t pretend that everyone here cares that the Patriots are two wins from the Super Bowl. But enough people do that it creates an emotional buoyancy that touches, by virtue of some kind of osmosis, even those who claim total indifference. Boston is simply a very different place when the city is smiling.
The Patriots’ unbelievable season has been well chronicled. It is the most unlikely sports saga here since the 1967 Red Sox, a last-to-first yarn back when you couldn’t make that leap by buying free agents, but were actually stuck with the same bums who had buried you the previous year. At the center of the Patriots story is Tom Brady, last season’s year’s fourth-string quarterback, a man who had never thrown a pass in a real NFL game. But this team has been far more than just Brady. It is the most likeable Pats club in decades. Early this season the team stopped coming out individually when the starting lineup was announced. Instead, it emerged together in a giant hugging and leaping cluster. Corny sure, but it also seemed to represent a genuine and attractive alternative to pro sports perpetual me-firstism.
So on Saturday night I will go out to the Pats game, eschewing the sanctuary of the press box for prime seats in the freezing cold. Those seats have been hard-earned by my father, my uncles and now me, my cousins and our children through more than 40 years of faithful fandom. That’s many, many dreary Sunday afternoons with what has too often been a dismal team. But every once in a while there’s been a huge payoff and Saturday brings one of them. Like the proverbial postman, neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night will deter me from my path. I don’t seek warmth. Nor do I care about being dry. I just want to be with my people, the fans. And I want to witness my city smiling again.
STARR’S NFL PICKS
Both the first-round bye and the home field are huge advantages. Still, wild-card teams have gone all the way, most recently the Baltimore Ravens and the Denver Broncos. If the Ravens are to repeat, they will have to follow that unlikely path again. Here are my picks for what is the best NFL weekend of the season.
Chicago 14 Philadelphia 10
Donavan McNabb’s one-man offense will run into a defense equal to the task (and a wind that will deflate even his strong arm). A great linebacking crew will keep McNabb inside. And Da Bears will grind out a victory running right up the Eagles gut.
New England 24, Oakland 20
The Raiders are old, banged up and missing key people. New England coach Bill Belichick had two weeks to demonstrate his defensive wizardry. And Pats back Antowain Smith used to play in Buffalo; he knows how to run in sloppy weather.
Pittsburgh 17, Baltimore 9
The “Bus” won’t stop here. The Ravens have been vulnerable to a strong running attack all year and Jerome Bettis behind a terrific offensive line is as strong as it gets in the league. Wild-card teams win when they are surging, not struggling, at season’s end. The Ravens won’t be able to turn it on now. And if they fall behind, Ravens QB Elvis Grbac is fatal in a catch-up position.
St. Louis 38, Green Bay 20
The Rams are vulnerable to teams that can grind it out on both offense and defense. Green Bay is decidedly not that team. Bret Favre is everybody’s favorite quarterback, but Kurt Warner simply has more weapons. The Rams are downright scary inside a Dome on fast turf, and they got nothing but Domes and fast turf for the rest of the way.
