The Day We’ve All Been Waiting For

Thursday, July 29, 2004, is a gorgeous day here in the Hub of the Universe, Boston, Massachusetts.  Unlike yesterday where I braved the rain, security, and the supposed transportation nightmare of the Democratic National Convention to attend a rally at the Charlestown Navy Yard, today is a beautiful, sunny day.  The birds along Commonwealth Avenue are chirping, the flowers in the Public Garden have never looked more radiant, and the golden Bulfinch dome of the State House is shining triumphantly in the sun (when it is not being obscured by green-clad snipers armed with machine guns).  The weather seems to be metaphorically representative of this most anticipated of moments, the long awaited day when hometown Senator John F. Kerry of Beacon Hill steps to the podium at the Fleet Center and delivers a speech accepting his party’s nomination for President of the United States.Wait… I was distracted there for a moment.  The idiotic closure of Storrow Drive for the DNC had my mind wandering for a second.  Editor, please change that last sentence to “the long awaited day when the champs of Super Bowl XXXVIII, your own New England Patriots, finally start training camp in Foxboro in defense of their second title in three years.”  There… that sounds better.

That is not meant to denigrate the good Senator or any of the other convention-goers in town (in the interest of full disclosure, I am an official member of the Democratic Party myself), nor is it meant to imply that somehow Massachusetts has turned its political leanings aside and will support George W. Bush in November.  The simple truth of the matter is that most Bostonians and “Massholes” in general simply do not care about our junior senator accepting his nomination tonight, outlining his goals, and overall introducing himself in greater depth to the country at large.  We have much bigger things to think about: for one, when will Rosevelt Colvin finally be able to play?

Training camp opens today in Foxboro, a town that I associate just as much with the blue and gold of its high school football team (a local rival to my own squad in the mid-90’s) as the red, white, and blue of the Patriots.  It is funny; since the Super Bowl win over the Rams, the start of the Pats season has an entirely different feel around here.  In my formative sports years in the 80’s, the Pats were always the drunk uncle of the Boston sports scene: they were around for all the major events, and you loved them because they were yours, but you wouldn’t admit to it in public (unless you were the son of a player or a lumberjack.)  

While the Celtics had Bird and Parish and the three titles, the Patriots had one embarrassing, drug-tainted Super Bowl butt-kicking at the hands of Da Bears.  Where the Red Sox had Dave Henderson’s home run, Morgan Magic, Clemens striking out 20, etc., the Pats countered with Irving Fryar cutting his finger at halftime and Mark Henderson driving a snowplow onto the field to unethically use home-field advantage to help beat the Dolphins.  The Bruins had the classy and regal Bourque and Neely; the Pats were stuck with Zeke Mowatt.  The other teams had Fenway and the Garden; the Pats played in a full-body dry heave of a stadium, then called Sullivan Stadium, a place where there was doubt as to whether the septic system could handle 10,000 or so simultaneous flushes and might therefore flood the entire complex with floating human feces (thankfully, the pressure held up during the famous Flush Test and the feces stayed in the pipes).  

As much as we loved football and had a motherly love for the Patriots, they just never really MATTERED on the radar screen of Boston sports consciousness.  In their one big chance on the national scene, they blew a 3-0 lead (note the sarcasm) to the Bears and got walloped, 46-10, including an insulting, kick-my-dog-while-you’re-at-it touchdown by William “The Refrigerator” Perry.  And when they suffered through the Dick MacPherson and the Rod Rust years of the early 90’s, things hit rock bottom for the Patriots.  The incident involving Zeke Mowatt sexually harassing Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson in the locker room basically typifies the Patriots Experience from around 1987-1993.  Hell, it might typify the first 33 years of the franchise altogether.  They just never got anything right.  Owner James Busch Orthwein almost moved the franchise to St. Louis, and truthfully, I am not sure that most of Boston would have noticed.

All that changed, of course, with three men: Bob Kraft, Bill Parcells, and Drew Bledsoe (probably in that order).  Kraft, a local billionaire and season-ticket holder, bought the team and hired Parcells to revive the franchise and provide some legitimacy, who subsequently drafted the cannon-armed Bledsoe with the #1 pick in the 1993 draft.  All of a sudden, the Patriots started to matter.  Their games sold out, for the first time since the Super Bowl season.  There was actually a waiting list for season tickets.  The Pats made the playoffs in 1994, losing to (ironically) Bill Belichick’s Cleveland Browns.  Finally, in 1996, the Parcells era came to its apex, and the resurrection of the franchise was near completion, with the improbable run to Super Bowl XXXI, a 35-21 loss to Green Bay.

Of course, the true moment when the Patriots REALLY proved that they finally mattered on the Boston sports scene was January 2002, when Adam Vinatieri’s two kicks into history (one to beat Oakland at home in the famous “Tuck Rule” game, the other to topple the mighty St. Louis Rams in the Superdome for the Super Bowl title) sent that year’s Patriots squad into immortality.  One would think that a million people coming to downtown Boston for a sweet victory parade celebration was proof that the Patriots had finally claimed a place alongside the other teams in the Importance Pantheon of Boston sports.  

Having grown up in Greater Attleboro, the Patriots have always been a big deal.  Since the area, about 30 miles south of Boston, is made up of small towns and cities, and most Patriots players (and many ex-players) call the area home, there was an abundance of BWG’s (Brushes With Greatness) with Pats players and coaches.  When I was five, my dad and I stopped to chat with Pats’ running back Mosi Tatupu in line at the supermarket.  This is the same guy who, years later, was the head coach of the King Philip High School team that would beat my brother Patrick’s North Attleboro High team, one of only two losses Pat incurred in high school.  We would bump into Patriots players at the mall, at the convenience store, in a pizza place.  I went to high school with former linebacker Steve Nelson’s daughters, as well as former offensive coordinator (and former Browns head coach) Chris Palmer’s son.  The Patriots were always an important and irreplaceable cog in the local culture; I can only imagine what life would have been like around here if they had moved to St. Louis.  It would have been incredibly bittersweet to watch our expatriated team win the Lombardi Trophy in 2002; on one level, I would have been happy that they finally did it, but on the other level, I wouldn’t care as much.  They wouldn’t have been ours.  And they truly wouldn’t have mattered then.

Fast forward to 2004.  John Kerry is accepting the nomination tonight to run for President, yet all anyone can talk about here today is the Patriots.  Ty Law this, Tom Brady that.  Rohan Davey, Vince Wilfolk, Eugene Wilson, yada yada yada.  Football season starts today.  By the time it is over, we will be shoveling our cars out from under blizzards and marking our parking spots with lawn chairs.  Today, we are soaking up the sun and wondering how the Sox are going to blow it again this year.

But it is a beautiful day.  It’s Patriots season again, and we’re the defending champs.  Soon we’ll be watching them raise the 2003 World Champs banner outside Gillette Stadium, and we’ll think back to that great day on February 1 of ’04 when Vinatieri sent another last-minute miracle through the uprights and slew the pesky Carolina Panthers.  But we’ll also think about Mosi, and Steve Grogan, and Steve Nelson, and Tony Eason, and especially Drew.  You can’t savor the Patriots’ glorious present without remembering where they’ve come from.  Thank God they stayed.  And thank God they finally matter.  

T-minus two weeks until opening kickoff of the first preseason game.  Anyone else excited?