Now, Boston feeling no pain
by Sam Donnellon
Posted on Wed, Jan. 26, 2005
THREE SUPER BOWLS ago, as Adam Vinatieri lined up for a field goal to decide the game, Bill Blackett felt a knee-jerk impulse that, at the time, defined him as a New England sports fan.
"I totally expected him to miss,'' said the 45-year-old chief financial officer from East Kingston, N.H. "Because being a Red Sox fan and a Patriots fan, what else could happen?''
Sunday, Blackett watched the Patriots bend the Steelers' top-ranked defense with their bare hands and march into their third Super Bowl in 4 seasons. This time, 3 years from when Vinatieri made that kick and 3 months removed from watching the Red Sox - the most torturous team in sports - complete an impossibly historic comeback against the Yankees, Blackett's impulse was a diametric opposite.
"I told my wife,'' he said, "that I just don't have that same tingle.''
We might not understand that in these parts, with the Eagles heading to their first Super Bowl in 24 seasons. We might have trouble understanding, 22 years removed from our last major sports championship, how winning numerous championships in a short amount of time could deaden the thrill, the way it has in places like New York and San Francisco and now, apparently, Boston.
Then again, there was a time not too long ago when Blackett, and all those New England fans we have traded epithets with over the years, would not have understood it either. It was only 5 years ago, after all, that a local sports writer there and radio-show host dubbed New England as "Loserville'' - a tag greeted with surprisingly little protest.
"Nothing was going right,'' said Gerry Callahan, a co-host during the morning drive for WEEI Sports radio in Boston and a columnist for the Boston Herald. "There was a disaster in every season.''
Back about the time A.I. was leading the Sixers into the NBA Finals, Boston felt pretty lousy about itself. Bill Belichick, who had not distinguished himself as a head coach in Cleveland, finished 5-11 in his first year as Patriots head coach in 2000. The Red Sox, under despised general manager Dan Duquette, had missed the playoffs and were being sold. The Bruins and once-mighty Celtics were lost in the abyss of have-not winter teams. The city was a rubble-strewn eyesore, amid a nearly $15 billion project to improve the highway structure dubbed "The Big Dig.''
A recession and military cutbacks had crippled the tech-dense local economy, and real-estate prices collapsed. Consumer confidence in all of the sports franchises was at an all-time low - it did not seem as if any of them had any real direction.
"Now it's just the opposite,'' Callahan said. "The football team is flawless. The baseball team gave us the most incredible championship ever, coming back against the most hated archrivals in a manner never done before in the history of baseball.''
Drafted to be a backup, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will take an 8-0 playoff record into his third Super Bowl in 4 years. Once considered to be no more than Bill Parcells' sidekick, Belichick's name now is spoken in the same sentence as Vince Lombardi's.
Once distrusted and disliked for hard negotiations in getting a new stadium built, and for losing Parcells as coach, owner Bob Kraft now is lauded for making the Patriots the envy of all other franchises. Similarly, the Red Sox, under owner John Henry and thirtysomething general manager Theo Epstein, out-Yankeed their Bronx rivals at the trade deadline last summer.
Now, both franchises are viewed as sources of civic pride.
And for many, as a model for civic identity. "The self-esteem in the area is off the charts,'' Blackett said. "When Callahan wrote and said that we were Loserville? We felt that. But not now.''
"One thing you have to realize,'' said James Chung, who heads a Boston-based marketing, strategy and research firm, "is that education, health care, finance and technology are the four key pillars of Boston's economy. Those are professions not high in cool. They are high on geekiness.
"But with Belichick, and Epstein, geekiness is cool. Belichick and Epstein have done what they've done by being smarter than everybody else. All of a sudden it's OK to be smart. Smart wins.
"It's OK to be a geek.''
It is unlikely that Blackett would embrace Chung's description - or hire him any time soon, come to think of it. But there is something in what he said. The Patriots, particularly, have captured a devout fan base not just because of what they have accomplished, but how they have accomplished it. Filled with middle-round draft choices and overlooked players, the Pats have endeared themselves through selfless play.
Companies seek to mimic Belichick's model, said Chung.
Said Callahan: "It's a complete reversal from the olden days. The Patriots were the team that made the dumb mistakes, that committed the dumb penalties, that fumbled at a critical point of the game. Now they take advantage of all that. They played the team with the best offense in the NFL and held them without a touchdown. They played the best defense and scored 41 points.''
Now, said Callahan, "There's an overwhelming feeling of invincibility'' in New England about these two teams.
Now, said Guy Loranger, an attorney in Portland, Maine, even the sight of Andrew Toney doesn't scare them. "Pittsburgh brought out L.C. Greenwood and all those guys,'' he said. "The Yankees brought out Bucky Dent for Game 7 in New York. "We're past that.''
Now, said Blackett, when Vinatieri lines up for a field goal - like that 48-yarder against Pittsburgh on Sunday - he assumes it will split the uprights.
"Our psyche is very good,'' he said. "As a group we are collectively confident that we are going to kick Philly's ass.''
Copyright (C) Philadelphia Daily News, 2005.
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