Part 1: Sports Are Us
Kevin Cullen, the erudite (and non-sports writing) Boston Globe columnist recently put it this way: “There has never been a time in Boston when so many of its professional sports franchises have been so good. There has never been a time when we believed—not wished, but believed—these teams would win. Hope has given way to expectation. A city, a region, of cynical losers is now, seemingly suddenly, a city, a region, of optimistic winners.”
There’s no arguing with the Cullen thesis, and if you add the pleasures of the Boston College football team and the URI basketball team (among others) its damnable evidence—we’ve gone from a New England sports-scape peopled with gloom-and-doomers, Yankee haters, Kobe detractors, prepared-for-the-inevitably-lowered-boomsters, many of them with inner feelings swayed by catholic guilt or puritanic
self-depreciation and huge doses of typical swamp-yankee lowered expectations.
The Sox finished ahead of the Yanks during the regular season, came back against the Indians in the play-offs, clobbered the Rockies in the Series, and essentially had a grand ol’ time in doing it with a cool daddy collection of players that, while not as overtly wild and wooly as the “Cowboy Up” boys, were equally as intriguing and as pleasurable to watch.
The Pats got past Spygate, managed to become the team-to-hate in the NFL, won big, won small, just about won games in each and every way possible, all the while enhancing the glowing auras of Belichick and Brady, and somehow transforming Randy Moss into a team guy. Three potential games remain and the defining mood is one of eager anticipation, as if the region collectively feels that another Super Bowl rack-em-up is right around the corner. After that, it’s simple---time to join the Celtic joyride…
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