Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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P arting Shot Good Sport HOW WILL A GENERATION OF YOUNG FANS COPE IF BOSTON SPORTS TEAMS RETURN TO THEIR HUMBLE, UNDERDOG ROOTS? BY R.S. COOK 144 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL O'LEARY M y grandfather used to roll around in a gang that called themselves the "peephole kids." The ragtag group of first-generation Irish living in Charlestown got their name from watching Red Sox games through the cracks in the Green Monster. My grandfather took pride in recounting those Depression-era games, a time when "ballplayers weren't in it for the money like these big shots you see today." He was 3 years old in 1918 when Boston won its fifth World Series, and he trudged through a lifetime hoping to one day see the home team recapture the title. As fate would have it, my grandfather passed away on April 4, 2004, while watching the Red Sox play the Baltimore Orioles. Some six months later, the Sox would finally win the World Series again—for the first time in 86 years. Being a sports fan in Boston isn't so much an inheritance as a holy covenant passed down by our forebears. If you were born in this town, you were baptized into the church that Tom Yawkey and Red Auerbach built. You knelt at altars once presided over by patron saints like Williams, Russell, Yastrzemski, Bird, Orr, and now Brady. You sacrificed, lost and regained faith, and prayed. And yet the past decade in Boston sports has been very different than the nine decades that defined my grandfather's life as a devoted fan. An entire generation of Bostonians' formative fan experience has been defined by championship parades; let's call them the Duck Boat Generation. Sure, there have been championship dynasties before (the Celtics in the '60s and mid-'80s come to mind), but never all four sports teams winning concurrently. Sportswriters called it the "Decade of Dominance," a story best told in numbers: 10 years, six championships, four teams, one town. Outside New England, Boston went from beloved underdog to reviled powerhouse, a sports town with money, talent, and, above all, obnoxious fans. But there is a chance that the Duck Boat Generation is rolling to a halt. Early indicators include David Tyree's helmet catch in the 2007 Super Bowl; the Celtics' collapse against the Lakers in game seven of the 2010 NBA Finals; the Red Sox chicken-wing debacle of 2011; and the freshest wound: two goals scored 17 seconds apart by the Blackhawks to beat the Bruins in the last minutes of the 2013 Stanley Cup Finals. As the Blackhawks skated around the Garden holding the cup overhead, a familiar face watched from behind the glass: the beleaguered Boston fan gagging on the bitter taste of defeat, a taste he had almost forgotten. The question today is not whether Boston will return to glory, but rather: Will the Duck Boaters be able to adapt to a return to our city's underdog roots? Can they do their penance and possibly wait a lifetime to see Boston recapture a title? Perhaps they'd best look to the past rather than the future. Some of the greatest moments in Boston sports history had nothing to do with winning. The memory of Carlton Fisk hitting a walk-off home run in game six of the 1975 World Series was not tarnished by the fact that the Red Sox ultimately lost game seven. Being a fan in Boston is about clinging to the bandwagon when the wheels are falling off and learning that loyalty is sometimes measured in the loss column. For, as my grandfather would say, while we play to win, we continue to watch for the love of the game. BC BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 144_BC_BOB_PartingShot_LateFall13.indd 144 9/17/13 1:41 PM