New England: self-doubt, but hope

Sporting News, The, Jan 27, 1997 by Steve Marantz

In this biggest game ever at Foxboro Stadium. the lights went out, darkening the field for 11 minutes during the AFC championship. Why look a gift metaphor in the mouth? For the Patriots. it was perfect. New England Patriot, NFL champions. Mother Teresa. ax murderer. Arnold Schwarzenegger, wimp. Uma Thurman, wallflower. Albert Einstein, dunce. Saddam Hussein, humanitarian. Wiliam Shakespeare, sportswriter.

It can't be.

Or can it?

For 20 years I have lived north of Boston and in that time I have acquired the native sensibility. I drive like a maniac, snarl at children and tourists, claim worker's comp at every twinge and expect the local teams to lose. Compared to people born and raised here. I am polite and optimistic.

Skepticism underlies the regional personality, as New Englander Peter Gammons suggests, perhaps a legacy of Puritan settlers and "Calvinist clouds of self doubt." Or maybe it's because Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

We in New England can't quite fathom the Patriots in the Super Bowl. We are conditioned to failure. The Celtics brought home their 16th and last title in 1986. Since then Boston might well be Peoria.

Let me explain in Boston shorthand: Len Bias. Bill Buckner. Michael Dukakis. Terry Cooney. Rod Rust. Reggie Lewis. The FleetCenter. Marcus Camby's jewelry. M.L. Carr. Dwayne Hosey. Boston College football. Ray Bourque.

Why Ray Bourque? Because in his 18th season with the Bruins, he still is Their best player. That's all you need to know about the city's NHL entry, once the exciting team of Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Terry O'Reilly and Don Cherry's dog, Blue.

Meanwhile, Celtics chairman Paul Gaston and Carr, his G.M. and coach, are hot in pursuit of the NBA's worst record and a lottery pick. The once-great franchise is a doormat. Things are so quiet at the blandnew FleetCenter that scalpers on Causeway Street offer free toasters with tickets.

Welcome to Titlelesstown, USA, where a $10 billion highway project has downtown under a cloud of dust, and everyone who isn't coughing is choking.

The Pats in the Super Bowl? First time it happened, the 1986 Super Bowl, the Bears set a record for margin of victory, 36 points, which stood for four years. That day featured quarterback Tony Eason being peeled off the Superdome turf like a flattened cartoon figure.

So excuse us while we're not carried away New England is not like Dallas or Denver or San Francisco. Football always has ranked No. 4. It is first and foremost a baseball region; the Red Sox at their lowest commanding more interest than the Patriots at their zenith. Pessimism stems from the Red Sox's failing to win a World Series since 1918. As the Red Sox go, so goes New England. The situation is not hopeful, with Roger Clemens leaving for Toronto, G.M. Dan Duquette alienating his best players and Fenway Park quaint but obsolete.

Hockey was second during the Orr era, but dropped to third behind basketball when Larry Bird came to town. Both teams are declining and equally ignored. The Bruins are a lunch-pail franchise worn down by years of overachieving with Bourque, Cam Neely and ordinary talent. Now Bourque is in the twilight and Neely is retired. The Celtics are in the grip of inept management squandering a dazzling legacy. Anyone able to name the Celtics' lineup truly is without a life.

That leaves the Patriots, who used to be something of an embarrassment, like a country cousin wearing plaids and stripes. Born as the Boston Patriots in 1960, the last franchise admitted to the new American Football League, they were hand-to-mouth and itinerant, wrapping ankles with used tape while shuttling between several fields. But they were competitive, with Babe Parilli throwing to Gino Cappelletti, reaching the AFL championship game in 1963, only to be blown out, 51-10, by the Chargers.

They strung together seven straight losing seasons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Owner Billy Sullivan finally put a roof over their heads in 1971, at Foxboro halfway between Boston and Providence R.I., in the Kmart of NFL stadiums. Opening game, the toilets didn't work.

Even when things went right, they went wrong. In the mid-1970s coach and G.M. Chuck Fairbanks pulled together a talented group--John Hannah, Leon Gray, Sam Cunningham, Stanley Morgan, Russ Francis, Steve Nelson, Ray Hamilton, Mike Haynes. I covered the team for The Boston Globe in 1978, the year they won the AFC East. It was a terrific team with Super Bowl potential. But chaos ensued when Fairbanks grabbed a lucrative offer from the University of Colorado before the last game of the season. Sullivan suspended and unsuspended Fairbanks. As the club prepared to meet the Oilers in the playoffs, Fairbanks, a holier-than-thou sharpie, was recruiting high school players on the telephone. Houston won, 31-14.

The 1985 team, coached by the metaphysical Raymond Berry, was not as talented. It simply got hot after nabbing a wild card and pulled off three road upsets largely because of opportunistic special teams. One day after the Super Bowl, revelations of widespread drug use by players hit the newspapers. The drug scandal, as well as huge debt weighing down the Sullivans, assured another decline. Five consecutive losing seasons began in 1989.