Glory Days

This is my first official post on this blog, and while I have other more current and specific topics to talk about, I wanted to start off with some nostalgia and reflection:

I grew up in the metro-Boston area in the mid-80's (lived in Weymouth till I was 10, them moved to Charlestown and lived there till I left for college). At that time it seemed like we were living at the height of Boston sports. I still remember owning a "Boston Sports Locker" t-shirt that depicted a locker with the jerseys of Larry Bird, Stanley Morgan, Ray Bourque and Roger Clemens (I also had a "squish the fish" t-shirt that I SOOO wish I still owned)... those were salad-days,  I remember thinking then. And why wouldn't I have felt that way? During the late 70's and early 80's, the Boston sports scene was something of a bad joke... the Patriots of the early 80's under Ron Meyer were awful, the Red Sox had the Bucky Fucking Dent game in '78 but other than that hadn't sniffed a division title since '75. The Celtics of the late 70's were bad enough to land Larry Bird with the 6th overall pick in the '78 draft. The Bruins of the late 70's and early 80's were really the only consistently good team in Boston until the Celts started winning in the early and mid-80's. So in 1985 / 86, when Boston had the Celtics, Red Sox and Patriots all playing in championship games, we were on top of the sports world, and at the time had no reason to see an end to the glory. We had no idea how quickly that would all change, or how almost 2 decades later we would really know what it was like to be in the midst of the "glory days".

After being humiliated in Superbowl XX at the hands of the "Superbowl Shuffle" Bears, the Patriots were crippled by a hangover that lasted nearly a decade and fielded some of the worst teams I've seen in my life, culminating with the Hugh Millen-led 2-14 team that ultimately "changed everything" for the Patriots.

The Red Sox, after losing the World Series due to bad relief pitching, bad coaching decisions, and of course the most famous error in baseball history, fell apart the following year, finishing 20 games out of first. And while they won a pair of division titles in 1988 and 1990, they were never a real threat to win a championship, and by 1994 were annual "also-rans" and not considered among the elite in major league baseball.

The Celtics had one of the all-time great teams (some would argue the greatest... I'm not one of them) in the mid- to late-80's and despite age and injury stayed fairly competitive until Bird's back finally gave out for good and forced him to retire in 1992. The Celtics finished 5th in the Atlantic division in the '93-'94 season and slowly declined into mediocrity, where they would remain until after the turn of the century.

The Bruins remained a strong team throughout the 80's and in the early 90's skated some of the best teams in the NHL, led by Bourque and all time great Cam Neely. However they could never get over that final hump and win a Cup, and in 1991 Ulf Samuelsson went at Neely's knees with one of the dirtiest hits you'll ever see. The hit ultimately cost Neely his career, as the knee was never right again and he retired in '96, after which the Bruins ceased to become real threats to win an NHL championship, despite putting together a couple of decent teams in 2001 and 2003.

So here we were... Boston sports fans in the mid-90's, and as the years went by season after season came and went without any real hope of seeing a championship parade flow through the streets of Boston, and the media began including Boston among the most tortured sports cities in America. It was frustrating to say the least.

I mentioned the 2-14 Patriots team above as the team that ultimately changed everything... this was a horrible team with a terrible (but lovable) coach in Dick MacPherson, with ownership in transition and rumors of the team moving to St. Louis. It was like watching a football follies film every single week. I still have no idea how they won 2 games. But the results of that awful season led to two things: the Patriots hired a real coach (Bill Parcells), drafted a real bona-fide blue-chip QB (Drew Bledsoe), and a change in ownership to a local businessman (Robert Kraft) who was a long-time season-ticket holder and fan who had two huge things going for him, as it relates to being an NFL owner. One, he knew how to run a successful business, and two, he loved football, was a true fan, and actually wanted to WIN above all else. This combination led to a total reformation of the formerly bungling Patriots into a bona-fide first-class team. Within 3 years they were on their way to super-bowl contention, and things were just starting to look up.

Meanwhile in 1997 the Red Sox began showing signs of life again when they pulled off a trade for one of the most electrifying pitchers in all of baseball, Pedro Martinez. By that time in 1997 I had moved from Boston and had been living in central NY since 1990, and I had lost track of the Red Sox, as a fan, to a certain degree. I still kept up with their record, and would watch when the occasional game would pop up on ESPN, but I had stopped "following" them. The internet of the early 90's was not what it is today, ESPN still only had the one channel, and news about the Sox just wasn't readily at my fingertips. Pedro changed that in an instant. We all knew he was pretty good, even great... but playing in the baseball purgatory of Montreal we just really didn't know how good. He showed us, and how. Until the day I die I will maintain that the 3 year stretch of pitching that Pedro gave us from the 1998 through 2000 seasons was the greatest 3-year stretch in baseball history. Pedro was must-see TV and I was hooked again.

In 2001 we witnessed the birth of one of the greatest professional sports stories of all time, as a 6th round draft pick QB came out of nowhere to lead a bunch of erstwhile veterans, under a coach that preached a team-first, no superstars mentality, to one of the most unlikeliest championships in professional sports history, as the Patriots beat the "Greatest Show on Turf" Rams on a last second field goal... and with that an entire city exhaled... and an entirely new culture of sports in the city of Boston was born.  The lid was off one of the greatest runs of sports dominance any one city has ever been blessed to witness.

Bill Belichick showed us the importance of "team-first"... an example that was ultimately picked up by the "idiots" Red Sox team of 2004... a collection of super-stars and role players that blended together perfectly, had an intense "never say die" attitude, and captured the first Red Sox World Series since 1918. With that the "curse" was broken, and we were finally able to deny Yankee fans one of the most annoying and over-used taunts of all time.

Meanwhile the Patriots were proving that they were no mere one-year wonder. They began racking up wins at a record pace, and Tom Brady was well on his way to becoming a Hall-of-Famer while drawing comparisons to greats like Joe Montana. Three championships in 4 years solidified their claim to a "dynasty", and while they have not won a championship since that 2004 season, they have hardly dropped off: they have won the division in 8 of the last 10 seasons, and in one of those which they did not win, they actually tied for the best record despite having lost Tom Brady for the season in the first game. They played a perfect 16-0 regular season in 2007, losing the Superbowl to a hungrier Giants team in the closing minutes, and last season finished with the best record in football again at 14-2... and as of right now looked poised to simply reload again. The Patriots have managed to do what no other team in football seems capable of doing: maintain greatness over a long term while enduring the rapid roster turnover that is inherent in the NFL.

The Red Sox loaded up again in 2007 and won another championship... and across town the Celtics brought together a band of super-stars, but carried themselves with the already ingrained culture of "team-first" and bought into coach Doc Rivers' "ubuntu", or call for unity. Under his direction the Celtics eschewed personal stats and glory and ran roughshod over the rest of the NBA on their way to a championship... and thus Boston was treated to its 6th parade in 7 years in the spring of 2008... and then we waited for the last of our teams to have its turn...

Only... I'm not sure how much any of us expected the Bruins to actually jump on this fast-moving train to glory. Over the course of the last decade we'd become accustomed to the Bruins being a scrappy team with a seemingly cheap, absentee owner that occasionally put out good teams, but never teams you really thought had a chance. They tore down the historic Boston Garden and put in its place a fairly sterile, ho-hum box of a facility known as TD BankNorth Garden (Now just TD Garden, as BankNorth has gone South). The arena was rarely full on Bruins game nights... and was unflatteringly referred to as "The Vault". It seemed the Bruins were destined to forever remain Boston's neglected step-child... the sad kid sitting on the bench while the rest of his teammates celebrated victory after victory. However at some point it seems to have struck Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs that maybe his pockets might be better lined if his stadium was better filled, and perhaps the success of the other teams, the Celtics in particular (who play in the same building), clued him in on the many rewards that come with actually putting out a strong, winning team with equally strong leadership and coaching. And so he brought in Peter Chiarelli, a savvy GM with experience building winning teams in Ottawa, and Claude Julien, another proven winner with a strong track-record. Finally he brought in Cam Neely to round out the organization and set the tone: this team was going to be built on a combination of skill and strength, just as Neely was.  And with that, and the acquisition of players like Nathan Horton, who brough size and toughness along with offensive fire-power... the development of promising young players like Brad Marchand and David Krejci, the addition of Mark Recchi, an all-time great who could show the kids how to play and how to win, and the unique and sublimely effective Tim Thomas in goal, the Bruins scratched, clawed and fought their way to their first Stanley Cup in nearly 40 years.

And with that, we had it all... an 8th parade in 10 years... kids who've never known what it's like to be a suffering sports city... all 4 major sports claiming championships in the same 10 year span... a feat never before accomplished. We are sports royalty. We are spoiled... and really, there seems to be no end in sight in the near future. The Patriots look poised to be contenders for the next several years at least... and as long as Belichick is at the helm I believe we can continue to expect that to be the case. The Red Sox, despite recent pitching concerns and injuries, are still one of the top three teams in baseball and are poised to make another run at a championship. The Bruins are coming off their Stanley Cup win with the entire team virtually intact and young players who will continue to get better. The Celtics are the closest team to seeing their window close, but this team is together for one more year and should at least make a run for a title.

So those of you who are young, under 20 and reading this, please do not take what you have for granted. It can disappear in a hurry. If you have kids who've grown up in this time, remind them to appreciate these... the glory days... for what we have has never been seen before... and once it's gone it may never be seen again.