Nay — Bury Me A Celtic, A Patriot, & A Cardinal Too

Image courtesy of Pats Pulpit

I’m not a total schmuck. I do realise my penchant for rotating sports teams, albeit every few years, is a symptom of a larger and recurring crisis of identity. I will soon be a candidate for NCAA Mid-Life Madness, even though I have sincere hopes that I’m already most of the way towards the end. Anyway, this isn’t for you — I’m here to apologize to Boston, to New England, with all the grandiloquence of someone that’s actually being listened to. 

I’m sorry because I was there. Never mind that bollocks about winning teams giving me a winning mentality; I’m positive I’ve always possessed healthier self-esteem, anyway, than the collective ego of Tottenham Hotspur. I think a big part of my problem, doctor, is I seem to think I can alter the past by demoting the status of precious memories. If I forget even the good times, the bad ones that undid everything are perhaps no longer following close behind. 

And yet the problem is, I was there.  

I was there when Tom Brady threw a 70+ yard rocket all the way out to Randy Moss on enemy soil, marching gallantly, we thought, towards the first perfect season in modern NFL history. That’s the moment I became a believer in football, and spent several years convincing myself it was the superior pastime to football. Your favourite players didn’t just up and bugger off to Real Madrid or Manchester United. You didn’t concede weird goals at Stoke or Villa. You didn’t suffer the ignominy of St. Totteringham’s day, one painful year after the next.

I was there when Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett did march the Boston Celtics towards what felt like the perfect season — when Rajon Rondo emerged as the missing Supreme; when Garnett screamed ‘Anything is Possible’ in a reporter’s face, at the arena, at the world. 

I was there when the Giants ended that perfect Patriots run in 2007, in an ugly, hard-fought Super Bowl. That’s how I became a Patriot: that’s how I chose Boston over New York. Whoever lost that night in Arizona was guaranteed my allegiance in their quest for vengeance.

I was there when Glen ‘Big Baby’ Davis was so hype to bring down the Lakers that one time, I believe in the subsequent Finals series, he let a bunch of drool hang off his face, roaring at all the Celtics faithful in the TD Banknorth Garden. ESPN captured every last angle.

I was there when Brady took that shot to the knee barely a game into the season, and some kid called Matt Cassel stepped up to call the plays under centre. I was there when he threw that abstract spiral of a football at a receiver falling out of bounds, falling out of bounds himself. I was there when Brett Favre, then retiring clumsily as quarterback for the New York Jets, called Cassel’s dime the greatest throw he’d ever seen a guy make.

I was there when Kobe got his revenge on the Celtics. I remember how clear it was that things were said when the Lakers faced the Celtics, lines crossed; and I was delighted to have a horse, for once, in any race at all. 

I was there when Brady returned, at the start of another season, looking wary of what might happen to his knee in a full-fledged return to action. The Pats wore their old-school colour rush jersey, the red one paired with the Silver Age Pats logo on the helmet. Brady took over Buffalo’s end zone in the clutch and got New England the win — because of course he did.

I was there when the Celtics blew it up, finally, and sent Pierce and Garnett to the Nets, for draft picks that would (I believe) one day become Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. I watched Rajon Rondo facilitate one too many wins, as the franchise gave me an intimate introduction to the process of ‘tanking’. I was there each time Boston ‘lost’ the draft lottery, mostly to Cleveland. 

I was there when New England turned a couple ordinary draft picks, The Belichick Way, into the most devastating tight-end combo in the league. Outside of one or two Bayern Munich sides, running off the dark art of total football, I’ve never seen a more devastating salvo in all of sports. 

I was there when Jaylen Brown first dunked all over the league with a haircut from the 90s. Isaiah Thomas won the Celtics game-after-game in the fourth quarter — all the way towards an unlikely appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals. I was there when Danny Ainge, simultaneously the nicest and the most ruthless general manager in basketball, traded Thomas to the Cavaliers for Kyrie Irving. After Thomas lost a tooth, and then a sister, and then a bag, despite being the ultimate Boston Celtic. 

I was there when a ‘declining’ Brady threw a touchdown pass in the final seconds of a home game against the New Orleans Saints at Foxboro. Minutes later, I’m sure Bostonians like to think at exactly the same time, David Ortiz struck a walk-off home run at Fenway Park for the Red Sox. That’s a sports town.

I was there when Malcolm Butler caught that interception in the Super Bowl triumph over the Seahawks. I was there when Philadelphia bit Boston’s bait for the number one pick in the draft, and effectively handed the Celtics Jayson Tatum. I was there when Wes Welker, my favourite Patriot ever, shed real tears in the dugout for being placed in the concussion protocol — for the umpteenth time that season, and on the cusp of the playoffs. I was there when kidney failure took away the legend Tommy Heinsohn, who I experienced as half the voice of Celtics highlights, but genuinely all of the hype.  

These are some of my personal memories of American sports, and try as I might, decay as I might, there doesn’t seem to be a darn thing I can do about it.