Football Boy Stands Bemused
I get it, I really do, but I’m still a little annoyed. And more than a bit perplexed frankly. About the Red Sox, that is. Or, more to the point, about how the Sox are getting all the attention from the New England sports media these days.
I got to thinking about this last night while watching the Cincinnati Bengals beat up on the Denver Broncos (who didn’t even look like they were interested in playing, never mind winning — upset week) and looking at my local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette (I’d provide a link, but they make you pay to use the site so why bother?).
At the top of the Gazette’s sports front were three stories about the Sox and their less-than-thrilling victory in game two of the World Series Sunday night. Three stories. Not local stories, either, but AP stories. Three of them. And a color photo of Curt Schilling. Taking up the entire top of the section front. Then, below the fold, a single story about the Patriots’ victory over the Jets Sunday afternoon. One. An AP story, like the Sox pieces. About what was maybe the best defensive football game I’ve seen this season. About the Pats’ 21st consecutive victory. About a win that broke a 62-year-old record for consecutive wins in regular-season games (the new mark is 18). About a game that gives the Pats the edge in one of the NFL’s tightest divisional struggles this season. One story. Below the fold.
The Pats are getting the same treatment pretty much everywhere you look or listen these days, too. It goes like this: Sox, Sox, Sox, Sox, Sox and, oh, yeah, the Pats. And while second billing to the Sox — who are, after all, playing for a championship — is to be expected at this point, one might expect a little better than an aside for what is without any question the best professional sports team in the region.
I mean no disrespect to the Sox or their wonderful, loyal fans. In fact, as I pointed out in an essay posted last week on The Moon Hoax, I’ve found myself more excited about the Sox than I thought I could be. I’ve actually been watching baseball games with interest, which happens once in a blue moon. What the Sox did last week in coming back from 0-3 to beat the Yankees is amazing. (And I recognize that no professional baseball team, and only two professional sports teams, had ever come back from being down three in a seven-game series before, so that’s huge all by itself.) The fact that the Sox are in the Series is remarkable. The fact that they’re ahead 2-0 is almost too much to believe. So, yeah, it’s great. The Sox deserve all the praise and attention they’re getting.
Still and all, the Pats could probably expect a little more notice than they’re getting here at home (they’re certainly getting plenty of it nationally). The Patriots team that is playing right now is arguably one of the best professional football teams ever to take the field. They are inarguably the best in their league right now. And they are inarguably making football history. Furthermore, I’d argue that what the Pats are doing right now is ultimately far more impressive than what the Sox are doing.
Two teams make it to the World Series every single season in Major League Baseball. And one of them wins. Every season. Without fail. Now, the Sox are rarely one of the teams playing in the Series. And they haven’t been the one to win it in 86 years. (And there’s that whole chimerical curse thing involved, yes.) But that doesn’t change the fact that the only thing the Sox have done that stands alone in their sport was accomplished nearly a week ago. Playing in the World Series may not be ordinary for the Sox, but it’s entirely expected in baseball.
The Pats, meanwhile, are not merely defending champions in their league, not merely the winners of two of the last three Super Bowls (an amazing accomplishment, as football fans know, though I wonder if those on the periphery have any idea of how difficult and rare a thing that is), and not merely the winners of a franchise-best six straight to begin a season, but they have done something that is unheard of in their sport. It’s not simply that no team before the Pats had ever won 21 straight games (including post-season games). No team before the Pats had ever won 19 straight. No team. Ever. And no team since the 1933-34 Chicago Bears, who played in a much, much different league than the Pats do (the NFL then wasn’t nearly as competitive a league as it is now), had posted 17 regular-season wins in a row. The Pats, as noted, have 18. Even if this team’s streak ends with a loss to the Steelers in Pittsburgh on Sunday (the opening line on that game has the Pats favored by three), they’ll have crafted a record that is likely to stand for 50, 75, 100 years … maybe forever. Because, as those of us who follow the sport know, it is all but impossible to win 21 or 18 (or, hell, eight or nine most of the time) straight games in the NFL. There’s simply too much talent, too much balance and too much to go wrong for teams to do this.
Add to all that the fact that the Pats-Jets game on Sunday was a classic struggle with the team’s only real division rival, and the fact that the Pats held on and won in a week when seven out of 14 NFL games ended in upsets, five of them going to teams that went in as underdogs by six or more points (look, upset week in the NFL has big mojo; you can believe that or not, but it’s true), and you’d think someone around here would have taken their eyes off their damned baseball scorecard long enough to notice.
Again, I don’t mean to come off as anti-Red Sox. I’m very much pro-Red Sox. I’ll be watching tonight for sure. I hope the headlines on tomorrow’s sports sections are all about the Sox going ahead 3-0 in the Series (though I realize how hard that will be to do against this Cardinals team in their home park). And if the Sox go on to win the Series, I’ll be excited for them and for their fans. It’ll be an amazing moment in Boston sports history, one I’ll be glad to have witnessed. But It will still be nothing more than what lots of other teams have done before and that lots of other teams will do in the future. The Pats, meanwhile, are making NFL history. And it baffles me that the team making a huge mark on its sport is getting so little notice for it.
