Boston, City of Champions: How We Do It

Ho-hum.  Another year, another world championship.  Of that part of the world comprised of the U.S. and Canada.

Four major sports.  Eighteen years.  Eleven championships.  Face it; after the Red Sox won the World Series last night, Boston is Title Town USA.  It’s never been done before, not even in New York, where they have two of every pro sports team to our one.

How do we do it, you may ask if you’re sitting in some loser burg like Atlanta or Los Angeles or Miami, all of which dwarf Boston in size, but which produce championships about as often a Halley’s Comet comes around.  It’s complex, subtle, nuanced–a constellation of things as one of our many local professors might say.  Here’s a checklist to help you add the right ingredients to your local sports goulash in the hope that you too can achieve the state of smug satisfaction that Boston sports fans enjoy, on average, every 1.6 years.  With a record like that, some fans never even leave the championship parade route–why give up a prime viewing spot when there’s another just around the corner?

Is it something in the water?  Heck yeah, as Napoleon Dynamite might say.  Boston is famous for its “Dirty Water,” the pre-cleanup Charles River that was honored in the song of that name by The Standells, a rock group from–Los Angeles.


The Standells: Most famous Boston rock group ever to come out of Los Angeles.

 

But the Charles isn’t the dirtiest river in Boston–not by a long shot.  There’s the Muddy River, which runs through town near Fenway Park.  Its waters are loaded with nutrients and minerals from the many shopping carts and discarded tires that challenge sportfishermen from around the world!


A river so dirty you have to rake it.

 

It’s the brains, stupid.  The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by guys who led their league in book-learnin’, unlike New York (merchants), Georgia (criminals), Texas (debtors) and Florida (dingbats looking for the fountain of youth).  Personally, I think Boston’s reputation as a mecca of the intellect is overblown; it wasn’t that long ago, in world historical terms, that the President of Harvard was burning books that cast doubt on the belief that witches were all around us.  Still, some of the intellectual aura of the place must be rubbing off on our local pro athletes these days.

Back when the Red Sox were mired in an 86-year championship slump, Bernie Carbo, the near-hero of the near-miss season of 1975, was once thrown out trying to steal second.  His manager asked him why he was running and Carbo said “I got the steal sign.”

“What’s the steal sign?” the manager asked.

“Any combination adding up to five.”

“What was the first sign.”

“Two.”

“And what was the second?”

“Two.”


Bernie Carbo, 1975 World Series, Game Six

 

It’s the food.  This is also a possibility.  An emigre to the region, I stood and watched a native prepare a “New England clam bake” on the beach many years ago.  What, I asked him, were the rocks for that he was throwing into the pit?  “We eat them,” he said.  I figured he was joking, but I had a hot dog anyway.  Several years later his claim was substantiated when I saw a sign outside a “packy” (local slang for a liquor store) that said “Fresh Native New England Rocks.”


“Let’s put sand in our food!”

 

Respect for our opponents.  Unlike other towns where “trash talk” motivates opposing teams to excel, here in Boston we maintain a reserved and courteous attitude towards our athletic adversaries, with minor exceptions such as Larry Bird, Ted Williams, Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, Derek Sanderson, etc., et alia.  For example, when New York Jets’ coach Rex Ryan’s depraved and disgusting foot fetish became public in 2011, residents of the six-state New England area were warned not to mention it by emergency broadcast, aerial leaflet drops and the Goodyear blimp.  When Patriots’ receiver Wes Welker inadvertently alluded to Ryan’s twisted attraction to his wife’s feet eleven times in a press conference, he was reprimanded and promptly traded.  There is no room here for that sort of disrespectful talk about the moral failings of a fat, overrated blowhard such as Ryan.

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“Attention New England residents–do NOT mention Rex Ryan’s perverted foot fetish, okay?”

 

It’s the attitude.   The former stereotype was that Bostonians were cold, condescending patricians, but a decade of movies by MattDamonBenAffleckMarkWahlberg should have disabused you of this notion.  Instead, the region is full of warm-hearted, abrasive and violent proles–a must for defense and special teams.


“So then this customer sez to me he sez, can I get some ketchup.  So I explained to him ‘When I bleepin’ get around to it.’”

 

The point is that a certain toughness and swaggering attitude–what former Boston Herald columnist George Frazier called duende–is considered essential here.  At Durgin Park, one of Boston’s oldest restaurants, the waitresses are known for their rudeness, for example.  Where a server in New York might approach a table having difficulty deciding on entrees with suggestions, a Durgin Park waitress will say “C’mon–I haven’t got all night.”

For some reason this business model hasn’t caught on in the dining industry generally.

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2 thoughts on “Boston, City of Champions: How We Do It”

  1. Impressive stats. But for us in Philadelphia, last year’s Super Bowl will last us for years. Our much smaller cup runneth over.

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