The Boston Sports Circles of Hell
For the last several weeks ESPN has been running a state-by-state survey to determine the “Mount Rushmore of Sports” for each. Their four transcendent sports figures that tower above all the rest. It’s one of those things the media giants’ creative departments come up with to drum up interest and fill air time during the doldrums of the sports calendar between the Super Bowl and the tipoff to March Madness. And I have to hand it to the Worldwide Leader. The “Mount Rushmore” thing is a great concept. It was even better when Uncle Buck came up with it for the June 27, 2007 issue of Barstool. But it’s not the first time the brilliant minds in Bristol ripped off the Stool and it will no doubt be the last.
For the record, the quartet Massachusetts fans picked to be carved in granite are Ted Williams, Bobby Orr, Red Auerbach and Tom Brady, and it’s hard to take issue with the choices. For all that we don’t know about electing politicians, handling our booze or negotiating our way around a rotary, we take a back seat to no state when it comes to knowing where our sports bread is buttered. Honestly, we probably made the best choices out of all 50 states. While we were picking our greatest legend from each of the four major sports, Florida was electing a soon-to-be-forgotten Tim Tebow and Illinois was choosing a professional assclown like Mike Ditka. If you could win a championship in surveys, we’d be cueing the Duckboats.
Still, as great an idea as this is by ESP- I mean, by UB... it doesn’t do enough. The whole business of honoring the legends has been done to death. The greats of the game already get awards, accolades, fat contracts, All Star appearances, Hall of Fame plaques, statutes, and massive public works projects named after them. And that’s when they’re not being fed by horny, worshipful underwear models. But what about the villians? What honoraria do they get? As any fiction writer, Hollywood producer or Disney animator will tell you, bad guys are the ones who make every story worth telling. Villains put asses in the seats. Take Hans Gruber out of the equation and “Die Hard” is nothing but an annoying, chain-smoking cop who talks out of the corner of his mouth a lot going to his wife’s office party.
And Lord knows Boston fans have more than bagged our quota of villains. Nastyass, despicable bastards. Real life wrestling heels of human beings who’ve fired up our bloodlust and made you wish you pray you could be there the day their wretched, miserable, evil souls would sucked down into the Hellmouth where they belong.
In high school I took a Humanities class where we read Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” In truth, I never read it, I read the cliff notes. In truth I never read the cliff notes, I went to the library, thumbed through them and copied from the for ten minutes, then spent the afternoon playing Strat-o-Matic baseball. But there were kids in my class who actually did read it, and at least some of their knowledge rubbed off on me a little. For instance, I learned that while it’s called a “comedy,” it’s not actually funny, it’s all about pain and suffering. Like a Robin Williams movie. Anyway, “Divine Comedy” is all about Hell. Dante’s Hell is divided into 9 circles, with each successive circle filled with the more egregious sinners, suffering worse and worse torment as you head toward the center. Which is the perfect model for the villains, scumbags, evildoers, ne’er-do-wells and dickwads that have littered the history of Boston sports like piles of dog crap on the Commons.
To be clear, this list isn’t just for guys who’ve beaten us or made us their bitch. Whatever pain Bucky Dent, Aaron Boone or David Tyree caused us, it’s a little hard to sentence someone to eternal damnation for beating you fair and square. This list is for those who are pure evil in human form. The ones who committed such pernicious, malevelont acts that only infinite torment will even the score.
1st Circle: ARod
Dante’s description : The outer circle of Dante’s Hell is not actually a place of suffering. Otherwise known as Limbo, it’s reserved for those who those who reject God and therefore are doomed to live out eternity in a deficient Heaven.
Who did Dante put here?: Caesar, Plato, Socrates
Why he belongs here: In fairness, ARod isn’t entirely evil. He’s the man you love to hate, no question. But he hasn’t really done us any wrong. He’s a guiltless buffoon at this point. A self-infatuated cheater and as phoney as they come, but harmless and sort of pathetic at this point.
Mitigating factors: Yankee fans hate him more than we do.
Who belongs there with him?: Napoleon, Charles Manson, Carrot Top
2nd Circle: Tonya Harding
Dante’s description: The first level where true suffering occurs. The damned are blown about constantly by violent storms.
Who did Dante put here? Cleopatra, Achilles
Why she belongs here: Bostonians are a thick skinned bunch. There’s a lot we can take. When it comes to our politicians, our churches, our ball players or our selves, do what you will. But you keep your grubby paws off our beloved, elegant figure skating princesses.
Mitigating factors: Tonya’s little Gang That Couldn’t Swing a Pipe Straight made for the greatest drama of the 90's and put figure skating on the map. Plus it made her into a trash TV superstar. Her videotaped wedding night handjob was legendary before she held a palm full of boy butter up for the camera.
Who belongs there with her? : Nixon, John Wilkes Booth, Yanni
3rd Circle: Roger Clemens
Dante’s description: A sea of slush, black snow, hail and freezing rain into which the damned are forced to lie down.
Who did Dante put here?: The gluttons.
Why he belongs here: For his last four years in Boston, at a time in which the Sox could’ve contented for a title, Clemens absolutely mailed in it. He went 40-39 during that stretch. It wasn’t until after he left that he discovered the performance-enhancers that would’ve made a difference for us, and proceeded to chase every single dollar he could get his rapacious little sausage-like fingers around on his way to four Cy Young Awards.
Mitigating factors: He did win three Cys and an MVP here.
Who belongs there with him? : Henry VIII, Elvis, Artie Lang
4th Circle: Reggie Jackson/ Thurman Munson/ Mickey Rivers
Dante’s description: The 4th circle is divided into two groups. Those who are condemned to push boulders into the middle of the circle, and those who are forced to push them back out. Lather, rinse repeat.
Who did Dante put here?: The greedy.
Why they belong here: The Yankees of the 70's were evil incarnate and their rivalry with the Sox back then made the 2000's look like a 2nd grade dodgeball game. Reggie was the pluperfect arrogant “Hey everyone look at me!” narcissist. Munson and Carlton Fisk were like two cats clawing at each other inside a burlap bag. During the historic 1976 Yankee Stadium brawl, Mickey Rivers ran around sucker punching Sox players from behind. He spent the rest of his career in the Fenway centerfield dodging “D” batteries thrown from the bleachers.
Mitigating factors: Reggie tried to kill the queen in “Naked Gun.” Munson died in a plane crash in ‘79. Mickey’s real name is John Milton Rivers but he named his son Mickey Rivers, Jr.
Who belongs there with them? : Bernie Madoff, Mussolini, Jose Canseco
5th Circle: Ben Dreith
Dante’s description: The river Styx, which is actually terrible and not at all like the beloved band who sang “Domo Arrigato, Mr. Roboto.” Some are forced to fight each other on the surface while others suffer in the murky, swampy water below.
Who did Dante put here? : The wrathful and the slothful.
Why he belongs here: The first team I truly fell in love with as a kid was the 1976 “Grogan’s Heroes” Patriots. In the Wild Card playoff, the Pats outplayed and outclassed the Raiders in Oakland but a series of calls by head referee Dreith cost them the game. The calls were so blatantly bad that to this day Steve Grogan will tell you he’s convinced the game was not on the level.
Mitigating factors: The Snow Bowl and the “Tuck Rule” call. When the Pats karma ran over the Raiders dogma.
Who belongs there with him?: Genghis Kahn, Ozzy Osbourne,
6th Circle: Ulf Samuelsson
Dante’s description : Two words: “flaming tombs.”
Who did Dante put here? : Heretics
Why he belongs here: By 1991, Cam Neely was a God in this town. An omnipotent being with the ability to perform miracles with his stick and smite opponents with his fists. And in the Stanley Cup finals, Samuelsson took Cam’s knee in vain with a cheap shot and Neely would never be the same player.
Mitigating factors: Neely is now leading the Bruins return to respectability.
Who belongs there with him?: Kim Jong Il, Stalin, George Steinbrenner
7th Circle: Bill Laimbeer/ Rick Mahorn/ Dennis Rodman
Dante’s description: Three circles guarded by a minotaur that include a river of boiling blood, vicious dogs chasing people through thorn bushes and burning hot sand with fire raining from the sky.
Who did Dante put here? : The violent, the blasphemers and the sodomites. In other words, the Pistons roster.
Why they belong here : The Pistons of the late 80s/early 90s were so vile and repugnant they were like fictional characters. And no team ever loved being hated the way they did. Laimbeer in particular might as well have been wearing a mask and hailing from “Parts Unknown.” Johnny Most called him and Mahorn “McFilthy and McNasty.” Even before Rodman did his pioneering work in Freakshowism, Danny Ainge nicknamed him “The Worm.”
Mitigating factors: The time Robert Parish beat Laimbeer within an inch of his life. Or the time Larry Bird gunned the ball off his head. Or the fact that Rodman is now penniless and foraging for scraps on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
Who belongs there with him?: Timothy McVeigh, Jeffrey Dahlmer, Ron Borges
8th Circle: Alan Eagleson
Dante’s description: Now we’re talking. Ten different ditches of stone. Some with walls made of human shit, boiling lakes of oil, some guys with their heads encased in stone, some with their heads turned backwards.
Who did Dante put here? : The liars, deceivers and those who committed fraud and treachery.
Why he belongs here : Eagleson did nothing less than cost this city its most beloved athlete. He was Orr’s agent who not only stole from Orr (and others) but when the Bruins tried to reach out to Orr at the end of his career to offer him a piece of the team, Eagleson never mentioned it and forbade them to talk to Bobby directly about it. Their hand forced, the B’s traded Orr to Chicago in a situation that was horrible for everyone on Earth. Except Eagleson.
Mitigating factors: He not only went to jail, he was forced to resign from his spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Who belongs there with him? : Hussein, Timothy McVeigh, Arlen Specter
9th Circle: Jack Tatum
Dante’s description: Satan has three heads, each of which chews on a different condemned man and cries tears which mix with their blood.
Who did Dante put here?: The betrayers Judas, Cassius and Brutus.
Why he belongs here: In a preseason game against the Pats, Tatum leveled a vicious shoulder-to-helmet hit on a defenseless Daryl Stingley, leaving the promising wideout paralyzed until his death last year. He not only never apologized, he cashed in on his infamy, writing a book called “Call Me Assassin” in which he bragged about what a badass his was. He actually tried to meet with Stingley to apologize a couple of years ago. But since the meeting was timed to coincide with the release of another book, Stingley told Tatum he could go piss up a rope.
Mitigating factors: None. None whatsoever.
Who belongs there with him?: Hitler, Bin Laden, Scott Boras
Anyway, this is just the list as it stands now. There’s always room for more. Yes, I’m looking at you, Manny.