The Titletown Manifesto
“You know, by God, I actually pity those poor bastards we're going up against. By God, I do. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel.”- Patton
“ What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”- Conan the Barbarian
If you haven’t noticed, the world has changed for the Boston fan. Changed irrevocably and for the better. We can quibble forever about the exact moment the worm turned for us. You say the Tuck Rule call, he says when the Sox couldn’t close the ARod deal, she says the Mo Lewis hit on Bledsoe. This guy says it was Dave Roberts’ steal, that guy says it was any one of about eight Vinatieri kicks. But we’re splitting hairs. All these and a hundred moments like them have marked the upward surge of Boston sports mankind and forever altered the way we and the universe treat one another.
It was what?...six years and five Rolling Rallies ago that we were all conditioned to expect the worst. Maybe it was some combination of too many soul-crushing losses and too many Globe columns about what a bunch of cranky, rancorous Gloomy Gusses we all were, but we were predisposed to assume that since Larry Bird’s back went out, thing just weren’t meant to work out for us around here. Check out tape of the 1999 ALCS between the Red Sox and Yankees. Fenway fans came out in full force. They brought their A game. They yelled and cheered and tried to will the Sox into the World Series. But every time something went wrong, every fly ball that nearly went out but hit off the top of the wall instead, every ball that could’ve cleared the bases but bounced into the stands, every bad call that always seemed to go New York’s way (and there were many), you could just feel the air go out of the ball park. And why not? There was a sizable body of work convincing us the sky was about to fall, and we were always proven right in the end.
It was an attitude that affected how you looked at everything. With the Sox, you dreaded the postseason. With the Patriots, a successful year meant making the playoffs or not getting smoked in the Super Bowl. The Celtics got an A if no one dropped dead at a tragically young age. We were aiming low.
Now, after our fifth caravan of Duck Boats since the millennium, things couldn’t be more different. It’s “Trading Places.” We’re living at the complete opposite end of the Sports-Misery continuum. In dealing with fans from other towns, we’re inflicting the pain, humiliation and degradation instead of absorbing it. Which is how it was meant to be.
The 2004 Red Sox were a heartwarming, feel-good emotional story. They won it all for your grandfather and for my sainted mom and for Johnny Pesky. The 2007 Sox were a different story. They won it for themselves. They were a celebration of excellence, talent and killer instinct. They didn’t pull off a miracle, they ground down the best teams baseball threw at them by pounding the strike zone and with a relentless, unforgiving offense. They took the hottest team in the history of October baseball and they swept them because they were better. Period. This was evolution in it’s most basic form. The Sox are the dominant predators, and today they sit atop the baseball food chain.
It’s hard to believe now, but up until a short time ago, the Red Sox were considered part of a great sports rivalry with the Yankees. That was back when the Sox were still thought of as lovable underdogs and before New York started having three hour press conferences for a fired manager like they were some podunk college town losing their football coach. That was before they started crying in their soup because their highest paid player opted out because he wanted to make more money to crap his October pants in some other city. (Note: In his last three post season series combined, ARod had fewer RBIs than Dice-K had last Saturday night.) Maybe the Sox and Yankees really were in an arms race, but it doesn’t seem like it now. But regardless, they’ve fallen like the Soviet Union, and the Sox are the only Superpower left on the planet.
And what do you do when you’re the only Superpower? You crush anyone who stands in your way, and force them to do your will. Anything less is asking for trouble. The US had its shot twice and blew it each time. After WWII, we could’ve told the whole world we were ready to bomb them all back to the stone age if they didn’t all start building baseball diamonds and sewing us some high-quality, low-cost jeans. Instead, we adopted the Marshall Plan and the Monroe Doctrine, pulled them all back onto their feet and brushed the grass off their jacket. And what did we get for it? They put our manufacturing out of business with their damned commendable work ethic and superior goods. Then in the early ‘90s, after the other (read: non-Yankee) Evil Empire fell, the US could’ve sold the whole rest of the planet to the Disney Corp. and allowed them to make it more pleasingly Epcottish. But instead we apologized for being so good at self-preservation and started letting the rest of them nag us about how are cars are melting their polar ice caps. Yeah, you’re welcome, ingrates.
Let this be a lesson. When you’re on top of the world, you do whatever it takes to stay there. And that means crushing your enemies. The Patriots have gotten this for years. Only now, they truly have what it takes to accomplish the task. The Pats have been accused of running up the scores on helpless opposing defenses. Is it true? You’re goddamned right it is. Because that’s what you do when you’re the greatest team in the history of your sport. You don’t just win, you crush people. If they don’t like it, let them stop you. If they can’t stop you, then you’ve made your point.
It’s survival of the fittest. It’s about more than that though, it’s about fairness. The Patriots have the smartest owner and the most resourceful GM/coach in all of football. They put together the greatest assemblage of talent and the most cohesive team construct in the NFL. If other teams are helpless to stop that, it’s their fault. Do better. Some complain that the Sox have an advantage because they have the second highest payroll in baseball. Again, how is that unfair? What is the source of that payroll?
We are. Boston fans. We have great teams to root for because we pay the freight. We have by far the highest ticket prices in all of sports. We endure the worst subway in America or pay more for a parking space than most fans do for a box seat. Yet Fenway hasn’t had an empty seat in it since 2003, Foxboro since long before that. And we do it because we have a hugely distorted set of priorities that makes having championship teams to root for a vitally important aspect of our lives. F- you if you think that’s unfair.
Like the teams we follow, we don’t care what you think. We’re just happy to be the best.