Thursday, December 10, 2015

Bob Lobel: Nobody Cheers (And Boos) Its Teams Like Boston


By Bob Lobel (@boblobel)

Weird times in the town without pity.

Boos at Gillette for a defending Super Bowl champion, and a team with (at the time) a 10-1 record. What the hell do we want, anyway? 

At The Tradition this week, the great Lesley Visser made the very astute observation that there is no place in American that celebrates its teams the way we do it here.

Oops. She is absolutely right, but needs to add that we are tough graders. 

Surly, we can admit together that we can celebrate better than most, but there are few cities that have such a short attention span. It's almost like this is the home of sports ADD. It's as if sports ADD started here and worked its way across country. I have it, so talking about observing it in others is no big deal. 

There was that football game in Foxboro last week, when the quarterback with God-like qualities looked anything but. I'm sure even God needs angels to help with the miracles. So it must be with the quarterback. Edelman, Amendola and the biggest angel of all, Gronk, were somewhere else. The long and short of it kinda shows that even Gods need help. Big time help. 

That’s ok. 

The end is hardly in sight at the moment, but all that optimism and talk of a fifth Super Bowl should probably calm down a little. I've really never seen a team go from Super Bowl to trying to make the playoffs as third seed trend down so quickly. 

Hang in there! 

Trending down is not what is going on down the street at the baseball park. Trending up is the word, and pitching is the vehicle that is getting the Red Sox to a place far from where they were. It's really a good thing to have at least one going up to pass the one going down. Listen, that is taking the temperature of the moment. Everything can turn on a dime, so let's go back to Lesley's observation that no city celebrates its teams like this one. 

Yes, it does vary from time to time. I was there last year when the Red Sox were booed. I heard with great clarity when the Patriots go theirs last weekend. Listening to the radio this week was kind of bizarre. The new young guys seemed totally amazed that the patriots were booed at halftime when they weren’t even losing (the game was tied at 14).  

Nothing new to these ears. Heard it and saw it all before. So it is true that trends are just that. Be happy a trend is not the destination.  There is time. Of course, when you say that, you can also hear the  hum of panic. 

Relax.

Sunday is another day and another trend will take the place of the last one. A loss will be more than a trend (hear the panic). Let's get ready to celebrate again (smell the whiff of panic). We are all in. 

All in, until we are out.

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