FOXBOROUGH, MA -- Now, it's Billy who's on the hook.
"This is your fault," Dave tells him as the Patriots and the Kansas City
Chiefs head into overtime.
It's Billy's fault because he's not only made the mistake of taking the Chiefs
and the eight and a half points they are getting (a reasonable bet, as it turns
out), but he's allowed Dave and Shannon to see his betting card. He's revealed
himself as a traitor, which, at least for the moment, is as good as a jinx.
The guys initially made a joke of Billy's act of treason, seizing and tearing
up his card. But that was a good six minutes of football ago, back when the
Pats were up two touchdowns and looking like they had finally found their
offense and were poised to put the game away.
Now things don't look so great. Now the Chiefs have rebounded and, in less than
five minutes of play, twice shoved the ball down the Pats' throats -- with
increasing gusto. Now things are back to appearing the way they did early in
the second quarter, when the Pats were down 10, when Gillette Stadium was
almost dead silent for stretches of time, when it looked like the almost
universally anointed "best team in football" was headed for an upset loss.
But this time, it's Billy who's brought on the team's misfortune. Or more to
the point, it's Billy instead of me. And I'm incredibly relieved. I'm still
hoping the Pats will regain momentum and win the game, but at least I don't
have to worry about losing my ride home if they manage to blow it. That's nice.
It's a long way home from Foxborough.
Dave must have been kidding, at least mostly kidding, when he told me way back
in the second quarter that he blamed me for the Pats' troubles, but the thing
is, I don't really know these guys. I'm along for the ride, so to speak,
gathering stories about the folkways of Pats fandom. What I do know is that a
fan's mind can work in weird ways. I know it because I've been there.
There have been less-than-rational moments in my life when I've come within
immeasurably tiny distances of believing, actually believing, that any time my
wife walked into the living room, something bad was bound to happen to my team.
Now, I love my wife. And I feel fairly bad about abandoning her on Sundays five
months a year. So, for the most part, I actually like to see her walk into the
room when I'm watching a game. Plus, I don't actually believe in jinxes. And I
certainly do my best to avoid engaging in the kind of magical thinking that
leads a person to believe something happening in his living room could possibly
affect the outcome of a football game. Nonetheless, I've been there, or
frighteningly close to it.
Dave hardly even knows me (which, in fact, is part of the problem); we met at
about seven this very morning. So when he looked at me, right after the Chiefs
scored their first touchdown, and said, "You know if they [the Pats] lose, you
can never come to another game, right?" I understood entirely. Dave, Shannon,
and Billy have been coming to Patriots' games together for years. And so far --
which is to say for the last season plus two games -- that had been working out
pretty well for them . . . and the Pats. But now things looked to be
changing for the worse. Why? Well, the guys were the same. The team was the
same. The new stadium had already been tested for jinx potential and had come
up looking great. As far as Dave could tell, I was the wild card. That meant I
must be the reason for the team's poor performance.
It was an absurd notion -- every bit as absurd as Dave's new suspicion that the
team's woes may be Billy's fault. But you can't count on a fan to recognize
such absurdity right away, especially if his team ends up losing.
I have no way of knowing whether Shannon and Billy feel the same way or whether
they'll take it out on me if something bad happens. As far as I can figure,
though, the only thing they have on me is that they are my ride. So all I can
think is, what if the Pats lose and I end up getting ditched at the stadium?
DAVE, SHANNON, and Billy aren't the only serious Pats fans I've met today.
They're just the ones I'm sitting with at the game.
I've spent the entire day with these guys and a bunch of their friends,
starting just after 6 a.m., when I met Shannon in a parking lot in Sutton.
From there, we drove to Dave's house in North Smithfield, to meet the others.
That's where they keep the bus.
Earlier this year, the guys -- Shannon, Dave, Billy, Ricky, Keith, Mike, and
Pep -- decided to replace the van they'd been driving to Pats games for the
past few years and to get themselves a little leg room in the process. They
bought a used Harvard University shuttle bus, painted
PATRIOTS on the
driver's side, slapped some Pats stickers on the windows, and rigged up the
thing as an impressive tailgating headquarters.
Just seeing a thing like that sitting in a driveway is a little overwhelming.
You think, these guys aren't just regular old fans. They're not even just
regular old season-ticket holders. These guys have made a long-term investment
in their team. Oh, for God's sake, what you think is: "Holy shit. These guys
bought a bus -- a bus -- just to take to football games."
It's entirely overwhelming to arrive in Foxborough on that bus just after
8 a.m., spend half an hour waiting for a parking lot (a field, really)
across Route 1 from the stadium to open, hold onto your seat with all your
strength as you rocket across that field like homesteaders, disembark, and then
stand back and watch the crew go into action setting up for a day of
tailgating, thinking you ought to help somehow, but afraid to disrupt the flow
of their work.
By 9 a.m., a tent was up, the satellite dish was aimed, the generator was
running, ESPN was on the TV, beers were opened, a game of pitch was under way,
and Mike had what looked to be about five pounds of bacon frying on two gas
grills.
There was a breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon, followed
almost immediately, it seemed, by a lunch of barbecued ribs. Later, after the
game, there would be pulled-pork sandwiches, corn on the cob, and grilled
potatoes. We'd never quite make it to the teriyaki steak.
There were four hours of guys in their early 30s who had known each other since
they were kids interacting as fluidly as such long-time friends will. There was
a good deal of boys being boys; of telling the stranger (better still, the
journalist stranger) every embarrassing story about the other guys they could
summon; of horseplay, raised voices and mock threats; of fart jokes, and, of
course, sexual posturing -- the play of men among men on the threshold of an
afternoon of NFL football. There was even some football talk -- though not
nearly as much as I would have expected -- most of it centered on the
assumption that the Patriots were about to waltz to 3-0.
Then there was the game.
THE GUYS DON'T all have seats together (in fact, they don't all have seats), so
we split up for the game. Mike and Pep head in together. Ricky and Keith stay
on at the bus, where they'll watch the game on satellite. Shannon, Dave, Billy,
and I take our seats in section 236, off to the shady side of the end zone
nearest Route 1.
With the Pats' slow, clumsy start, the side of Patriots' fandom I've known all
my life starts to emerge.
Three penalties on the Pats early in the game -- two on the defense during
Kansas City's first drive, one on the punt-return team -- and Shannon believes
the officials are gunning for his team.
Dave watches Troy Brown drop what should have been an easy pass, shakes his
head, and offers, "Things to come here today, boys." Moments later, after the
punting team commits yet another penalty to negate a great stop, Dave mutters,
"They can't go three and zero. They can't go three and zero." Not a single
point has been scored by either team.
The guys sitting in front of us conclude that Tom Brady's reported relationship
with some young actress is bringing about the bad mojo.
The guys sitting around me -- well, Dave anyhow -- conclude it's me.
I grow less worried as the Pats catch up and the guys start believing in their
team again. But it returns as the Chiefs retake the lead at the start of the
second half. I have to wait till the Pats are up two touchdowns early in the
fourth quarter to voice the concern that has come over me as I've watched the
Pats' offense struggle and the Chiefs' running back, Priest Holmes, run all
over the Patriots' D, the concern that the Pats are about to play two road
games against San Diego and Miami, teams that have better running backs and
better defenses than KC.
"San Diego's defense is overrated," Dave says. (This is just a few hours before
San Diego's defense would post a safety, a touchdown, two interceptions, and
three sacks against Arizona, but at that moment, Dave was a Pats true
believer.) I disagree, but the game isn't quite over and I'm going to need that
ride home, so I decide it's best to keep it to myself.
Good decision. The Chiefs come back to tie the game in the very last seconds of
the fourth.
There's been virtually no defense for the last quarter of the game. So now it's
looking like whoever wins the coin toss and gets the ball first in overtime is
going to win the game. The Chiefs call heads, it comes up tails. The Pats take
the kickoff and, in less than five minutes of playing time, put up a field goal
to take the win.
They can, it seems, go 3-0. Better still, it seems Billy and I are both in the
clear.
The question that occurs to me as I walk across Route 1 on my way back to the
bus is, can the Pats go 4-0? We've lost Dave and Billy in the crowd, and when I
ask Shannon about it, he doesn't have much to say except that he's a bit
concerned. I get the feeling he may also be worried that simply talking about
it will bring on bad luck. And I'm a little tired and a lot sunburned. So while
I'm actually more than a little concerned about next week, I decide once again
it's best to keep it to myself.
Sean Glennon is a freelance writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts. He
can be reached at sean@thispatsyear.com.
Issue Date: September 27 - October 3, 2002
