Illustration by Tim Walker

WARWICK -- I'm almost afraid to tell John Reis I'm an Oakland Raiders fan. But I'm not going to lie to the guy.

"You said you're a big football fan, but you're not really a Patriots fan," Reis says, setting up the question I'd been hoping he wouldn't ask. "Are you just a football fan, not a fan of any team?"

"Actually, I'm a Raiders fan," I offer, bracing.

I've been hanging out with Reis for less than 45 minutes, but I already know what he thinks of Raiders fans ("They're still crying out there about the tuck rule and all that") and of football-loving New Englanders who don't count themselves Patriots loyalists ("I don't understand how you can grow up in New England and root for another team"). I even watched him exercise his distaste for regional turncoats, phoning two Miami Dolphins fans from his neighborhood to taunt them as their team fell ever further behind the Kansas City Chiefs.

It's not like I think Reis is going to kick me out of his house. Reis is as intense a Patriots fan as I've ever met, but he's nothing if not good-natured.

It's just that the late games haven't started yet. And while I'm fairly certain the Raiders are going to beat the Tennessee Titans, anything can happen in the NFL. And another thing I've already learned about John Reis is that he's one of these guys who adopts an almost instant familiarity with you. That's mostly a good thing from my perspective. I am, after all, essentially a complete stranger who invited himself into the guy's home to watch him watch a Patriots game. So his friendliness has gone a long way.

Only I've got this message he just left on his buddy's answering machine fresh in my mind: "Oh, you won't even pick up the phone? What, are you still crying? Hey, if your Dolphins are playing like this against Kansas City, how do you think they're gonna do against a real defense?"

I'm also mindful of the fact that I've only known Reis while things have been going his way. Watching the Dolphins lose, he's been full of energy, smiling wide, jumping around his living room, happily shouting taunts at the Dolphins through his big-screen TV.

That's exactly what I do when I'm watching a game at home and things are going my way.

What I do when things aren't going my way is a good bit uglier. I swear at the set, fume, pout, and stomp around. I don't know if John Reis is like me in that way, too, but I think I might find out. I've spent the last week semi-convinced that the Patriots are going to lose to the San Diego Chargers.

So even if I hadn't learned over the past 25 years that it can be touchy to tell anyone, particularly a Pats fan, that I follow the Raiders, I'd still have a thing or two to worry about.

I'm practiced at this, though. I don't leave any space between telling Reis where my football loyalties lie and explaining myself.

"I mean, I've never rooted against the Pats," I tell him. "I always want them to win. But I could never take it, you know? I needed to have a team that I could count on."

"Oh, yeah," he says, smiling, "I know what you're saying."

I have no reason to believe he doesn't mean exactly what he's said, but I still secretly cross my toes for a big Raiders win. I think maybe I should find something else to cross for the Patriots, but I need my fingers free to take notes and my legs free for the jumping-up-and-down part of watching football, so I let it slide.

JOHN REIS GOT screwed by the Patriots this season. Have I mentioned that?

Reis is the guy you might have read about in the papers, the guy you might have heard about out at Gillette Stadium, in a bar somewhere, on the back steps at your office during a smoke break. He's "that guy from Warwick," the one who got stripped of his season tickets after 20 years because he tried to sell some seats on eBay.

In case you missed it, Reis's story goes like this: he's been a Patriots season-ticket holder since 1982. Over the course of 20 seasons at the old stadium, including more than a couple that the Patriots finished with fewer than a handful of wins, Reis missed two games. That is, he was there in the rain and the snow and the freezing cold, often for games that were only important in determining how high up in the draft order the Pats would pick the following spring. (In the NFL draft, the last-place team from the previous season picks first, and so on.) He was there in years when the team was lucky if it drew 20,000 fans to many of its games.

When you meet Reis, you quickly learn why he was there through all that. His loyalty to the team is unquestioning. His home office is a shrine to the Pats, with autographed photos and footballs, a Super Bowl XXXI ticket cast in Lucite, a wealth of memorabilia, all carefully displayed on a wall of shelves. A large magnet he had made for his truck bears the slogan BLUE THUNDER, WHITE LIGHTNING, references to the Pats' defense and offense. He believes it's important that he wear Pats-themed clothing every game day. He doesn't really believe that what he wears brings the team luck, but he's not taking any chances.

You don't have to stretch to understand what Reis is talking about when he tells you how excited he was that he'd managed to snag 34th-row seats on the 50-yard line this season. (Season-ticket holders are offered the opportunity to improve their spots in the stadium as seats open up.) And you certainly don't have to stretch to hear his disappointment when he tells you how he never got to sit in those seats.

When Reis realized he was going to have to miss his third-ever game October 13 -- he was taking a trip with his wife -- he decided to sell his tickets for that game on eBay. And why not? People do it all the time. Many do it strictly for profit. You can buy tickets to pretty much any sporting event you can imagine on eBay. You certainly have more than enough opportunities to pick up Pats tickets there.

Trouble is, it's against the rules to resell tickets to Patriots games. Says so right on the back of the tickets. And when the Patriots found out Reis was reselling his tickets to that game, they revoked his season tickets. Just stripped them away. There was no call to say, "Hey, you can't do that." No letter asking him to cut it out. Just official legal notice that he'd lost his tickets and a check refunding the purchase price. Just like that.

So now, after 20 years as a season-ticket holder, Reis turns to eBay himself to buy tickets for the team's home games, buying from people who are wise enough to the rules to sell through third parties, or from authorized ticket agencies (a/k/a legal scalpers) the team allows to resell tickets at prices higher than face value (in exchange for what no one will say, though it isn't hard to guess). He's done it for both games at Gillette Stadium so far this season -- paying about $250 for a pair of tickets with face values of $75 each -- and he'll continue to do it, because he continues to love the team even though he's not so fond of the organization.

In the meantime, Reis is suing the Patriots in an attempt to get his seats back. He's angry about the way the organization treated him. And he ought to be. The Patriots of 15 years ago, poorly run as they may have been, might have handled Reis's situation more reasonably. Without a 50,000-deep waiting list for season tickets, that Patriots organization might actually have contacted Reis and told him what he was doing was against the rules. It might have recognized the value of a guy who's been showing up for games through thick and thin for two decades.

The current Patriots organization doesn't need to reward loyalty, and so, apparently, it isn't going to.

Last week, Reis made an offer to the team: he'll drop his suit -- and walk away, if that's how it goes -- if Patriots owner Robert Kraft will agree to a 15-minute meeting with him to discuss the situation.

"If Robert Kraft looks at me and says he thinks what happened is fair, I'll accept that," Reis says. "I don't think it's him. I think it's the lawyers. I just refuse to believe Robert Kraft would look at this and think it's a fair punishment."

I recognize that I'm a bit of a cynic, but I have to wonder if Reis isn't being a bit overly optimistic there.

There's no question but that Robert Kraft has distinguished himself as one of the better team owners in the NFL. It was Kraft's investment in the team, after all, that allowed it to evolve from one of the league's perpetual dogs to a Super Bowl champion and a feared opponent. It was Kraft's money that built Gillette Stadium.

But Kraft is a business executive. And business executives have a way of doing what their lawyers tell them to do. So even if it isn't Kraft, even if it isn't simply an organization grown arrogant with its recent success, even if it is, as Reis suspects, "the lawyers" who are keeping him from getting his seats back, it seems unlikely a 15-minute meeting will accomplish anything other than finalize the loss.

I don't want to say that, though. I don't want to say it even more than I didn't want to tell him I'm a Raiders fan. And I especially don't want to say it as I sit in Reis's living room eating his stuffed quahogs, drinking his beer, and watching his team do everything it can to hand a victory to San Diego (even as the score updates constantly report that the Raiders are running away with their game).

To my relief, Reis retains his good spirits throughout the game. He yells at Tom Brady as the quarterback throws a pair of interceptions. He yells at the Patriots defense as they allow running back LaDainian Tomlinson to rack up 217 yards. He notes that this is the second week in a row the Pats have given up big yards to a running back, and we both worry about how the team will fare against Miami and its star RB Ricky Williams next Sunday. And he swears up a storm as Patriots RB Kevin Faulk foolishly attempts to lateral to wide receiver David Patten with seconds remaining in the game, turning the ball over to San Diego and giving up the Pats' last chance at tying the game and forcing overtime. But he keeps his spirits up.

When it's over and the Pats have suffered their first loss of the season, Reis turns off the TV and thanks me for coming, smiling and shrugging a "you can't win 'em all" shrug.

A few minutes later, as I drive past T.F. Green Airport on my way out of town, I cross my toes in hopes there's nothing to worry about in Miami. And I cross my fingers in hopes I'm wrong about John Reis's prospects of getting help from Robert Kraft.

Sean Glennon is a freelance writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts. He can be reached at sean@thispatsyear.com.

Issue Date: October 4 - 10, 2002