NEW BOSTON, New Hampshire -- One second everyone's chanting -- "It's
o-ver! It's o-ver!" -- the next they're scrambling.
The big TV has gone black just as officials appear to be getting ready to
confirm that the Patriots-Bears game is, in fact, all but over. The connection
has gone out, with the exquisite, painful, seemingly sentient timing of cable
TV.
It takes a few seconds for us to figure out what's happened. Then there's a
rush to change the channel on the little TV and adjust the rabbit ears on top
of it.
A rough picture forms just in time for us to see the Patriots lining up to try
a two-point conversion. And though we've missed the actual announcement, the
fact that the game is progressing this way means the refs have upheld David
Patten's huge go-ahead touchdown catch. There's an excited cheer before we snap
to silence, bottling the urge to celebrate the Pats' win until it's just a
little closer to certain.
The Patriots, up 31-30, are attempting to bump their lead to three points with
21 seconds to play. If they pull off the two-point conversion this time (their
previous attempt -- a mere two minutes of game time ago -- had been stopped
short), Chicago won't be able to win at the end of regulation with a field
goal.
This is big. Teams win NFL games on wacky plays in the closing seconds all the
time. And while the guys gathered here have been as unfalteringly confident in
their team as any Patriots fans I've ever seen, believing even through the
darkest periods of an extremely difficult game, there's no such thing as a
professional football fan who doesn't know that games this close are never over
until the clock ticks down to :00.
It's tough to score a touchdown in 21 seconds, but it's anything but unheard-of
for a team to steal a long field goal with that kind of time. If the Pats
succeed here, it'll mean that the long field goal would do nothing but tie it.
And everyone watching this game -- in New England and in Illinois -- knows the
Pats would win in overtime.
They make the conversion this time. Tom Brady hits Troy Brown to pick up the
two points. The Pats are up 33-30. And here, in the basement of Keith Gentili's
colonial in the woods of New Boston, eight thirtysomething men commence a
dancing, hugging, high-fiving, laughing, and yelling celebration most of the
sports world is better off for not having witnessed.
All I can do is sit gape-jawed, awed by the Pats' impressive comeback -- they
had trailed Chicago 27-6 with less than seven minutes remaining in the third
quarter -- a little scared by my fellow fans' celebration (part of me wishes my
wife were here, just so she could see that other guys do victory dances as
goofy as my own) and mindful of the fact that there are still those 21 seconds
to play.
Keith emerges from the celebration, giant grin dominating his flushed, round
face. He takes a step toward me, bends down just enough to make it clear he's
addressing me, laughs, and says, "I think they're fucked." My words from
earlier in the quarter, when things looked a good bit less rosy for the Pats.
As usual, I'm the last person in the room to start believing in the Pats (in
fact, I'm still 21 seconds away from it); as usual, I've expressed this (though
this time only because I was asked); and as usual, at least when the Pats win,
it's coming back at me.
I'm okay with that today. I've been here long enough to have more confidence in
my assessment that Keith and his buddies are a good-natured lot than I'll ever
have in any football team. I can take a little playful ribbing from this kind
of crowd, especially given how great it is to have been wrong.
IT'S BEEN a busy afternoon here in the basement. Busy as NFL game days go,
anyhow.
There's been a steady stream of food -- chicken, sausage, ribs, shrimp, pizza
-- since, I suspect, long before I arrived at three o'clock. There have been
dart games. There's been an almost continuous round of this game Keith invented
involving a ring, a piece of string, and some hooks screwed into a two-by-four
that hangs from one of the ceiling joists above. And there have been
Strat-O-Matic baseball match-ups playing out all over the basement since I
arrived. It's opening weekend in Keith's Strat-O-Matic Old-Timers league, and
guys have been getting some of their games played while they're all together.
Strat-O-Matic is the Dungeons & Dragons of the fantasy-sports universe --
with a lot more yelling and a lot less pewter. Sports geeks gather in basements
all over America with statistical charts for their teams (usually current
teams, but in this case it's classic squads, mostly World Series contenders,
like the '67 Red Sox and '54 Indians) and play games based on strategies too
complicated to absorb in a single November afternoon and executed by rolling
dice and interpreting the rolls against team stats.
I don't play Strat-O-Matic. I'm not playing anything today. What I've been
doing, when I haven't been watching football, is learning about the world of
sports collectibles. That's Keith's business. A former editor of a collectibles
magazine called Tuff Stuff, Keith currently works as director of hobby
sales for Pacific Trading Cards, a manufacturer of hockey and football cards.
There are two basic categories of sports cards, Keith explains. There's retail,
the cards you can buy at the discount department stores and corner drug stores;
they're priced to move. And there's hobby, higher-end cards sold (for between
$3 and $20 a pack) at specialty stores. Keith has something of a dream job for
a sports nut. He creates events for hobby-card dealers, which means he spends a
lot of time traveling to cities across the country and hobnobbing with people
who have tickets to see their home teams. All of which means that Keith gets to
go to a lot of pro-sports events. And -- this is the one that evokes my envy --
he gets to go to the Super Bowl every year.
Of course, there's danger in turning something you love into the way you make
your living. It's one thing to get excited about a team or a game, to collect
cards, autographed photos, and whatnot. It's quite another to tie your mortgage
payment to the hope that other people will share your passion. And even in
businesses where the economics are likely to work out, there's always the risk
that the thing you so enjoy will become nothing more than your job. In Keith's
case, it's the risk that watching a game will become so indistinguishable from
working that it's no longer fun.
Keith has experienced a little bit of that. He confesses to skipping Super Bowl
XXXV (Ravens-Giants), partly because he'd had enough of the New York fans after
two weeks of trading-card events, but mainly because he just wanted to get
home. It hasn't affected his lifelong passion for the Patriots, though.
He can't explain that. He can't say why he's able to watch the entire Pats game
without once mentioning work; or why, having seen innumerable games, he's able
to get as excited about this event as anyone else in the room. It's just
working out for him. And he's not about to pick it apart.
ALTHOUGH KEITH and I have never met before today, he knows where my head is at
when it comes to football. We played in the same fantasy-football league a few
seasons back. We've spoken on the phone a couple times. And Keith has been
reading this column. So he knows I'm a nonbeliever. He knows exactly how
reluctant I am to jump on the Patriots bandwagon.
That's why he turned to me earlier, during an argument over whether the Pats
should have accepted a holding call against the Bears late in the fourth
quarter. With the Pats trailing 27-19, the Bears were facing a fourth down at
the Patriots' 16-yard line. It could have been a third down at the 26 if the
Pats had taken the penalty, giving the Bears an extra opportunity to pick up
the first down, but making it more difficult to hit a field goal if they
failed. The Pats declined, allowing Bears kicker Paul Edinger to hit an easy
chip shot to make it 30-19.
The guys divided over whether Patriots coach Bill Belichick made the right call
on the penalty. I simply sat back, taking it in, assuming it didn't much matter
(that the Pats were out of the game anyhow) until Keith sucked me into it.
"What do you think?" he asked.
I said what popped into my head: "I think they're fucked."
It was less than three minutes of game time later that those words began coming
back at me.
When the Pats scored with 2:36 remaining in the game to close the gap to five
points, Keith looked at me sideways and whispered the sentence back to me, an
oddball, inexplicable confidence that his team was anything but fucked shining
out of his eyes. I thought about pointing out that the Pats had just missed a
key two-point conversion (which would have brought them to within three
points), but there was something about Keith's certainty that stopped me.
When the refs overturned an interception that would have handed Chicago the
game (calling it an incomplete pass, which gave the ball back to the Pats),
Keith glanced at me, saying nothing but thinking it hard enough that I could
feel it.
And now, with 21 seconds to play and the outcome all but certain, there's no
reason Keith shouldn't just come right out and say it. He's earned it -- and so
have I.
I keep my sense of humor about me. "I guess they're not fucked," I admit.
Keith laughs, then gets back to celebrating with his buddies.
There's a little bit of staring at the little TV just to make sure. Then with
the final seconds ticking off the game clock, guys start getting ready to
leave. It's getting late -- 20 minutes to eight o'clock -- and most of us have
long drives ahead (New Boston isn't close to anything).
Something strikes me as I head for the door. "Seems like the kind of comeback
that can turn a whole season around," I say, hardly believing the words are
coming out of my mouth.
"You're right," Keith answers. "It does."
But I'm as committed a skeptic as Keith is a fan. So as I walk down the long,
dark driveway to the street, I can't help but wonder if those words won't come
back to haunt me too.
Sean Glennon is a freelance writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts. He
can be reached at sean@thispatsyear.com.
Issue Date: November 15 - 21, 2002
