the trilogy

When I was eight years old I lived and died for two things which, unfortunately for my parents, did not include school.

Those two things were art and sports.

I was that kid. If you named an athlete in baseball, football or basketball, I could rattle of a ridiculous amount of statistics that were unimportant to anyone within earshot. I stayed up late in my room on school nights with my one-speaker boombox and listened to WTSN (I can't remember where it was based out of...Seabrook, NH....Somersworth? Rochester?...whatever, it's really not a trivial piece of information to this story...) as, depending on the season, a Red Sox or Celtics game was being broadcast.

I remember Tony Armas hitting two home runs in an inning as the Sox beat the Indians 24-5.

I remember countless last quarter heroics by the one and only Larry Bird in the dead of winter, looking out my second story window at New England snowfall and thinking of the beautiful Boston Garden parkay floor with the squeaks of high-top sneakers.

Sundays in the fall were spent outdoors, except for 1 pm until 7pm, in which I would watch the Patriots.

It wasn't so much the athletes that drew me in as much as it was the art and nature of the sports, the sensation of that half second period between when someone releases the ball from beyond the three-point line and it either decides a positive or negative result.

....and considering I was a New England sports fan stuck in the heart of my youth in quiet, uneventful Dover, New Hampshire in the mid to late eighties, the outcomes leaned further and further towards the negative results.

My father, die hard fan in himself, was the catalyst to my youthful days spent in agony. He was born and raised in the same state as I and, sadly, endured many a years of high hopes in regards to the Boston Red Sox. He was the one who let me stay up those late hours in October of 1986 on those school nights and shared the living room with me as we watched in anticipation as our local hardball heroes went to the world series to meet the New York Mets.

Game six....it's well known what went down (or in between...) and my father could not control himself, which was to my benefit because it may have been the first time I found myself shouting both "Fuck!" and "Goddammit!" in his presence. It was around 11:30 pm, which at the late hour was enough to wake both my younger sister and my mother....needless to say they were none too please and/or understanding.

Game seven didn't even really happen...I fell asleep in the seventh inning as the future two innings were looking increasingly bleak as every moment passed.

Luckily, that year we had the Boston Celtics. We had championship number sweet sixteen against the Houston Rockets. I remember coming home from school as the games started at 5 pm eastern time....just enough of a gap from when I walked through the back door to finish my homework and give my parents no reason to not let me sit in front of the idiot box for such an immensely important reason.

....and, unfortunately, we had the New England Patriots in the super bowl. The playoff games leading up to this were amazing. I remember the "squish the fish" shirt my father brought home for me a day before the game against the Miami Dolphins. I remember my mother making pizza from scratch every sunday that was warm and ready the moment I came inside at 1 pm after spending the morning and early afternoon outside doing what kids do.

....and I sure as hell remember the Patriots getting absolutely annihilated (46-10, i think?). The week leading up to the super bowl was spent breathing disgust for the Chicago showboats in Jim McMahon and William "the refrigerator" Perry.

So, this is how my younger days were spent. Time and years went on, flooded by local team disappointment, but by over enthusiasm and love for the game(s) escalating. I tried my hand at playing baseball, but was quite possibly one of the worst players the game will ever own. Basketball I fared much better, playing up and through my junior year in high school before I gave up on anything that included me being part of a "team". And, as those times and years went on, I became "that guy" on a team. The away game bus rides were spent with a walkman and headphones and when asked what I was listening to, I would reply (any of the following: "sick of it all", "bdp", "black flag", "epmd", etc...you get the picture) to them, knowing full well that I'd get the weird look, the "never heard of 'em" and the turn back around. I got used to it....much like my opinions of being involved in underground and extreme music, I was never there to make friends. I was there to do what I wanted to do.

My obsession with all things sports related had come to a sad and whimpering halt some time around my senior year in high school, where I had dirtied my hands into the forms of crust punk and hardcore and it pretty much took over every spare moment I had. I'd still catch and inning or two late at night during my constant battles with insomnia, but for all purposes, my first non-female love had come and gone.

It lasted this way for quite a few years, as five out of every seven nights a week were spent driving to far off places to see a band I'd never actually heard, but was willing to give a shot. This, keep in mind was ten or eleven years ago, in my late teens / early twenties....back when gas was ninety cents a gallon and I could drive four hours to Connecticut without even thinking twice.

Sometime late in 2001 was when I first started to get the itch again. I had a job doing room service at the Portsmouth, NH Sheraton Hotel (just picture a dude with a little gnar all dressed up in a tuxedo shirt and a bow-tie....it payed my bills and I got free food) and one of the many days I worked in the fall always ended up being sundays. At first it was work as usual, delivering overpriced appetizers and cocktails to bloated, cigars wavers away on business trips spending their sabbath in their condo living rooms watching football pre-games, games and post-games. I delivered the items without much glance at the television until a few weeks had passed and I started to find myself more interested in whatever game was on than making the small talk that would earn me an extra buck or two a visit. I then found myself watching games on my break. And then, I became a Patriots fan once again.

Lo and behold, that ended up being the perfect year to go back to the one time excitement I had held. The Patriots kept winning and I kept watching. Before I knew it, the playoffs had passed and New England was in the super bowl once again. I tried not to think much of it. I tried to convince myself that the excitement of my youth had not completely rekindled and the flame would once again engulf all my anticipatorial sports fanaticisms.

But, it kind of felt as though it had already happened. I found myself loving those three hours of being a spectator. I wanted to see my team win a super bowl.

The side story to all of this is as follows:

My father had told me of an early moment in his marriage to my mother, within a year or so before I was born. My mother makes amazing chocolate chip cookies, as many of my friends could / can attest to. These were, by far, my father's favorite snack. There were days I remember seeing him with chocolate solidified on his face he ate them so hard and fast. One late December sunday, during a rather stressful and ill-fated Patriots playoff game, my mother decided to bake him some cookies to help soften the blow if the Pats ended up losing. With about two minutes left in the game, she slipped the plate in front of him onto the sturdy oak coffee table. The Patriots were marching down the field and needed a touchdown to win. Not a field goal...a touch down. My father couldn't take his eyes off of the screen. With less than a minute left, the ball was intercepted, as was my father's and all of New England's dreams of a super bowl year. In what both my parents have laughingly told me was the most non-violent outburst ever recorded, my father slammed his fist on the table, as much of New England must have just done. But, the difference was that most of New England didn't have a fresh plate of chocolate chip cookies set out for them. Long and short, the plate cracked, the cookies got crushed and flew onto the floor and my mother went bawling into the other room. To this day she laughs about it, as she did about a minute after leaving the living room, calling it one of the funniest sequence of events their marriage ever contained.

So, every year around December, I'd joke with my father about how since the Pats didn't make the playoffs, we didn't have to worry about any cookies breaking.

2001.

The New England Patriots were led to a super bowl victory by a then young and new quarterback named Tom Brady. It was one of the best games I've ever had the opportunity to watch. The game was done and I felt myself get a little choked up. For the first time in my adult life, I was witnessing one of my childhood loves win the game of all games. I got choked up mostly thinking of all the sundays in the living room with my dad, my teacher of being a fan. I knew that he was watching this game and jumping up and down screaming victory at the top of his lungs. After a life of watching football, his team had become champions. I tried calling him a few times in the next few minutes, but was never able to get through, which in a way dulled the feeling of happiness I had reigning over me. I wanted to share it with him and, for some reason, it was just not happening. I decided to try and call him one more time, picked up the phone and heard that I had a voice mail. I dialed the number to hear the message and for a brief second just heard what sounded a bit like pandemonium....people screaming, cars honking, etc. I then heard my father's voice. He had moved to Boston at that point...right near Fenway Park. He was outside of his apartment, celebrating with all the other Bostonians. He had held the phone out so I could hear everyone going nuts and then said one simple little thing that summed it all up:

"Hey Ry!!...Do you hear this?! Can you believe it?! Looks like I won't be breaking any cookies tonight!!...."

I hung up the phone and, much like I'm doing right now while recalling the story, had to fight pretty hard not to let the waterworks leak a little. My father's Patriots were now father and son's Patriots.

Over the following couple of years, football was a mainstay and baseball and basketball crept back into my viewing schedule whenever free time permitted.

I tried never to weigh too heavily on my enthusiasm for baseball because, well, I was a Red Sox fan. That's very close to saying I like being robbed and / or punched in the face for fun. I had seen all the years of misery....I had read about all of the years of misery from before my time.

My father, in his early teens, had actually made a scrapbook for one of the years. He started at the beginning of the season during spring training and documented the entire year, saving box scores and standings, team photos and pennants, interviews, tickets from some of the games he had been lucky enough to go to.

That year just happened to be 1967, the year the Red Sox went to the world series to meet the St. Louis Cardinals.

The year of Tony C, of Ted Williams and of my father's childhood baseball hero, Carl Yastrzemski, or just as he was call "Yaz".

Of course they lost, but for me as a young kid to have such a complete documentation of a baseball season written by my father at around the same age as me was pretty amazing. It still is, considering I've held onto the scrapbook through all these years.

So, he'd dealt with all the lows and lower lows of being a Red Sox fan.

...of the '75 series

...of Bucky Dent

...of that unfortunate game 6 in 1986.

He'd gone through it all.

2004.

There's no funny back story to this year, no odd little misquotes of wisdom. This was just a year I found myself at twenty seven years old wanting ever so badly to witness the Red Sox win their first world series in longer than both my father's and my life put together.

And they did.

I watched every playoff game as if it was the closest to religion I would ever come.

We'd call each other in between each game or two, for no real reason other than to maybe feel as though we were both still sitting there in that living room, watching the game together.

I wanted to be able to call him when that world series was over. I wanted to be the one who got to celebrate with him, if but only for a quick minute. We owed each other this, and we both knew it was going to happen.

Once the series went three games to none in favor of the Red Sox (against the St. Louis Cardinals, which every member of the Red Sox nation was at some point elated to even out after thirty seven years of grudge...), it was not a matter of if as much as when. Granted, this was still the same Boston team, but this year it felt different. During that game four, we called each other multiple times. Out of anywhere he could possibly be, my father found himself watching game four of that world series in the middle of New York City. He kept telling me that he was going to have to celebrate the first Red Sox world series victory in the heart of Yankee pride. To top it off, he somehow found himself sitting next to Manny Ramirez's sister who spent the game next to him at the bar, figuring the only two Red Sox fans in all of NYC that night might as well celebrate together.

As it's known, the Sox won. My father and I got to celebrate together over the phone, me in New Hampshire and him in New York. We got to have that moment neither of us figured we'd ever end up getting to have together.

Four years later, in fall of 2007, I found myself in a van on tour during October while the Red Sox were again in the world series. In the last inning, were driving on a highway in, yes, New York. I pulled off the road and we all listened to that last inning. The final out was made, I honked my horn and we resumed our drive back to New England, in which I called my dad and we talked about how bizarre it was for us to be able to see this happen twice in four years after eighty six with nothing to get excited about.

The only team left for us to have this moment with was the Boston Celtics.

2008.

Twenty two years after that eight year old kid came home from school to watch the NBA finals, I was able to return to Seattle after another month away from home with my band and I was able to watch the Boston Celtics take down the rival of all rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers. I watched game six from the Boston Garden as the cameras took every moment to zoom in on another of the long list of former Celtics that were with the team during it's dynasty days. Bill Russell, Danny Ainge, etc...

Two days after Father's Day, my dad got his late gift and I got to feel eight years old again for a brief few minutes.

The trilogy is complete.

I look at sports very similar to the way I look at music:

for every person that can play and plays for the love of it, there are twenty that play for the money and for the status it gives.

But the game, whichever one that may be, will always be played and my father will be there for a phone call after every win or loss.......whether it's mine or theirs.

I've seen the Patriots become a dynasty.

I've seen the Red Sox win two world series and come back from a three playoff games to none deficit against the New York Yankees (which had never before been done).

I've seen the Boston Celtics beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals.

...and I've seen my father smile, celebrate and be happy with where he is in life.

Man and son are doing alright.