Westword, Volume XLII

Fall is a paradox. I dread the end of summer, but I love New England in autumn. I know the trips to beaches are on hiatus, but I do enjoy these cool mornings and pumpkins on the porch. I never crave apple-picking season’s arrival, but I do love apple-picking.
 
And baseball is nice…but I want football. Yes, football hath taken over, from Labor Day till the beginning of February.
 
Football is my favorite, and football is my three teams – Westwood High, Boston College and the Patriots. It’s been this way all my life. Football is Lombardi, Rudy, Flutie. Vinny and the Jets, Brady and the Pats. Wilfinger and Warren. Amaru and barbecue on a Weber Q. Long in the tooth, still in the booth.
 
Tennis, golf, auto racing…I can watch them all year. But when pigskin preseason arrives, I just don’t.
 
It wasn’t always like this. As a younger man, I proclaimed allegiance to baseball. I defended her as some grew critical; I insisted that football was second-best. If asked why, I’d jump on a soapbox and pontificate about America’s past, fathers and sons, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Yaz and Roy Hobbs. Baseball is King, I’d say.
 
I was wrong. The king is dead. Long live the king.
 
The underpinnings began to come unglued in 1994, with the August 12 strike that canceled the end of the season and the playoffs, meaning no World Series. No chance for Tony Gwynn, batting .394, to chase the immortal .400 mark. The next spring we had to endure players like “Pork Chop” Pough and other unknown replacement players, until labor peace was reached.
 
Then the real cratering occurred late in the summer of 2002, as baseball appeared headed towards another strike. Or lockout (can’t remember, since there were so many!) It was the final straw for this fan. The Patriots had miraculously won the Super Bowl that year, and I had scored season tickets in the offseason. From the parking lot at the then-new Gillette Stadium the night before the baseball work stoppage, I told my friends that I was divorcing baseball.
 
Ah, but they made labor peace at midnight, and I had to go and forgive. Again.
 
But some corner of my heart didn’t forgive. And in the two decades since, football replaced baseball and then checked out. Way out. Nowadays, they aren’t even in the same ballpa…ah, stadium. All this despite the dizzying, electrifying month that was October of 2004, featuring the Red Sox reversing the curse and winning the World Series.
 
Our Olde Towne Team has won three more since then, but no matter. Baseball became boring. Football feels fun. So, I still love you, baseball. I’m just not IN love with you anymore.
 
So in the fall, my thoughts turn to Bowls, like the Super Bowl, the Orange Bowl, maybe even the Poulan Weedeater Independence Meineke Car Care Idaho Potato Fenway Bowl. I dream that my three teams will all go undefeated. They’ve all had their moments, but the closest they came to all reaching perfection together was (surprise, surprise) in 2004, when the Patriots (17-2) and Westwood (13-0) both won their Super Bowls.
 
BC went 9-3 that year, with a chance to go to the Fiesta Bowl and reach the Top 10, but they blew it with a hideous 43-17 loss. AT HOME. To Syracuse. On a cloudy, cool November 27th. I have gotten over it and forgotten all about it, though, can’t you tell? Just like I’ve forgotten Matt Ryan’s three interceptions or our vacation week in Arizona that was planned, booked, and canceled.
 
Hey. Time passes. And here we are in another year, another season. Still working all those Westwood games, now with a kid on the sidelines. Still with those season tickets to BC games, now with a kid there too. Still with those season tickets to Patriots games, now with legalized scalping, oops I mean now with more ticket flexibility if we can’t make it to every game like when we were younger.
 
But from September until the winter, you know where to find me on weekends – cheering on one of my three teams.
 
Westwood Living? No…thank YOU for living in Westwood. See you next time, and I look forward to hearing from you (especially if you’d like to debate that thing I wasn’t allowed to write about this month!) any time at jayresha@comcast.net