FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Greetings from the land of the lost.  It's been a loooooooooooong time since I've posted. 

 - On Tuesday night the Celtics won their 17th NBA championship and on Thursday Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe named his top 10 Celtics teams of all-time.  Now, Mr. Ryan is a wonderful writer who has served as the beat reporter covering the Celtics, is a frequent contributor on ESPN's Sports Reporters and is also enshrined as a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.  Bottom line, he knows his stuff.  So which 10 of the 17 championship teams did the esteemed Mr. Ryan include in his best of the best?  Well, here's where it gets interesting.  Three of his top 10 choices did NOT win a championship and his number three best Celtics team of all-time (1972-73) didn't even MAKE the finals.  Number 17 came in at number two by the way, trailing only the 1985-86 team (owners of the original Big Three), that went 50 and 1 at home and was the last C's team to win the title before Tuesday night.  I applaud Mr. Ryan for taking this stance because in this day and age, if you don't win it all, if you don't take home the hardware, you're not considered great at all, are you? 

Using Mr. Ryan's philosophy, that a team can clearly be one of the greatest ever without winning a championship, I move on to what have should have been the greatest NFL team of all-time, this past season's Patriots, who went unblemished through the first 18 before becoming akin to a Broadway actor who forgets their lines when the curtain comes up.  Really there is no Patriot or Pats fan out there who doesn't wish that unfortunate blip had happened in one of the first sixteen contests.  So my question is, can the 2007 Patriots be considered among the best teams of all-time?  I'm sticking with Ryan and I think they can.  I have friends and know others in the media (Mike and the Mad Dog - are you listening?  Nah, they only listen to themselves and it's irrefutable that Mikey has never, ever been wrong - just ask him) who will go to their graves declaring that the 2007 Pats can't even be included in the argument as one of the best ever because.....  because they didn't win the whole enchilada.  And that's really what it's all about today right?  How many college basketball and football teams have had tremendous seasons, seasons for the ages, but are quickly brushed aside historically because they didn't win the whole enchilada?  Are the 2007 Pats destined to forever be just a footnote, a cruel joke of a team that came so close to the first ever 19 and 0 season in history, or are they one of the best teams ever?  I think if you ask Bob Ryan, they are one of the best ever.  And I think they're also one of the best ever, a tremendous team that just happened to have forgotten their lines at the wrong time.

 - Tuesday night was a great night.  Not only did the C's bring back the title to its rightful home (does anyone remember when the America's Cup was Newport's birthright?) but I got to see my first Sox game of the season and Jon Lester pitched a tremendous game as the Sox shut out the Phillies 3 to 0.  Having been transplanted to Philly, I don't get to see too many Sox games live (thank God for the MLB Extra Innings package and thanks to John Kerry for persuading MLB to change its stance last year when it was precariously close to become the sole rights of Direct TV) so it was wonderful to see the boys live and in real live High Def. 

If you've never been and ever do get the chance, take a trip to Citizens Bank Park and see a game.  The Bank is a beautiful stadium.  Full disclosure:  The only stadium I knew while growing up is the cathedral that is Fenway and I didn't see a game anywhere else but around Kenmore Square until I was 30 - when I went to see a game at the Den of the Devil, Yankee Stadium - and for me, nothing else will ever compare.   I'd guess it's like your first love and it's probably that way for alot of people - Yankees fans with the Stadium, Cubs fans with Wrigley, - and for those who grew up with the cookie cutter cylinders of the 70's; Pirates, Phillies, Royals, Angels fans - I emphasize.  But Citizens Bank Park is absolutely a spectacular stadium, one with tremendous sightlines, atmosphere and beauty.  Its only flaw is that it's the size of a postage stamp.  Really, with the hundreds of acres of empty space in South Philly you couldn't make it about 20 feet longer down the lines?  Other than that, it's a beautiful stadium. 

And one of the best things about Citizens Bank Park is McFaddens, the bar that's built right into, but not inside, the stadium.  Besides the great layout, McFaddens has a large inside and a nice outside patio area where they have musicians playing some sweet music while you hoist a few drinks before the game.  The part I absolutely love is that both the inside and outside areas have ticket gates right into the stadium.  You just walk up to the gate, hand forth your ticket and you're in.  And it doesn't hurt that the waitresses and bartenders at McFaddens add some dulce de ojo (that's eye candy to our non-Spanish readers) to the scene.

- It was like when you're out hoisting a few with your buddies and you hit the bathroom for the first time; once the seal is broken, it's all over.   That's how it feels this week if you're a major league baseball manager.  The Mets started the ball rolling with their totally incompetent handling in the Willie Randolph fiasco (Did you really think that making the guy fly 3,000 miles and axing him in the middle of the night would make the firing invisible?  That the distance and darkness would somehow protect you from the blinding glare of the New York media?).  The Mets totally screwed the pooch on that one.  Rather than minimizing the story, the way they handled it created more of a firestorm and threw oil on a grease fire.  I think Omar's a good GM, but he really blew it this time.   And once Willie was sent packing it was like uncorking a shaken bottle of champagne or as if a secret spell had been broken and other teams were now allowed to do the same as the Mariners and Blue Jays (ironically the two expansion teams whose birth into MLB came at the same time) followed suit.  If I'm a manager of an underperforming team right now I'm not going out and shopping for new Bentleys.  I'm hoping that my GM doesn't fall under the same spell as the Jays or M's. 

That's it for now sports fans, I hope you enjoy. 

Vipee