"Grace" is not a word most people associate with pro football.
But here we were, sitting on lawn chairs in a chilly tent, warming ourselves over grill fires and bowls of chili. People move in and out, chatting and eating and drinking. The Patriots game kicks off in two hours, and the anticipation is as thick as the grill smoke. The tent stands on a concrete lot, between packed rows of cars and SUVs, put up during a pregame ritual well-known by the regulars.
Rich and I have only recently learned that ritual. We're not regulars yet. Through a combination of friendship and dumb luck, we have landed smack in the middle of one of Foxboro's premium tailgate parties. We wear tickets to this Patriots vs. Colts playoff game around our necks -- that was luck. We have managed to make it to a few regular-season games this season and last, with someone else's tickets -- that's both. The rest is all about friendship.
We had been invited because Rich knows several of these people from an email list. He's been a fan for a very long time, but I had only been to one game before we started seeking tickets in earnest last season. I feel like that Biblical worker who starts working in the eleventh hour, but earns pay for the whole day -- I haven't "earned" my way to championship glory by suffering through the dismal seasons, as the other partygoers have. I'm embarrassed that these good folks might see me as a fair-weather fan. But no one seems to mind.
I find more familiar faces each time we come to a game, and I make sure I meet someone new each time. We've been accepted unquestioningly. Meanwhile, the potluck food and beer is shared generously among all comers. The carb count is low, the protein count high, the flavor count off the scale -- Monty and Karen are serious about their marinated steak tips, shrimp, and swordfish. Before a game against the Buffalo Bills, we ate buffalo. Before a Miami game, mahi-mahi. (That's dolphin meat. The fish kind, not the mammal kind.)
Randy, the center of the whole party, works the crowd with the adroitness of a natural leader, but he still finds time to talk with Rich and me to make sure we feel welcome. Randy is blind. The last game he saw was back in 1999 or thereabouts, and he probably knew it; the progressive neural disease was already stealing his vision, a bit at a time. Now it's stolen his ability to walk. He spends long, hard hours in therapy during the week, and unlike at last year's tailgate parties, he is now wheelchair-bound. His desperately sweet golden retriever had to be left at home for games this year, unable to work as a guide dog, and thus not allowed in the stadium.
But today Randy drinks his homebrewed "Bruschi Brew" and makes sure people eat his jambalaya. He's made this for almost every game since the Patriots' improbable Super Bowl win in 2001, which he attended in New Orleans. Rituals, again. I don't know how he does it, but he remains cheerful and energetic every time I see him.
I had always viewed pro football from a cynical distance. I didn't grow up as a pro sports fan of any sort. Football was a fun diversion, but one I hadn't understood very well; eventually I learned from Rich that the more you know about its rules and strategies, the more fun it is. But the fan culture seemed so over-the-top, so commercialized. It's only a game. What was up with these fans that painted their faces, put on funny hats, carried signs, got their faces on TV, and dedicated so many hours to following a team?
This particular team has won almost every single game for two seasons. The media is screaming the word "dynasty" as the Patriots blow out one NFL record after another. In fact, they haven't lost a home game in what seems like forever. The fans today, then, are all in high spirits, with high expectations. And they follow rituals. People at this tailgate party wear the same clothes for each game, prepare the same food, go through the same actions every Sunday -- maybe it makes a difference! No, but we like to think it does. We like to be a part of this team, and help them win these games however we can.
Randy and his friend Karen had both been elected Patriots Fan of the Year in recent seasons. They sit in the front row, decked out in full red-white-and-blue Patriots gear. Randy and his seatmates usually paint their faces, and the local camera crews love them. They and their tailgate party are dedicated fans of Patriot player #54, Tedy Bruschi -- a consummate defensive player and athlete -- and they drape a huge banner over their portion of the stadium wall: "54 Full Tilt, Full Time," which is often shown on TV. I don't think Randy ever says no to an interview or a photo op.
Tedy Bruschi himself seems to cut against the grain of modern pro-sports player culture. This baby-faced, soft-spoken linebacker gets out there and plays like a Tasmanian devil. Playing as hard as he can week after week, he never seems to relax or slacken on the field. Off the field, he once got rid of a drinking problem by simply ceasing to drink (and it's too bad he can't partake of Randy's Bruschi Brew). When he speaks in public, he shows enormous respect for his teammates, coaches, and opponents. Also, he's declared that he won't leave the Patriots until he retires. He might be more of a star elsewhere. He, like other talented Patriots players, could rack up better stats and bigger contracts with other teams -- but here they're submerging their own egos and winning Super Bowls. In Foxboro, they expect humility, preparation, and teamwork from the players.
And smarts. The Patriots coach, Bill Belichick, is wickedly smart, and he expects his players to think fast on their feet and know the playbook backwards and forwards. The players are tough as steel, and they play a rough physical game too. But Belichick expects more. He's demonstrated to the nation that intelligence and a willingness to learn can win big, and I thank him for making it fashionable again to be smart. The anti-intellectual current in American culture today saddens and worries me. But our Patriots stand against that current. Who would have expected this from a football team?
They even appeal to people who don't buy that. The Patriots right now are the epitome of good sportsmanship. If I coached a Little League team, I'd tell the kids to be like these guys; in my day job, I consider them role models for teamwork (and I'm usually too cynical to have role models). They trust and support each other, both publicly and privately. Above all, they win -- and lose -- with class and grace. They don't brag or blame or take success for granted; they just do what needs to be done, one game at a time.
Not even their fans take their success for granted, judging from radio-show callers and web discussions. We cheer them on, of course, but deep inside, we're never confident they'll win the next one. Maybe eternal pessimism is a New England thing. More likely, we're all so used to the Red Sox mindset -- we'll do our best, but we'll always lose in the end, and no one respects us anyway -- that we just can't quite get our collective heads around success on this scale. We're watching history being made this season. But if we don't carefully guard our pessimism, the Patriots (and the Red Sox, now) might jolt us into believing that whatever we think is impossible may be within reach, after all.
The Patriots win today's game, of course. I don't think anyone at the tailgate party really had any doubt. The partygoers had all dispersed to their various seats in Gillette Stadium for the actual game, and Rich and I watched from atop the stadium in Section 308. The Gillette crowd is a mighty thing: loud, weather-tolerant, creative with insults (we chanted "Cut that meat!" at the Colts' quarterback, Peyton Manning), and able to help the Patriots completely demoralize an opponent. The score is 20 to 3. After the last play, Rock and Roll #2 thunders across the stadium while fireworks explode and fans dance deliriously in their seats. Rich and I scrape up dirty snow from the seat floors and fling handfuls of it into the air at every "Hey!" -- a new ritual that Bruschi and Randy's front-row crowd had been photographed taking part in last year.
The party reconvenes joyfully in the dark tents afterwards. The champagne sprays over our snow-covered hats, and the traditional red-and-blue Jello shots are handed around for a toast. More meat is put on the grills. The game is discussed, dissected, and debated; I don't know very much, but when I offer a naive opinion about a few early plays, Randy takes me seriously and encourages me to defend my position. It's all good.
Randy passes around a set of Sharpie markers for people to sign the tent. If you've been to the tailgate three times or more, you get to sign your name and write something about the game we just saw. (The last tent blew away during last week's game, so everyone gets to sign the new one today.) Laughing, we keep trading the dry markers among us until we find one that works. And we talk about the surprise visit they got last week from Tedy Bruschi himself -- he apparently stopped his car on the way in to the stadium, leaped over the snowbank into the parking lot, and came over to the tailgate to pay his respects to Randy.
I have a picture from Yahoo! News of Bruschi walking off the field after this game, shaking hands with our front-row crowd. Randy is there, of course, in his familiar black shades; his head and shoulders are hanging over the rail, reaching down into empty space for Bruschi's hand. My heart turned in my chest when I saw it. The reason he can't walk is vertigo: the neural disease has attacked the nerves that regulate balance, and even riding in a car is hard for him, let alone the position he was in in that picture. He usually doesn't even sit in that front-row seat anymore, choosing instead to sit in a safer, more stable seat at the back of the section. But there he is.
He won't be able to attend games forever. For that matter, the Patriots won't keep winning forever, either. Eventually something will give -- their offensive and defensive coordinators have already decided to go elsewhere next year, and maybe that will mean home losses again. Rich and I don't know what next year holds for us, or Randy, or Bruschi, or the team. We'll accept with grace what we've been given this year, and we'll take whatever comes.
After all, it's only a game.