For old-timers like me, you have no idea how bad it was. Thus, when consequential legends such as Adam Vinatieri retire, it's an emotional moment.
For the uninformed, I attended nearly every Boston/New England Patriots game from 1964 until ventured off to college in the autumn of 1973. For nine seasons, I saw the Pats play in four different venues in four different communities within the confines of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Some might say I was a glutton for punishment, given the perpetually wacky state of the Patriots in those days. Perhaps I enjoyed a healthy dose of tragicomedy with my football.
When I started attending their home games as a nine-year-old, the Boston Patriots were prominent members of the American Football League, a league that was often called "rinky-dink" by most scribes. By the time I was a senior in high school, the New England Patriots were part of the AFC East, a conference within the greater National Football League.
Change in professional sports came faster in those days.
As a child, I attended home games at Fenway as the guest of my father. By the time I was 15, I was, according to longtime Patriots beat writer Ron Hobson of The Quincy Patriot Ledger, the youngest season-ticket-holder in all of the professional sports. In 1970, after my father had given up his own season tickets because he could no longer be subjected to the pathos that had come to define the team, I secured a job at the Wellesley (MA) Supermarket so that I could pay my own way as a Pats season-ticket holder. Ultimately, I would spend 60 dollars yearly out of my $1.60 an hour job in order to follow what could only be depicted as disorganized insanity.
Legendary Boston Globe columnist Will McDonough, the most acclaimed chronicler of the franchise in its 60-years-plus-history, once famously called those seasons that I bore witness as “The Goofy Years.”
Indeed, they were. In fact, that may have been an understatement.
In the first five seasons of my Patriots adventure, Dad would usually drive us to their games in the Back Bay. Occasionally, however, we would take the MBTA from Woodland to Fenway Park. The local transportation authority never had extra subway cars for the team when they played at the Fens. At the time, the Pats were deemed too inconsequential by most Bay Staters. In reality, the New York Giants were the region’s number one football team for more than two decades. From 1952 until the end of the 1969 season, every Giants contest was televised live on Channel 5, WHDH Boston. Most football fans I knew growing up in the Boston area referred to the Giants as "us."
Not me.
Of course, when we finally sat in our seats in Section 12 at Fenway Park, my father would invariably recite from Shakespeare's Henry V, “We few; we happy few…”
Temporary bleachers covered the left-field wall at Fenway Park during the football season - room for about 5,000 fans. The left end zone stretched from short left field to the Red Sox batter’s circle. The other end zone was situated between mid-center-field to the right-field corner, 15 yards beyond the legendary Pesky Pole.
When I began following the Patriots, nearly one-third of the team was either from BC, BU, Holy Cross, or Northeastern. To save expenses for the then financially challenged Patriots, those local colleges and even high schools in the area would alternate their marching bands for the halftime entertainment. Not surprisingly, Harvard invariably found an excuse not to have its own celebrated band perform for the people at Fenway. As Dad explained before one game, “Harvard probably doesn't accept payment in green stamps."
This was our legacy. We had been a national punch line for more than two decades - the proverbial joke. And then Adam made that kick and set us on a road to greatness. The beer will always be on me, Adam.