1/3 A professional sports team located in Boston represents Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and most of Connecticut. The number and loyalty of New Englanders have allowed Boston teams to negotiate lucrative regional television contracts. This makes Boston a large market that is supposed to have an immense competitive advantage over teams located on the Minnesota prairie.
Vivid examples of this Boston advantage could be found in recent days on the Star Tribune's sports pages: - The Boston Celtics, a team that won 16 NBA championships in 30 seasons (1956-57 through 1985-86), stand 11-43. That is the worst record by 3 1/2 games in the Eastern Conference and leads only Vancouver (11-47) among the NBA's 29 teams.
The Celtics have not had a winning season since 1992-93. M.L. Carr's green-clad disaster could post the lowest victory total in franchise history. The current low is 20 victories in 1947-48 - a season in which the NBA played a 48-game schedule. - The Boston Bruins, a team that has reached the National Hockey League playoffs in 29 consecutive seasons, is 20-33-8 for 48 points, the lowest total among the league's 26 teams. The Bruins trail Montreal, holder of the eighth and final spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs, by seven points. - Jose Canseco reported to the training camp of the Oakland Athletics in Phoenix. A few weeks earlier, the Boston Red Sox had traded Canseco to Oakland for pitcher John Wasdin. Canseco expressed his delight at leaving Boston and general manager Dan Duquette. He said the team's remaining slugger, Mo Vaughn, also considered Duquette despicable and would be leaving as soon as possible as a free agent. Vaughn has said nothing to refute Canseco's claim.
The Boston media types are not about to defend the general manager. They see Duquette as a man of much arrogance and little substance. 'He also has a bad haircut,' said Dan Shaughnessy, a sports columnist for the Boston Globe. - Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, announced he was abandoning plans to try to get a new stadium built in South Boston. Any chance Kraft had to get the Southies to back this proposal ended when his feud with Bill Parcells caused the coach to leave for the New York Jets.
Parcells took the Patriots to the Super Bowl last month. The Boston call-in shows and sports pages were jammed with praise for Parcells. Surrounded as he was by Carr, Duquette and the Bruins' Harry Sinden, Parcells was the wise and heroic leader to the New England masses.
Poor Pete Carroll. Parcells took a team that was slightly above average to the Super Bowl. As Parcells' replacement, Carroll is now Kraft's lap dog in public perception. If the Patriots stumble, which is a strong possibility, Carroll will find himself vilified.
And there is no doubt: The condition of professional sports in big-market Boston has folks primed to be vindictive. Mike Barnacle, the newsside columnist for The Globe, offered this going-away tribute to Roger Clemens a while back, after the pitcher chose to leave Boston for Toronto and a three-year, $24 million contract:
'If Clemens had not once been able to consistently throw a baseball 95 mph past men with bats in their hands, he would be wearing bib overalls and sitting on a milk crate at the open end of a trailer somewhere, brushing his tooth, while shooing flies away from his head. The man is a complete dope.
' . . . For several years, he has been a .500 pitcher, a liar and a guy with more excuses than wins. Clemens has operated within the myth that he was the best pitcher ever to perform in this town . . .
'That accolade can only be placed on the shoulders of Warren Spahn. He played for the Boston Braves for almost a decade, then moved to Milwaukee with them in 1953. He won 20 or more games in each of 13 seasons, and for 17 straight years, Spahn gave his team at least 245 innings pitched.
'In the winter of 1944, Spahn fought in the Battle of Bulge, then returned to the major leagues, where he won 21 games and tossed 289 innings in his first full summer after World War II. Roger Clemens consistently lost his battle of the bulge as he allowed his weight to balloon from 200 to 240 pounds and took the mound looking like Norm in `Cheers.' '
The Red Sox and the Patriots have been perennial sources of frustration to the New England faithful. The Celtics and the Bruins - the C's and B's - have been more reliable. This will be the first spring since 1950 that both the Celtics and the Bruins will miss the playoffs.
How bad is it in Boston? Earlier this month, the two winter teams were on West Coast trips. The games were transmitted back on the New England Sports Network.
'Local sports fans have been reluctant to stay up for late broadcasts,' Shaughnessy wrote in the Globe. 'USA Cable's Westminster Kennel Club Show quadrupled the TV ratings of both the Bruins and the Celtics. Given the choice, local viewers opted for real dogs over the bowsers who play for the B's and the C's.'
