“It’s different here.” says a banner that has Boston Celtics stars adorning it, as it hangs off of the facade of Boston’s City Hall, with mayor Michelle Wu signing off good luck to the city’s NBA team, who, when I spotted the banner shortly after arriving in the city for the first time in my life on Wednesday afternoon, were 2-0 up in the Finals against the Dallas Mavericks. What I saw of this sports mad town’s love affair with its teams and its sport over the next 24 hours has me convinced that there is no city on earth as passionate, protective, and pugnacious about its sporting pastimes as Boston.
Sport runs in its veins, and I did not need a test to confirm it. I could see it when I messaged a good friend I have known for over 8 years on Twitter, if she is there in Boston when I am visiting (planning to follow up with “let’s go to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game”, when she replied) and she replied “I am. Let’s go to Red Sox game together!” It’s a level of telepathy that defies explanation. I saw it in the warm fist bumps a man in his 40s (wearing a Celtics hat) shared with three men in their 80s who were wearing Patriots (the NFL team) polos and sitting & chatting on a park bench in Boston Commons. That instant connection between strangers, and the momentary yet momentous bond is sport’s precious gift to us, but this level of cross sport love (the unifying factor there was the city, and the underlying assumption that they were also fans of the other team) is something I have never seen. I also saw it in the bright eyes of the Chinese-American lady who I bought a Celtics hat from (for a friend) who exclaimed that the team (which was leading 3-0 having won the game in Dallas) should not sweep the Mavs and should come back to The Garden and win the Championship there so that fans can celebrate at Union Square.
I spent a few years in Philadelphia and I am fan of all the Philly teams, and while the sports fans there too earn a reputation for being rambunctious, by comparison Boston sports fans (and by that I mean those in the city) seem to go above and beyond. Fenway cheered as one when a little bit of Game 3 was played on the big screen during a break in the baseball, and the score showed the Celtics leading in the second quarter. The ballpark itself (the oldest continuously in use, 112 years and counting) has an aura that is infectious and seductive. I went to watch the Phillies take on the home team, and naturally my loyalties lay with the visitors, but you could not help notice how the crowd got behind the Sox even when they fell behind 4-0 early. It is not unusual, neither unheard of that the home crowd backs the home team (in Bangalore the crowd at the Chinnaswamy during the IPL/WPL or at Kanteerva during the ISL can be equally vocal) but what is unusual is even on a day of a relatively inconsequential game in a long baseball season, how EVERYTHING is about that game, whether it is at Fenway, or at the Cask N Flagon, the bar right opposite Fenway, or at the countless sports bar around the city. No wonder the ballpark holds a sports world record – 820 consecutive sellout games between 2003 and 2013, a stat that to me reads like a sporting love letter of epic proportions.
Everyone I spoke to there said the city was sports mad to a level where it is the literal fabric that has a stamp on the very roots of this almost 400 year old settlement. The Samuel Adams statue outside the Boston Tea Party Museum had been made to wear a Jaylen Brown shirt and there was a board that said “Huzzah!” in Celtics colours right behind him. It was not the defiling of a statue or a landmark, it was inclusion. Those origins of this city and its rebellious and us-against-The-Man sentiment that lay behind that famed rebel yell that was the dumping of the East India Company’s tea chests into the water may also have something to do with why Bostonians are so protective and fiercely proud of their fandoms.
In Europe and the UK, you will find it easy to start conversations if you are a fan of, say, the local football team. That is also true in Boston, but with one caveat – your pride will not exceed theirs. I sought explanations for why the city is this much in love with its sports and its sporting traditions, and one of the Uber drivers offered a rather interesting theory – the greater Massachusetts area has over 100 universities, and collegiate sport is big in each of them; the concentration of so many youth playing offers a place for the city and its adjoining areas to display their strength, ability, grit, and spirit, and so it remains a city young and energetic at heart despite being one of the oldest in the United States (est. 1630!). The sports teams and their styles often reflect that. And it is not just the team sports. Take the Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest annual marathon, a race whose relationship with the city (and the half a million spectators who turn out to cheer the runners to the finish line) has become so special, that even the Red Sox play a specially scheduled game that day which starts earlier in the day so as to coincide its finish when the runners are entering the city (the race starts in Eastern Massachusetts) allowing the spectators at Fenway to go out and cheer them on.
In Philadelphia I had been around long enough to have a reasonable sample size to conclude that every second person repped a Philly sports team through their gear – hats, shirts, jackets – every single day. Even with my small sample (and the timing – NBA Finals featuring one of its winningest franchises) I have a feeling Boston may score higher on that metric.
Sporting fandom for me is about two things – storytelling and community. Everywhere from Liverpool to Lahore, fans, serious and casual alike, will throw their support behind their local teams, not because they always bring success or glory, but for how they might tell the world the story of where they are from. Boston’s very own legend Bill Russell is credited with saying “If Shakespeare can compare all of life to a stage, maybe it’s not odd to believe that part of the play can take place on a basketball court.” And this city’s fans, wear their heart that beats for its sports teams on their sleeve (and their hats and jackets too) to remind you of the story that they are from Boston, its spirit and its spunk unyielding, and that while other teams may sometimes win more, or even have more fans, it will always be “different here”.
It’s impossible not to respect that.
Get Sporty 