Essay

My city has an obsession

By Rob Schwartz

I was born and bred in Boston, a relatively small but well-known city on the East Coast of the United States. Boston is known for many things. For one, Boston is intimately tied to the early history of the "New World" and the pilgrims escaping British tyranny. The original landing spot of the pilgrims is very close to Boston and it was one of the first cities on the North American continent. In addition, it was the cradle of the American Revolution. The first shots were fired in the greater Boston area and the revolution was planned and started there.

Another important point about Boston is all the famous universities around the city. Both Harvard, the leading American liberal arts institution, and MIT, the leading technical university, are in the Boston area. This has given birth to a thriving intellectual community in the city, which in turn has engendered a strong technology and science industry there.

Yet despite all these intellectuals, scientists and thinkers, the city of Boston is obsessed with something decidedly physical and unbrainy: professional sports. Other parts of the country (like Texas, for example) concentrate on college sports, but for Boston it's pro sports. We have two of the most storied and loved franchises in all of the United States. The basketball team, the Boston Celtics, has won the most NBA titles, and in the 1960s it defined a sports dynasty, winning eight championships in a row (still unprecedented in the history of U.S. pro sports). You might have heard the Celtics recently went back to their winning ways, taking the 2008 title and returning the team to glory after 22 years.

Equally, or possibly even more loved despite their history, is our baseball team, the Boston Red Sox. You were probably unaware of this team until they made headlines in Japan by signing Daisuke Matsuzaka. Just two years before that, the team had done away with 86 years of misery by winning the World Series for the first time in that stretch. It may seem strange but this hardball team, which had lost the big game for as long as most people could remember, has always been absolutely adored in Boston. We suffered with them, usually coming up short against their hated rivals, the New York Yankees. All that changed in 2004, and the change was reinforced with Matsuzaka (nicknamed Dice-K) and another World Series victory in 2007, but the point is the city has always worshiped the team, even when they were losing.

It is difficult to express the kind of passion the people of Boston express for these two franchises (as well as our football and hockey teams). Even when the Celtics were bad in the 1990s, it was extremely difficult to get a ticket to see a home game. It's quite paradoxical that an intellectual center like Boston would be obsessed with men throwing, catching and shooting a ball, but we are.

Shukan ST: July 18, 2008

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