This article is co-written by Devin Martin ‘29 and Lily Faucett ‘29
So you’re new to Boston. Quick, what’s the first place someone told you to go once you arrived? Let me guess, it wasn’t the Freedom Trail, the Common, or even the Rainbow Swash gas tank in Dorchester… it was Fenway Park?
The pilgrim must pay his respects at the cathedral before he is welcomed to the church.
What does it say about a city that founded a nation, pioneered the suffrage and civil rights movements, and reared many of the most influential figures in our nation’s history, that the first stop is a ballpark?
To the uninitiated, perhaps we just really like baseball.
But the Bostonian knows that our teams are to Boston what bar review is to a law student: our salvation.
For the second installment in this series breaking down why Bostonians are the way that we are, one pillar of our culture at a time, we take a swing at Boston’s pièce de résistance: Sports. Ride the bench if you’re looking for a history lesson or an ESPN highlight reel. Here, we’re tackling how Boston’s teams have shaped the pill of the Boston identity.
Overview:
Boston’s teams, like most things in Boston, are probably older and better than whatever they have where you’re from. This gives us a deep sense of entitlement and a superiority complex that pervades the lives of every Bostonian.
But ask any Bostonian about their favorite sports memory, and you may be in for a curveball. As much as we remember our first championship parade, or our second, or third—the other 10 are a little bit blurry—it’s not the moments of success so much as it is the moments of community that stick with us.
It’s the first time your dad took you to Fenway. It’s the conversation you had with a guy in the Celtics hat at the airport bar. It’s maybe even the one day you let yourself skip a Patriots game because Sunday at 1 pm is the only time the girl you liked was free, but you blew it anyway because you couldn’t stop checking the score. (Just me on that last one? Cool)
Peel back the curtain, and you’ll see that amidst all the winning, something else underpins the passion and gravity behind Boston sports: No matter if you’re a kid from Charlestown, or a Kennedy, we’re all rooting for the same team.
Celtics
We have the Celtics to thank for the city’s most recent championship in 2024. It’s hard to imagine that two-year-olds in Boston don’t even know what a championship parade feels like… some suffering is too powerful to name. The Celtics are the most successful Boston team, with 18 championships, the most of any team in the NBA.
The Cs, more than any other team, embody a cornerstone of Boston’s identity: Legacy.
The Celtics are probably the only Boston team for which you, your parents, your grandparents, and your great-grandparents could all remember a championship. Much like the city itself, their identity has never changed. We just win.
When JFK was blocking Cuban missiles in the 60s, Bill Russel was blocking shots at the rim. When Boston band Aerosmith was filling stadiums in the 70s, John Havlicek was filling the Garden. When the Massachusetts Miracle shot the Boston economy back to life in the 80s, Larry Bird was shooting the lights out at your favorite stadium. They took the 90s off (didn’t we all?), but when the Commonwealth trailblazed same sex marriage and universal healthcare in the 2000s, the “big three era” Celtics capped it off with a historic championship against the Lakers in 2008. The Celtics go as Boston goes: pick a random number between 1950 and 2026, and chances are both were scoring.
But with such a legacy of success comes humility.
Jayson Tatum might be the best player in the NBA, but where does he rank among Celtics all-time greats? Harumph… get in line. Nobody is putting Boston on the map; you’re about 300 years too late for that. If you want to make it here, it’s not about you; it’s about the franchise.
As Walt Whitman once wrote:
“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
Bostonians have many regrettable traits. Individualism is not one of them. Look up at the rafters at the Garden, and you’ll see why.
Red Sox
If you’ve never seen Fever Pitch (2005), you really should. The movie markets itself as a romance between Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore’s characters, but the real romance is between a boy and his baseball team.
In the movie, Jimmy Fallon’s character inherits his uncle’s season tickets, and he sits with his Fenway family. He knows their names and stories and lives, perhaps more so than he knows his own. If you ever find yourself at a Red Sox game, you’ll realize this is far from movie magic. Try it, next time you’re there. Turn away from the game and ask the couple next to you where they’re from or who their favorite pitcher is. You may find, as I did after my first Civ Pro cold call, that a Fenway Frank in the company of Red Sox fans can fix almost any bad day.
Fever Pitch was written and filmed in 2003. If you want to be a Bostonian, you’ll quickly learn about one of the most important pieces of sports lore we’ve got: The Curse of the Bambino. Long story short, the Red Sox won a bunch back when Justice Cardozo was writing your least favorite opinions, and then starting around the time Palsgraf happened, didn’t win anything for 86 years (what hasn’t that case killed).
The original plot of Fever Pitch was about loving a sport that didn’t love you back. Except, during filming, something unexpected happened. In October 2004, the Red Sox achieved perhaps the single most momentous championship in the city’s history… and boy, is that saying something.
They’ve since tacked on three more World Series titles, more than any other team in the last 25 years. There was a time when the opposite was true, and they couldn’t buy a win. But here’s the secret… it doesn’t really matter. Fenway sells tickets no matter what, because Bostonians don’t go to Fenway to watch baseball; they go for a rich, passionate love story.
Jimmy Fallon calls it like it is: “The Red Sox never let you down. Every April, they’re here. At 1:05 or at 7:05, there is a game. And if it gets rained out, guess what? They make it up to you. Does anyone else in your life do that? The Red Sox don’t get divorced. This is a real family. This is the family that’s here for you.”
Even when you feel like you’ll go another 86 years without a win, you still show up. And in Boston, your family shows up to stand behind you. And that’s enough… but sometimes you get to win anyway.
Bruins
The Bruins embody the rugged, harsh underbelly of Boston that the pamphlets don’t want you to think exists, but that every Boston movie ever has convinced you we’re all like. If the Red Sox are your measured, endearing aunt that’s good with kids and goes to bed early, the Bruins are your chain-smoking uncle who bought you a power drill for your 6th birthday.
They used to say, “I went to a Bruins fight and a hockey game broke out.” The team has cleaned up its image a bit as of late—I haven’t gotten punched at a Bs game since 2017—but the Big Bad Bruins still carry with them an air of antagonism.
The Bruins and Boston have this in common: we punch above our weight. We’re poorer than New York, uglier than LA, smaller than Chicago, and less influential than DC. But yet, what city continues to show up time and time again as a titan of industry? It ain’t easy. Sometimes you gotta drop the gloves and spend a little time in the penalty box to make it happen, but in Boston, we know how to take a hit to make a play.
Boston also has a special relationship with hockey that other sports lack. Massachusetts has produced the second most American NHL players of any state. Want to guess where we rank for football or Basketball? Not second. It means something that while we can sit around and watch our teams play like nobody’s business, Boston actually plays hockey. Boston College even happens to be a farm for NHL talent (If this whole lawyering thing doesn’t work out, you’ll know where to find me).
No matter how many hours you work in BigLaw, I guarantee you’re not up earlier than the local kid getting in her morning skate. Even she slept in compared to her parents, who got up in the wee hours of the morning to make breakfast, prepare her equipment, and drive her to the rink before heading to work.
Why is this the case? Perhaps because it’s so cold here that it only makes sense we’re passionate about the sport played on ice. Maybe the identity of a Bruins player echoes the values of a Bostonian, or perhaps it’s the other way around. Watch closely during next year’s Stanley Cup presentation, and you’ll notice that the NHL is the only league where they don’t hand the trophy to the damn owner—the players get to pass it amongst themselves. The Bruins teach us that if you wake up early enough, break enough teeth, and take enough punches for the guy next to you, you can stand 10 feet tall in the spotlight… or 10 feet 3 inches in skates.
Patriots:
Easily the most popular and closely followed team in the city, the Patriots are New England’s second favorite pastime behind complaining. If you’re on the Mass Pike heading into Boston for a night out, have one drink for every Patriots bumper sticker, license plate frame, or Jeep spare tire cover… You might want to schedule that Uber home ahead of time. Through the fall and most winters, the city settles into a routine of building anticipation through the work week before the payoff on Sunday. I would tell you to keep tabs on the team in case you find yourself making small talk to a partner in an elevator, but honestly, it’s impossible not to keep up just by osmosis.
The Patriots represent the modern embodiment of Boston’s exceptionalism, and their six championships since 2000 are the most of any team not just in Boston, but in the entire country. Here’s a stat you probably don’t hear talked about much: the Patriots also hold the NFL record for the most championship losses in history, and the third most of any American sports franchise.
They’ve spared no generation either. Your grandfather can tell you war stories about the loss in ‘85. Your dad won’t let you forget that Drew Bledsoe came this close in ‘96. Brady lost three Super Bowls in his era (some say he made up for it), and even the youngins got their first taste of heartbreak when the Patriots fell short in the big game last year.
From the outside looking in, the Patriots’ story is about incessant success, and who could blame you. When you succeed, that’s all people see. When you graduate law school and go on to do remarkable things in this profession, hopefully in our city, nobody remembers the times you fell short. Nobody remembers the exam that got the better of you, the cross-examination that you choked, or the night you had an insurmountable amount of applications and outlining to do, but decided to write a blog post about sports instead.
If you are new to Boston and choose to make our great city your home, I can promise you this: we know better. Bostonians have had our fair share of wins, but we have seen the confetti fall in the other guys’ colors too many times to forget that behind every champion is a whole lot of almosts.
It’s exam season in law school. If you feel like momentum is going against you, throw on the Pats game. They might have a thing or two to teach you about perseverance.
Let’s run the ball.
Devin Martin is a first-year student at BC Law and brand new Impact blogger. Contact him at martids@bc.edu. Lily Faucett ‘29 is also a first-year student at BC Law. This is her first Impact post. Contact her at faucett@bc.edu.
