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Bob Ryan On The Sad State Of The Celtics And Other Boston Teams
Bob's a depressed Bostonian these days....
[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]
[Boston Globe Online / Sports]
Largely, local teams in state of confusion
By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist, 12/30/98
[Image]he phrase keeps popping up in my head.
Annus horribilis.
That's how Queen Elizabeth II described a recent 12 months of British
history during her annual end-of-the-year address to her subjects.
The time is here for my own annual State of the Teams assessment, and it
doesn't even matter that two of our five local professional sports
franchises had, or soon will have, postseason play, that one has a dynamic
coach who improved the team by 21 games and that another, its current little
slide notwithstanding, is a respected team described by its own general
manager as a ''contender.''
Lately, it seems as if every year in sport - here, there and everywhere in
sport - is an annus horribilis as sport drifts farther and farther away from
the grasp of the common man. We are entrenched in a major corporation/luxury
box/club seat/greedy and lying free agent world. Throw in local politics
(and a Happy New Year to you, too, Mr. Speakah) and it's a totally
depressing sports landscape.
In other words, pass the hemlock.
As always, the teams will be discussed in alphabetical order.
BRUINS
They have a terrific first line. They have a quality goaltender. They have a
civic monument defenseman. They have a top-drawer coach.
They also have the most loyal and deserving fan base of any team in town.
And they deserve more than they get.
I'm a Harry Sinden fan. I don't think the game has passed him by. I simply
believe that if he had the resources that are routinely given other general
managers he could put together a juggernaut, not just a feisty, hard-working
team from which its cop-on-the-beat coach extracts everything there is to
get.
The problem with the Bruins isn't here. It's in Buffalo. That's where owner
Jeremy Jacobs lives, and he doesn't have one Gene Autry corpuscle in him.
The Cowboy died rich, frustrated, and unhappy at 91 without ever seeing an
American League pennant raised in Anaheim, and it wasn't because he didn't
try. He spent and spent and spent.
Jeremy takes and takes and takes. His heart isn't in it. After all these
years, we don't even know if he could tell you how many men are on a team.
So Harry does what he is supposed to do, and he's good at it. Like Red
Auerbach before him, he takes better care of his owner's money than the
owner would. Harry doesn't throw any money around - and it shows. If you
don't throw money around in the NHL, you have no chance of winning the
Stanley Cup, which, Jeremy Jacobs's penury aside, is what this enterprise is
supposed to be all about.
Does this sound contradictory? Wasn't I decrying the big-money stranglehold
on sport? Sure, but it's reality. The Bruins keep trying to pretend
otherwise.
CELTICS
Does it matter? There's no league. No games, anyway.
But let's say there was. Would Antoine Walker be here? I don't know. Would
there be someone half-decent in the middle? Probably not. Would Kenny
Anderson be healthy enough to play most games? Maybe, maybe not. Would Paul
Pierce be a big plus and a new fan darling? My guess is yes.
Would Rick Pitino have whoever he'd have in uniform playing tough, gritty
basketball? Oh, absolutely. But would they be any closer to real contention
than they were last year? Nope. Would we spend a disproportionate amount of
our time reminiscing about the Good Old Days and feeling completely sorry
for ourselves?
Whaddya think?
PATRIOTS
I'm surprised someone hasn't trotted out the old joke about a guy being
capable of (naughty wording)-up a one-car funeral and applying it to Bob
Kraft.
First he harasses football's best coach out of town.
Then he moves the team.
He and No. 1 Son Jonathan seem oblivious to the fact that they are planning
a move to foreign territory, not simply moving into a new house down the
street. This is no value judgment on Hartford and the state of Connecticut;
it's a statement of fact. The closer it gets to the actual moving day, the
more Mr. Kraft will be reviled hereabouts. He's got Tom Finneran as a
punching bag now, but three years from now that business will have died
down, and Kraft will be regarded as the man who ripped the team out of
Boston, Mass. Period.
His team is in decline. It is no longer a Super Bowl threat, and things will
get worse in the division as Indianapolis and Miami improve. By the time it
really does move out of here, it could be one of those forgettable 4-12
outfits, and that might even help Kraft in a perverse way since by then
people will be saying, ''bon voyage.''
The question du jour is whether or not Pete Carroll is the kind of coach who
can get you to the so-called ''next level,'' and this is not exactly a brain
teaser. Regrettably, the answer is no. The problem is that Kraft has both a
financial and emotional commitment to the Anti-Tuna, whom he gifted with a
five-year contract that was a textbook overreaction to the entire Parcells
episode.
The Patriots have had major injury troubles, as we all know, but that has
nothing to do with the spectacle we witnessed last Sunday in the
Meadowlands. Players always have to be held accountable for their actions,
but when you see something like that, it tells you there is more to the
story. Something is fundamentally amiss.
They might even beat similarly battered Jacksonville, but then they head to
Denver. Are you actually looking forward to that?
RED SOX
Well, they finally won a playoff game.
Since then, Dan Duquette assures us that by signing Jose Offerman he has
replaced Mo Vaughn's ''on-base capability,'' as if ol' No. 42 were Chuck
Knoblauch or somebody. Nor should we forget Mark Portugal, and please
remember to light a daily candle so he stays healthy enough to make 25
starts.
No offense to Mike Stanley and Reggie Jefferson, but the idea that one of
them will be the Opening Day No. 3 or 4 hitter is preposterous. Nomar
Garciaparra will have to acquire patience, which, up to now, has been an
abstract concept for him. He will miss Mo terribly.
But you already knew that.
One last Mo thought: He was not coming back once he became a free agent, but
it never should have come to that. I think Messrs. Harrington and Duquette
were never worried because they truly believed they'd sign someone to
replace him.
So what else do you want to know? Dan Duquette still doesn't believe the
game is played by people. John Harrington is being slowly revealed to be a
very fortunate man who is in over his head trying to run this baseball team.
That pathetic whining on TV about this being the ''silly season'' and the
Red Sox being subjected to unfair scrutiny for ''50 or 60 years'' is very
interesting. If he believes that, he's stupid. If he is merely trying to
shoot the messenger after he is caught doing something asinine, he is
devious. Take your pick.
If you still care about the franchise, know this much. You are not in good
hands.
REVOLUTION
What, am I going to lie? Am I going to pretend I go to games or can name
five players on the team?
All I know is that this is one of the most solid franchises in the league.
They attract fans. I am also wondering, as an aside, why Thomas Rongen could
have been so successful elsewhere and so unsuccessful here that he couldn't
even finish the season.
There is a place in the great American sporting smorgasbord for soccer. It
won't be the place it has in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the
southern part of this continent, but the sport will continue to thrive, and
it looks as if there's always going to be a team around here, at least until
Mr. Speakah finds out that Bob Kraft owns this one, too.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist.
This story ran on page D01 of the Boston Globe on 12/30/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
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