The Boston sports fans' guide to rooting for an out-of-town team

This past weekend in his Sunday Globe column, Dan Shaughnessy suggested all Patriots fans should join him in rooting for the Jets to win the Super Bowl. His theory being that if they were to win it all, it would light a fire under the collective asses of the Patriots’ organization to go out and do likewise in 2011. So by Shaughnessy’s logic (and I’m using the term in the loosest sense possible), the problem with the Pats has been that they haven’t been trying to win the Super Bowl. Or if they have, they haven’t been trying very hard or spending enough of Robert Kraft’s Bed, Bath & Beyond rent money to do so. Because the Super Bowl champions these past few years haven’t been coming from the AFC East, so the team has lacked the necessary motivation to do what it takes to win.

Amazingly, this isn’t the first time a Boston sportswriter has floated this particular kooky notion. Two years ago in the Herald, Tony Massarotti said the same thing with regard to the Yankees. That all loyal Red Sox fans should root for them to win the World Series so John Henry would finally free up the one hand Theo Epstein has tied behind his back and the Sox would finally get serious about winning another championship.

I’ll put aside for now the towering illogic of these hare-brained arguments. Because honestly, rooting for the Jets or Yankees to win championships so that the Pats and Sox would try harder to win would be like Americans in World War I saying “You know, I hope the Axis Powers are able to pull this one out so the Allies will be more motivated to win World War II.”

Instead I’ll focus on the question I’ve asked a hundred times before: How is it possible for the people who cover sports in this town to be so consistently out of touch with the people who follow it? With their target audience?

Because there are certain teams that you simply cannot ask us to root for, under any circumstances. No matter how chewy, salty and delicious your jumbo pretzel logic is. Hatred is hatred. And it doesn’t go away when you’ve been beaten; it gets stronger. I mean, the Rebel Alliance didn’t tell the Empire “Wow, you really kicked our butts on Alderaan! Good luck destroying our bases on Hoth and Endor and hope you conquer the galaxy so we try harder next time!” The motivation to destroy them was plenty strong enough already, without watching them reduce planets to rubble or take over the whole flipping universe.

It’s a ridiculous notion to think otherwise. If any Boston media figure thinks we could put aside a lifetime of animosity and a season of obnoxious, smack-talking buffoonery like we were subjected to this year and all of a sudden take the 2010 Jets to our flabby man-bosoms and root for them to win ... well they’re either delusional or doesn’t understand the fans around here one iota. And I don’t know which is worse.

I may not be the writer the others are. And for certain I don’t have the sources or the access they do. But I’ll take a back seat to no one when it comes to understanding the Boston sports fan. I know what motivates us. And in a time like this end of these NFL playoffs ... one of those rare occasions where no Boston team is playing for a championship so we don’t have a dog in the fight ... I know who we’ll root for and why as well as anyone. As Wilson Pickett once said, “No brags, just facts.”

So here is it, presented in one handy reference guide. The 10 Rooting-Interest Criteria of the Boston Sports Fan, listed from most significant to least:

1. The Rivalry Factor. Nothing will eliminate a team from consideration as the team we’ll root for faster than them being one of our traditional blood-feud rivals. Obviously here I’m talking about the big ones. The Yankees, Lakers, Canadiens and the Colts. When one of these is vying for a championship, we’re motivated by the pure joy of watching them fail. So long as they’re not facing the Al Qaeda All-Stars, we’re rooting for the opposition. It’s an absolute no-brainer.

2. The “How Will They Compare to Us if They Win?” Variable. This is crucial. We’ve been called provincial and you’re damned right we are. The Lakers once spotted the Celtics a huge lead in titles but have damn near caught up. If Pittsburgh wins the Super Bowl, they’ll have won as many in the Belichick-Brady Epoch as the Pats have. And all of them since the Pats won the last won. Even when we’re not involved, it’s always about us.

3. The Geographical Resentment Quotient. What happens when both teams left are blood rivals? It’s happened before, like when the Celtics lost to the hated 1981-82 Philadelphia 76ers. And what we did then was fall back on this criterion. The legendary “Beat! L! A!” chant was born out of an institutional hatred of West Coast basketball, with it’s soft, smiley-faced, showtimey style of play and its loathsome, phony, glamorpuss celebrity fans. The Eastern Conference’s style was brutal and punishing. All flying elbows and blood on the front of Larry Bird’s shirt. Rooting for the Sixers was an easy call because they’d earned our respect.

4. The General Insufferability Index. As I said here back in December, the Jets aren’t the Patriots’ rivals any more than the Globetrotters have a rivalry with the Washington Generals. Now that they’ve actually won a significant game, their status might change next year. But for this year, the G.I.I. is where they were impossible to pull for, Shaughnessy’s argument notwithstanding. This was as obnoxious and unlikeable as an army of orcs. If I rooted for them against anyone, I’d need a Silkwood shower afterwards.

5. The Superstar Human Interest-to-Villainy Ratio. All of the above being equal, we get down to the individual stories. As in, “Whom would you be happier to see win a ring?” Some guys are hard not to root for. A great rags-to-riches story like Kurt Warner, say. Or a goofy, charismatic fresh face like Tim Lincecum last year. The flip side of that is we always prefer to root against rapists, serial baby-daddies, creepy foot fetishists, dog killers or A-Rod. We’re funny like that.

6. The Fanbase Jackassishness Level. Sometimes it’s possible to root against an otherwise non-offensive team just because their fans are so despicable. By example, anyone who was at Super Bowl XXXIX will tell you that Philadelphia Eagles fans ran through the pleasant city of Jacksonville like Barbarians in a “What’s in your wallet?” commercial. If they were in this Super Bowl, even with the non-dog-killing Kevin Kolb at quarterback, hoping to disappoint that gang of lowlifes would be reason enough to root against them.

7. The Cinderella Element. Everyone likes a fairy tale to some degree. If by some miracle the Kansas City Royals win the American League pennant next year, we’ll all be pulling for them. We may be Massholes, but we’re still human.

8. The Franchise Tradition Consideration. This is really getting into minutiae here, but if the first seven factors haven’t given you a rooting interest, your average Bostonian will pull for an old school team every time. Which is why most puckheads were glad to see an Original Six team like the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup last year, as opposed to one of those dozen or so NHL teams who first appeared in “Slap Shot.”

9. The Success Fatigue Aspect. Simply put, this factors in how sick you are of seeing a particular team win. And it’s why everyone west of Great Barrington hates the Patriots.

10. The City Hateability Ranking. I’ve rated every professional sports city in America based on how much we as a region hate them. From New York and Los Angeles at the top to Oklahoma City at the bottom. Space doesn’t permit me to show you the whole list, but trust me, it’s incredible.

This is how Boston decides whom to root for. Maybe the process isn’t as formal and thought out as this, but essentially this is how it’s done. What we don’t do is sit there and say that we want some team and fanbase we hate to win championships just to give the local teams some “motivation” we demand of them already.

As a footnote using this formula for Super Bowl XLV, New Englanders will be leaning toward the team that isn’t a rival, won’t make the Pats look bad by winning, has a long tradition and hasn’t won in a while. And failing that, we’ll just go with the team whose quarterback doesn’t rape drunk girls in bars. Go Green Bay.

Follow Jerry on Twitter at @jerrythornton1.

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Saying farewell to year of the sports sex scandal

Even the most casual student of history knows that some years are more significant than others.That some years stand out. You could’ve spent every history class of your life drawing pirate faces on all the presidents and making folded-paper fortune tellers and still absorbed enough general info to associate certain years with certain major historic events.

How about 1776? The birth of revolution. Or 1066? The Norman Invasion. Think about 1492? The Age of Discovery. And 1929? The Stock Market Crash. Finally, 1955? The year Marty McFly brought his parents together at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

Most years are insignificant and have little impact in the course of human events. But some are unforgettable. And 2010 is such a year. Future generations will long remember how important this year was. As will we who lived it.  

Decades from now, when I’m 100 years old making pillow talk with two Brazilian lingerie models (that’s how I always picture my golden years) and they ask what this year was like, I know what I’ll tell them. “Adriana, Gisele,” I’ll tell them, “2010 was a great year. A magical, wonderful year. A time when the streets were paved with gold and dreams came true. Because that was the Year of the Sports Sex Scandal.”  

These past 12 months really have been an amazing time to be alive. What 1969 was for people who dream of traveling to the stars, 2010 was for those of us who love athletes’ NC-17 hijinks. A time when anything seemed possible. And it was.

Sure, other years have had their moments of sexual shenanigans in sports. The '70s gave us the infamous wife swap of Yankee teammates Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson. In the '80s we got Wade Boggs and Margo Adams. And in the '90s we saw Magic Johnson touch the lives of more LA women than the inventor of the collagen lip.

So while Baby New Year 2010 didn’t exactly invent the Ballplayer Sex Scandal, he certainly lettered in it. Even those of us who write for smutty sports websites for a living found ourselves being shocked by the relentless, almost daily, sexual antics. It got to the point where you woke up every morning and searched the web for the latest embarrassing, "NSFW" buffoonery before you checked scores, stats or fantasy results. And you were rarely disappointed.

Every week seemed to bring another guy cheating on his wife, texting something he shouldn’t be texting, making babies he ought not be making, or exposing parts of himself best left under wraps. So in tribute to this epic year in misbehavior ... as an Olde Wang Syne if you will ... I present a countdown of the best Sports Sex Scandals of 2010:

Brandon Spikes: In some other year, a professional athlete having intimate moments in the privacy of his bedroom in front of a web cam connected to millions of Chat Roulette subscribers would be a huge story. But in 2010, the story is the only part of this that wasn’t huge. Spikes is a young guy. He’s single. He did this while he was in college. There are no victims in this, only willing participants. The only lesson to take from this is something I’d already assumed: that the middle linebacker of the Florida Gators scores a much, much better class of women than a 'C' student from Bridgewater State College. And I speak from experience.

Antonio Cromartie: In one of the top 10 TV moments of the year, Cromartie was asked on HBO’s “Hard Knocks: The New York Jets” to name his children. Seeing as he has somewhere around eight kids with 12 different women in 20 different states, Cro wasn’t up to the task. In fact, to me it was eerily reminiscent of listening to my fourth grader recite the provinces of Canada for his geography test. Suffice to say that, based on his number of 3-year-olds and depending on how you look at it, Antonio “The Father of Our Country” Cromartie had a very good year with the ladies in 2007.

Aussie Rules Football: I don’t know much about Australia other than what I’ve learned from the steak house at the mall. For sure, I don’t know what their football is all about. But I did learn this year that when it comes to scandal, they go big or they go home. It seems some 19-year-old Aussie groupie named Kim Duthie claimed to have slept with half the league. Then she started to release the pictures of the players in question to prove it. At least one of the players in the photos claimed they were taken by a teammate, as if somehow that was supposed to mitigate things. Duthie is also alleged to have shaken the players down for money to keep quiet about things, no one is sure. What we are sure about it the commissioner of Aussie football doesn’t have the same personal conduct policy Roger Goodell has.

Ben Roethlisberger: While some NFL quarterbacks’ offseason activities include golf, fishing or competing in the Oreo Double Stuff Racing League, Roethlisberger prefers exposing himself to drunken coeds in bars. This year we learned just how much time he puts into his hobby, and let’s just say that the only thing that spends more time out of the pocket than Big Ben is Li’l Ben.

Dennis Rodman: A few weeks back, Rodman called a Florida radio show to talk basketball. He wanted to talk Miami, but the chick he was in bed with at the time was only interested in the Heat as apparently The Worm (ahem) was getting what in the Clinton years we used to call “The Oval Orifice” live on the air. Every WEEI listener who heard the audio the next day was just relieved it wasn’t Frank from Gloucester.

Brett Favre: This year we found out that Brett Favre — when he’s not Mississippi Riverboat Gambling, playin’ football just for the love of the game, bein’ a warrior and just goin’ out there tryin’ to make plays — liked to unwind by texting cell phone pictures of his Little Gunslinger to unwilling female co-workers while his wife was undergoing cancer treatment. At least now we know why he prefers the Relaxed Fit (TM) Wranglers.

Tiger Woods: There are falls from grace, and then there’s this. This year Tiger’s Q-rating took a dive that makes those high altitude/low opening parachute jumps the Navy Seals do look like a climb down the pool ladder. At the start of the year, all we knew was that Woods was probably buttering his sexual toast on both sides. By spring, he was making humiliatingly, staged insincere apologies on national TV. And around that time we got treated to the text messages his porn “star” (double ahem) honey Joslyn James had so lovingly saved. Then we were left to decide which line Tiger actually wrote himself: The Apologypalooza one that said “Character and decency are what really count,” or the text that said “I want to treat you rough. Throw you around, spank and slap you"?  

Rex Ryan: Is being attracted to your wife of 23 years so wrong? Or thinking she has pretty feet? Or making little videotapes of her admiring her tootsies and posting them for the perverse, depraved pleasure of every sicko wackjob in the world with an Internet connection? No, no and no. This is America. More power to you. But now let’s say you happen to be the loudest, most self-promoting and egomaniacal gasbag coach in the National Football League and you do it. Is it funny? You’re damned right it’s funny. Hysterically funny. And even in a year filled with hilarious sexual hijinks, you get the top spot.

So, to all the guys who made the list and gave us a year filled with historically entertaining moments that embarrassed us all, thank you. And to the ones who didn’t, 2011 is only days away. Let’s get crackin’.

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For Boston sports fans, suffering exes a thing of beauty

I have a platonic female friend who has everything a woman could ask for: good looks, her health, nice career, great husband, a new baby who’s so cute that looking directly at her could cause temporary blindness. She’s got everything she could want with the exception of me, since I only have eyes for my own Sweet Irish Rose.

Nevertheless, this friend has spent the last several days furiously stalking (Q: Is there any other way to stalk?) one of her exes on Facebook. Specifically, the Facebook photos of her ex’s wedding. It seems this guy she used to go out with just got happily married, which has her in distress. In spite of the fact that she’s got a great family. And they broke up NINE years ago. And she dumped him.

Now this struck me as odd, even though one of the formative moments in my life was my brother Bill explaining to me, “No matter how much you like a woman and think you understand her, there are gonna be moments where you’ll be saying to yourself ‘WTF was THAT all about???’ ” It was a lesson I took to heart.

Even still, I had to ask my lady friend why she would care that one old ex of hers seems to have moved on and gotten happily married after all these years. And she explained it to me, at least to the extent that any woman can explain her own bug-eyed, crazy, irrational behavior. She said she never wants any guy she’s ever dated to get over her, ever. Never ever.

And in a weird way, that makes perfect sense to me. I can relate. I know of what she speaks. Not because I understand women. Who does? I understand because I’m a Boston sports fan.

Seriously, we’ve been there. Great athletes come and go from this town all the time. Some leave because they want to. Some because they were sent packing. Some on good terms. Some, not so good. And some are chased out of town by villagers carrying pitchforks and torches. And the one thing they all have in common is I don’t want them to ever get over us.

And this was never made clearer than this past week when our most recent messy breakup, Randy Moss, proved that he wishes he’d never walked out on us.

In case you somehow missed it, a Tennessee radio show last week took a call from a guy identifying himself as “Woody from Nashville,” who proceeded to rip Titans coach Jeff Fisher a new sphincter and insist he be fired. Now, every sports talk show in America takes 10 calls a day when some anonymous nitwit wants someone fired. But this particular call was different because “Woody” sounded exactly, exactly, like Randy Moss. Granted, no one has proven it was. Or admitted it. But neither the Titans nor Randy himself has gone on record denying it was him, either.

So as a shameless Patriots homer, I’m going to believe Woody is Moss for the same reason I believe somewhere out there exists a Scarlett Johannson sex tape: I believe it because I want to believe it.

Just like my platonic friend. I want to believe that Randy Moss is miserable without me. Without you. Without us. I harbor no ill will toward Randy. I look back at all that he accomplished in New England and I’m sincerely grateful. Over 3 1/4 seasons, he was productive, a decent citizen and a good teammate. And just as important, he kept his inner crazy where it belonged: suppressed deep, deep down inside him so it could form a little ball of rage that would grow over time then come out later and destroy some other team from within.

And I’ve gotten my wish. Moss is miserable. He does wish he never left. He can’t get over us. For almost four record-setting seasons he was part of something special. He was part of a great organization doing extraordinary things. He was appreciated. He played before a packed house every week in front of rabid fans who adored him. But he chose to turn his back on us and leave in search of something better.

He left us to go back running back to his first love, Minnesota. But that was a disaster, and they called it off after only four weeks. He rebounded with the Titans, who barely even know he’s alive. In six games with the Titans, Randy has five catches. In the last two games, he has none and they haven’t even looked at him.

And now? Well now he’s been reduced to the pro ballplayer equivalent of drunk dialing in a disguised voice. Because he knows we were the best he ever had, but he blew it. We gave him the best years of his life and he could’ve had us for keeps but he chose to walk out on us. So now he’ll end up alone in an apartment full of cats while we find happiness and fulfillment. And that’s how it should be.

The most satisfying part of all this is the fact that Moss ran back to his ex, the Vikings, and found nothing but misery. So the Pats went back to their ex, Deion Branch, and things are better than they ever were before.

Branch was another Patriot who years ago thought he could do better elsewhere. So he blew town for Seattle. Granted, he left on much better terms than Moss did. But that doesn’t mean we wished him well. As much as I love Branch, I wanted him to go to Washington, play in front of all those apathetic software engineers, poseurs and pony-tailed barristas and pine for the days of packed houses at Gillette with drunken Massholes screaming their lungs out and living and dying on every play he made.

And I got my wish. Branch has admitted as much. Things didn’t work out for him in Seattle. As much as he said he loved the Seahawks or how happy he looked in the pictures, he was miserable without us. Which is just the way we want it.

A couple of weeks back, Christian Fauria was on WEEI’s “NFL Sunday” show painting very much the same picture. He was talking about his post-Patriots career, playing in Washington and Carolina, and how hard it was to adjust to being part of such shoddy operations after being to the mountaintop in New England. And the Patriots left Fauria, not the other way around. But like with my friend, who leaves whom isn’t important. All that matters is that no one gets over us.

But sure, sometimes guys leave under the worst possible circumstances. Manny Ramirez comes quickly to mind. Manny bitched incessantly about how tough Boston was to play in and how much he didn’t much care for playing here under the microscope. So he left and ended up in LA playing in a city that quickly lost interest in him and was even more miserable. Watching Manny get divorced from the Dodgers in short order and then slowly fade into what Mike Tyson called “Bolivian” brings me nothing but joy.

The Sox were done with Johnny Damon when that split happened. And a lot of media members couldn’t figure out why Sox fans weren’t willing to wish him well when he went to the Bronx.

But it wasn’t pettiness on our part; it was human nature. When your wife moves in with your rich neighbor with the landscaped property and the three-car garage filled with Cadillac Escalades, you don’t wish her well. Even if you were the one who filed for divorce.

There are dozens of other examples of good players who left Boston, either by the teams’ wishes or because they thought the field turf ... or the Monster ... or the parquet ... was greener elsewhere. And even though you can wish them well, you really don’t wish them well. I want every athlete, coach, media member or executive who ever came through town to desperately long for us once they go. Even if I liked the guy when he was here, I want and expect that once he’s played in Boston he’ll be ruined for all other cities for life.

Again, that’s just human nature. Does it make sense? Probably not. But it’s not nearly as insane as this happily married woman Facebook stalking her ex. Or “Woody from Nashville” for that matter.

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The Five Stages of Boston Sports Grief

I know that if lived in some other city, one where they hate Boston teams and Boston fans — which is to say, every other sports town in America — I know what I’d be doing this week. In the wake of the Patriots’ epic failure. I’d be perusing sites like this one. I’d be combing through the major sports outlets and every blog I could find looking for Bostonians who are wallowing in misery and licking their wounds so I could make festive cocktails out of their salty tears.

I know I’d do it because I’ve done it. I can’t count how many times a Boston team has won a huge game or a postseason series and I’ve spent the days following going through the other town’s web sites spelunking for all the finger-pointing, name-calling and blame-gaming and basking in the warm, glowing, Schadenfreudey goodness of it all.

Well if that’s what you’re after, then you’ve come to the wrong city. And the wrong column. If you think the loss to the Jets was more than we can handle, then you obviously haven’t been paying attention all these years.

Make no mistake, this was a terrible loss. One, because the Patriots were heavy favorites. Two, because things set up perfectly for legitimate shot at another championship. Third, and most significantly, because of all the smack talk that had gone on in the days and weeks leading up to it.

The Jets players were F-bombing Tom Brady. Wes “Mr. Subliminal” Welker fired back so he got threatened with physical harm. I was in the Gillette parking lot shooting a Fanthropology video for WEEI.com before the game, and the Jets fans were cocky to the point of arrogance. Pats fans were arrogant to the point of cockiness. Nothing but drunken bravado and booze-fueled swagger all around.

And to lose a game with all that riding on it after all that trash talk is a miserable experience. The most insufferable kid in school pulled our undies over our head in front of everyone and for now, there’s not a damned thing we can do but take it.

But as bad losses go, this one is nothing. We’ve had far, far worse. In Boston, we don’t lick a wound like this. We squeeze the pus onto our pancakes like syrup because we eat losses like this for breakfast. The rest of the country might think the Jets cut our legs off with this one, but as the Black Knight said to King Arthur, ’tis but a scratch.

It’s way too soon for Big Picture time or for putting the season in perspective and all that. I’m not ready to talk about the Pats’ expectations going into the year or how many draft picks they have or that the future is so bright we gotta wear welder’s helmets. As for right now, this sucks. I’m just saying that I refuse to give any fans in any other town the satisfaction of a pity party.

Bostonians are too tough for that. We’re descended from the people who risked their lives to come over on the Mayflower and carve a civilization out of the wilderness. (Actually they all live on Beacon Hill and down the Cape now.) But the rest of us are descended from the people who cleaned their gutters, collected their trash, filled their jails and kept them rich by doing it for crap money. It takes a lot more than a humiliating loss in front of a record TV audience to make us feel sorry for ourselves.

We’re Will Hunting without the math/floor buffer skills. “My father was an alcoholic. Mean F-in' drunk. Used to come home hammered, looking to whale on someone. ... He used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the kitchen table and say, ‘Choose.’ I used to go with the wrench. 'Cause F- him, that's why.”

Again, we’ve had lots worse. The kinds of losses that change your life. Or worse, sell Dan Shaughnessy books. At this point, do I need to rattle them off? Just in the last generation alone we’ve got the Red Sox in ’78, ’86 and ’03. The Patriots in ’76 and ’07. Hell, there’s no need for a history lesson. Last year alone the Bruins blew a 3-0 lead and the Celtics were leading by 13 with six minutes to go in Game 7. So in the grand scheme of things, losing to a rabble of mouthy cartoon characters like the 2010 NYJs will barely register a mention five years from now.

So if you’re one of those poor, soulless creatures from some other godforsaken part of the country and came here looking to bathe in our blood, I’m happy to disappoint you. Instead, though, let me offer you a little lesson in how we roll in the City of Auerbach. Here’s a look inside our heads you’re not going to get anywhere else from a lifelong Bostonian who’s seen more unsurvivable losses than 10 generations of Clevelanders, Seattlites and San Diego-ans … San Diegons … San Diegans ever have:

The 5 Stages of Boston Sports Grief

1. Dismay: This is the immediate aftermath of a loss like Sunday’s. It’s the one everyone felt walking out of Gillette to their cars, settling up their bar tabs, leaving their friend’s houses, or in my case walking out of Big O, Fred Smerlas and Steve DeOssie’s tent for the long ride home. Symptoms include confusion, bewilderment and disbelief. But it’s not just limited to the postgame. The onset can occur much earlier, such as when the Lakers started chipping away at the Celtics’ lead or around the time the Patriots couldn’t sustain a drive at the end of the half. Generally this is the shortest-lived stage as it quickly degenerates into:

2. Pissed Offedness: This stage is the life blood of sports talk radio. It often first appears on the car ride home and has been known to last for several weeks. In extreme cases it can result in calls for coaches to be fired (see Claude Julien all last spring). But with the Patriots this week, most reported cases involved second-guessing of the fake punt, the Welker benching and the usual talk about Belichick’s arrogance and Brady’s hair. I more or less skipped this stage and went straight to:

3. Isolation and Amnesia: With apologies to all my friends and family who kept sending me “WTF?” texts in the fourth quarter or all the readers of Barstool who assumed I killed myself, I prefer to deal with a loss like this with total denial. No phone, no NFL Network, the least amount of WEEI I can stand. After the Pats lost in the Super Bowl That Shall Not Be Named, My Irish Rose and I went to the movies to get away from it all. I even remember we decided to see “Cloverfield,” because I was in the mood to see New York get eaten. I’m sure a doctor would tell me it’s not healthy to skip the anger stage, but for now I’d rather just repress it. Let the rage grow and fester and come out months from now, maybe directed at Yankees fans on Opening Day or something. Anyway, I’m in the Amnesia stage for the time being, until I move onto:

4. Hope and Optimism: Believe it or not, in spite of everything you’ve always heard about that idiotic stereotype of the negative, defeatist New Englander, chasing curses and always thinking the worst is about to happen (thanks again, Shaughnessy), we’re not like that at all and never have been. Prior to the loss on Sunday, we even had the audaciousness of hope enough to believe that FOUR championships in 2011 were within our reach. That the city would be one continuous loop of duck boats; one championship parade leading right into the next. OK, now we have to settle for the Tiger Slam. Four titles at once, just not all in the same calendar year. It still takes balls to believe it could happen. But once the shock of this last defeat wears off, it won’t be unthinkable. Especially since our normal state of being is:

5. Arrogant Masshole: We’re not at this stage yet. And it may take a while. But this is our default setting. The one the rest of the country has come to know and hate. This most recent loss was a tough one to swallow, no doubt. But we’re used to these and they make the championships that much better. Last Sunday, we got the wrench, and once we get through the usual stages, we’ll be back for more. How you like them apples, New York?

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Gasp! Jennifer Aniston sports new short hairstyle

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