Home Sweet Away Team

I didn’t truly become a New England sports fan until I was accused of not being one. It was the winter of 2002, my freshman year at Penn. The New England Patriots would eventually win their first Super Bowl on a last second 48 yard field goal by Adam Vinatieri. During a phone call with my Aunt Mary, the Patriots’ recent success came up. “Wait, but you live in Philly now. So does that make you an Eagles fan?”

I was surprised at the vehemence with which I responded. Absolutely not. Whether she meant it this way or not, it felt like the subtext of her question was, “Have you left us forever?” To change teams would be an irreversible departure. I was forging a path that took me not only outside of our region, but to an Ivy League university from our working class family, and my allegiance to our teams had to remain unwavering.

And there wasn’t only distance felt from my family, but in my new home as well. As a first-generation college student, I hadn’t realized that coming to Penn would mean that I would be unique because I held a job while in school and managed my own finances. And I really didn’t have much of an accent, but “wicked” was my favorite modifier — as in, “wicked good,” “wicked awesome,” “wicked stupid.” Before long, I started catching myself before I said it. Now, fifteen years later, I have just about lost my “wicked”, and I miss it.

What I didn’t lose was my home team, which was actually an away team, and the attachment to my family’s you-get-what-you-get, do-your-job values. I think the role of away team fan suits me and might even be why my allegiance has become so unwavering. Why like what everyone likes when you can like what everyone hates, even envies? That winter of 2002 marked a change in the luck of our teams, who have now won nine championships total since that first Super Bowl victory: four by the Patriots, three by the Red Sox, and one each by the Celtics and Bruins. I have loved wearing Patriots, Red Sox, and Celtics gear in Philly when Boston is in town. I love high fiving fellow Celts fans at Sixers games, jeering at the Sixer fans who leave early when hope for their team is lost, and walking into Smith’s bar at 19th and Chestnut, which Philadelphia-based Patriots fans have made their home in recent years, with wall to wall Brady and Gronkowski jerseys and every television tuned in to the game.

But like many fans, the living room has been my true sports home. Not my living room, but instead, my friends’ Brad and Laura’s living room in South Philadelphia, an unlikely home-base for Patriots fans, given its proximity to Lincoln Financial Field. In fact, the doorbell at Brad and Laura’s house plays “Fly, Eagles Fly,” a leftover from the previous owners, about the most South Philly detail one can imagine.

But when we gather on Sundays, there is no question where our allegiances lie. First, there’s our attire: Brad’s and my Brady jerseys, my Julian Edelman t-shirt, Laura’s Patriots sweatpants, our hats and scarf the Patriots poncho, which Brad purchased in Mexico and we typically don when our luck needs to be reversed: “We need to score. I’m putting the poncho on!” And then, there’s the accessories: the Patriots sweatshirt-clad teddy bear, named Tom Bear-dy; our three hologram cups featuring Brady, Gronk, and Edelman, which I purchased at my grandmother’s pharmacy on Cape Cod; and perhaps most importantly, our Patriots tequila decanter and matching shot glasses, which our friend Alex purchased for us in Mexico. (Yes, Mexico is a haven for NFL gear with a flair.) I’m not sure when exactly my father, who watches from his own couch in New Hampshire, began the tradition of enjoying a shot of tequila every time the Patriots score a touchdown (or a field goal during slower games), but it is a ritual we have embraced and respected, the warm bite of the tequila propelling us to victory, and, yes, consoling us in defeat.

In January of 2015, the Patriots entered the Super Bowl under false and vengeful allegations of having intentionally deflated footballs to give greatest quarterback of all time Tom Brady an unneeded advantage. This was no time for preemptive celebration. It was time to do our jobs, in the words of living legend and Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. Sometimes being a sports spectator is the perfect balance of relaxation and exhilaration. For me, football Sundays represent a break from work email, from grading papers, from campus. But at crucial moments, however, an outsider would not understand why we do this to ourselves. Brad had decided not to invite non-Patriots fans over for the Super Bowl, deeming them an unnecessary distraction. Laura was concerned that we had purchased a different brand of tequila — could that affect the outcome? I was on edge generally, and focused my negative energy on my boyfriend Aaron, who first introduced me to Brad, who hasn’t yet been mentioned because he is the one non-Pats fan exception who often finds himself halfheartedly drinking tequila with us.

Aaron’s temporary allegiance was the least of our concern through the first half of Super Bowl 49. By the fourth quarter, the Patriots were down by 10 and I had started to get that tight feeling in my chest that I’d also felt in 2008 and 2012 when we lost Super Bowls to the hated, overrated and no longer relevant New York Giants. No team had ever come back to win a Super Bowl when trailing by more than a touchdown going into the fourth quarter. Couldn’t we just have this one thing? Or: couldn’t we just have these nine things?

Our boys began to look like themselves again in the fourth quarter, with two more touchdowns and holding Seattle scoreless. It was 28–24 Pats with 2:02 left in the game, meaning that Seattle would need a touchdown to win. They advanced down the field with a pass to a despised man known as “Beast Mode” and an improbably completed 33-yard pass to Jermaine Kearse, which threw us back to the Giants’ equally improbable “helmet catch” in 2008. Seattle was on the 1 yard line with 26 seconds left. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can’t we just enjoy each other’s company like civilized people?

I have watched what happened next more than I can count. Despite Beast Mode’s unstoppable nature when running the ball, Seattle elected to pass. Malcolm Butler, the same player who had unsuccessfully covered Kearse’s catch two plays earlier, read the route and cut in front of Seahawk Ricardo Lockette for an interception at the goal line.

I don’t remember what I did in this moment. Brad was standing — we were all standing, every Patriots fan in the world — and Brad fell to his knees in disbelief, gratitude, shock. I probably screamed and stared at the television, hoping that what I had seen was in fact what happened, that there wouldn’t be some kind of penalty call. In place of my own clear memory here, I present some video footage of my Patriots brethren, courtesy of YouTube (the good part comes just after 3:00).

As I watch videos like this one, I piece together my own memories of the rest of that night: we all embraced, we even threw cupcakes at the wall, and of course we finished the tequila. And somewhere in the tequila-soaked haze of victory, I remembered not just my family and friends, but the great writer Roger Angell’s essay about the Red Sox’s Game 6 win in the 1975 World Series. Angell thinks of his friends and family all over New England celebrating Carlton Fisk’s 12th inning home run, which would go down in history as a moment of collective euphoria.

My own people filled the framework of Angell’s piece: And I thought of them, in living rooms in Epping, New Hampshire and Whitman, Massachusetts; in Dover and Bourne and Pocasset and Marston’s Mills and East Bridgewater; my aunt Patty in Monroe, Maine and my Aunt Laurie, another New England ex-Pat, as it were, in Winter Garden, Florida. My grandfather Lee Josselyn in South Dennis, who dresses the wooden seagull on his mailbox in a mini Patriots jersey; my grandmother Dottie Leadbetter who most likely left the room on that last play because she just couldn’t watch, who chain smokes through all of these games, to whom I sent flowers the day after the Celtics’ 2008 championship win. As Roger Angell said of the New England sports nation and of those leaping from the carpet to the couch in their socks and slippers and jerseys and hats, “and all of them […] utterly joyful and believing in that joy — alight with it.”