Patriot's Day

In 1775, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, who commanded the British forces around Boston, said "Hey, it's the third Monday in April! Let's all ride out to Concord and fire the shot heard round the world!!" The importance of this event can be seen from his use of exclamation marks, a rarity in British speech.

Unbeknownst to them, however, Paul Revere and William Dawes had warned the New England Patriots, who formed a defensive line. Then, in compliance with local Stand Your Ground laws, the two sides stood blasting away at each other. Luckily muskets were not especially effective weapons.

So every year on the anniversary, Massachusetts marks this holiday with various festivities, despite the fact that in 1775, the third Monday in April fell on a Wednesday.

The festivities fall into two main categories. At the crack of dawn, people dressed as British and Colonial soldiers go out and fire muskets at each other. They use blanks, which renders their guns slightly less deadly.

This is followed by the ritual of thousands of people running halfway across the state to beat the traffic into Boston for the Red Sox game.

The Game's A Foot

I'm not what you'd call a big sports fan.  I had never watched a baseball game on TV until I was 30, after I had moved from New York to New England. Consequently, I was never a fan of any of the New York teams, though some of my high school friends consider this treasonous. What little rooting I have done has all been for the more northerly teams.

Nonetheless, I'm able to see a clear distinction between New York sports fans and fans in New England.  Specifically, New York sports fans tend to cheer their teams because those teams win a lot.

In New England, fans seems to endure their teams, the way they endure the climate and the terrain. Red Sox fans grew more passionate with each passing year of championship drought.  They finally found a manager who led the team to its first World Series victory in 86 years, and then followed up with another victory 3 years later! And what became of that manager? They fired him.

Now the New England Patriots seem bent on grabbing some of the Red Sox cachet by also snatching defeat from the jaws of victory ... repeatedly.

Perhaps it's because the whole region is so infused with a sense of its own history, but New England sports fans seem to prefer reminiscing about past glories to actually enjoying new ones.