When the Pittsburgh Steelers won four Super Bowls in a six-season span in the 1970s and the Pirates won two World Series in the same decade, Pittsburgh became known as the City of Champions. What, then, should we call Boston and its neighbor Foxboro with three World Series victories and two Super Bowl titles in a decade?
The Patriots are back, playing Seattle tonight as the American Conference champions for the sixth time in the last 14 Super Bowls. The Red Sox don’t have that record of World Series frequency, but they have won three of the last 11 World Series, two since the Patriots last won the Super Bowl.
The Red Sox problem has come more recently. Although they won the American League East title en route to the World Series in 2013, they finished in last place the year before and the year after. Those developments gave them the dubious record of going from worst to first to worst, the only team, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, to do that since 1900.
The Patriots won their division and conference championships for the 2014 National Football League season. The Red Sox will be hard pressed to match the Patriots’ achievements in the 2015 baseball season.
Should the Red Sox, as expected, fail to go from worst to first to worst to first, the Patriots won’t have to schedule a ceremony to honor their baseball neighbors in the next football season. The teams have adopted the mutual practice of honoring each other when they have won their league’s championship.
The Red Sox will be prepared to salute the Patriots at Fenway Park next April should they emerge from their game with the Seahawks with their fourth Super Bowl conquest, but Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox chief executive, wasn’t prepared last week to confirm that.
Before the Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2004 and 2005 (following the ’03 and ’04 seasons), Lucchino and I talked about the positive relationship between the teams, but this time he declined to have a conversation on the subject.
After two days of requests for a telephone interview, I received this e-mail from a spokesman for Lucchino.
“Larry’s asked me to relay to you his declination,” the spokesman wrote. He added more but labeled it off the record. I would like to quote what he said, but I honor reasonable off-the-record requests.
A few years ago I had the opposite experience with Lucchino. He asked me what I thought of Bobby Valentine as a manager, I answered candidly and he hired him in spite of what I said. I wrote about his asking me, and Lucchino later claimed he had said the conversation was off the record, which he had not.
A 93-loss, last-place season under Valentine later, Lucchino might have wished he had listened more closely. He settled instead for being irate and refusing to talk to me for a year or so.
Several years earlier, when he was speaking to me, Lucchino talked – on the record – about the respect the Red Sox and the Patriots had for each other.
”I can see Bob Kraft’s house from my window,” Lucchino said, referring to the Patriots’ owner, days before the Patriots’ 2004 Super Bowl game against the Carolina Panthers. ”I’m looking forward to him putting up a Super Bowl flag.”
”I’ve got the zeal of a convert when it comes to the Patriots,” Lucchino added. ”I’m very supportive. Robert Kraft has been a great friend and neighbor. They’ve been great to us. John Henry and Tom Werner” – Red Sox owners – “have a great relationship with the whole Kraft family.”
The Patriots won that game, 32-29, gaining their second Super Bowl title in three years. A year later they would make it three in four years, defeating the Philadelphia Eagles, 24-21.
“Perhaps we’ll honor them on Patriot’s Day,” Lucchino said prior to the Eagles game, referring to the Massachusetts holiday on April 18th that year, when the Red Sox were scheduled to play Toronto. “That would be a good time to honor the Patriots. That would be different from opening day. But we shouldn’t get too far ahead of things.”
Lucchino was right. The Patriots won the game, but three months earlier the Red Sox won the franchise’s first World Series in 86 years. The ceremony honoring the Red Sox took precedence, and that event was held on opening day 2005 at Fenway Park. The Red Sox honored the Patriots before the second game.
The Red Sox-Patriots twin success marked only the sixth time a pair of teams from the same city or region won MLB and NFL titles in the same calendar year. When the Patriots won the 2005 Super Bowl it was only the fourth time over-all and the first time in a quarter century that two neighbors won three consecutive championships. The last time it had happened was 1979 and ’80 when the Steelers and Pirates were the winners.
The cozy relationship that resulted in the practice of cross honors actually began in San Diego when Lucchino was president of the Padres. Charles Steinberg, senior adviser to Lucchino in Baltimore, San Diego and now in Boston, told of the origin of the reciprocal honors.
“When Larry was in Baltimore, he had a relationship with Bobby Beathard of the Redskins,” Steinberg related. “Later they were in San Diego at the same time. We had dinner with Beathard and Larry said what if we honored the Chargers at our first opening day in San Diego?
“The Chargers were in the ’95 Super Bowl and San Diego was jubilant. We wanted to carry that positive atmosphere into baseball. We subscribe to the belief that it’s always good for the city when one of its teams wins.”
After the Patriots won the 2004 Super Bowl, the Red Sox invited Robert Kraft, their owner, to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Fenway opener for the 2004 season.
Kraft, quarterback Tom Brady and nearly two dozen Patriots players came onto the field at Fenway from behind a huge United States flag that covered the Green Monster. As the fans roared, the players gathered around Kraft as he tossed the first pitch. Brady stood next to John Henry, the principal Red Sox owner.
“We made a deal if they won, they would come and be present at our stadium,” Kraft said.
The idea of the Red Sox winning the World Series seemed more a fantasy than a possibility, but seven months after the Fenway celebration of the Patriots, the Red Sox were at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, baseball champions for the first time since 1918.
Henry, Lucchino, general manager Theo Epstein, manager Terry Francona and two players, Johnny Damon and Curt Schilling, emerged from the end zone tunnel, World Series trophy in hand, and walked or ran to the 50-yatd line.”
The teams have continued the reciprocal honors. However, they have not been alone. “We’ve extended it to the Celtics and the Bruins,” Steinberg said. “Everyone has won at least one championship. Both were feted on the field when they won and both reciprocated.”
The Celtics won the National Basketball Association title in 2008, and the Bruins won the National Hockey League Stanley Cup in 2011.
SUPER QBS BRADY, WILSON TWO OF A KIND
Without their quarterbacks, it’s very likely that the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks would not have been in this year’s Super Bowl. The fact is both could have been without their quarterbacks.
The Patriots’ Tom Brady and the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson both were drafted by Major League Baseball teams and could have opted to play baseball.
The Montreal Expos, who are now the Washington Nationals, selected catcher Brady out of high school in the 18th round of the 1995 draft. Second baseman Wilson was picked by Baltimore out of high school in the 41st round in 2007 and by Colorado in the fourth round in 2010.
Both were initially selected in low rounds because of commitments to attend college.
Wilson played two years in the minors. Brady went to the University of Michigan and stuck to football. Both impressed baseball scouts.
“You were like, ‘Wow, this kind of fits the bill,'” scout John Hughes told MLB.com of Brady. “He could throw. He could receive well. He was a left-handed hitter who had some pull power.”
“I think he would have been a pro,” Hughes added. “He had all the intangibles. He could throw, and he had left-handed power. There is no reason to think this guy couldn’t have been a big league catcher.”
The only thing blocking Brady’s path to baseball was his desire to go to Michigan and play football. Three Super Bowl titles and possibly four later, he probably made a good choice.
Wilson led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl victory a year ago, putting him ahead of where he would have been in baseball. Nevertheless, baseball scouts liked what they saw.
“We were convinced if he had stayed with baseball, with his mindset and work ethic, he could have done well,” scout Jay Matthews told me last year.
“He had natural talent in baseball. He played well at second base. He adjusted to that position very quickly. We felt if he had 1,500 at-bats in the minors, he could have been a good baseball player. He had a great work ethic. He was the first guy at work in the morning and one of the last to leave. He has an infectious personality, and he makes everyone around him better.”
Just before Wilson quarterbacked the Seahawks to last year’s Super Bowl, the Texas Rangers plucked him out of the minor league draft, figuring $12,500 was a small price to pay just in case.
“We talk to our scouts about the makeup we want of our players and the work ethic it takes to win,” Jon Daniels, the Rangers’ general manager, said, “and Russell Wilson has been an example of that. He has off-the-charts character and focus.”