Strikes are for baseball

TALES FROM THE TAILGATE
As the prospect of no NFL football looms on the fall horizon -- I know, let's not wish away spring and summer -- I've been thinking back to my first year as a season-ticket holder. If the 2011 season -- whatever becomes of it --  were to be my last as a tailgating regular, it would make a perfect bookend to that first year. If the league can't get its act together by September, then my last it may very well be. But before there can be a last season, there had to be a first.

1987. The Pats were defending AFC East Champs and were expected to contend again. I had a good job at the newspaper and a first child on the way. I had two season tickets for the Pats. I was an adult.

The season started well when Raymond Berry named Steve Grogan the starting quarterback over Tony Eason. Ask Pats fans to pick their all-time favorite players and of course the lists would be filled with the names Brady, Bruschi, Harrison, Bledsoe, Brown, and Hannah. One name that should appear on all those lists is Grogan. Steve Grogan is why people who love football love football. Nobody played harder. When the game was over there was only one thing you could be sure of and that's that Grogan had left it all on the field. He wasn't the most talented QB by far. He was just one of the toughest to ever play the game. Tony Eason, let's just say, was not. Although Eason too took many a shot and got up and kept going. The difference is Grogan wouldn't just get back up. He'd get back up and throw the first punch on the next play.

The season got off to a great start as the Pats beat their nemesis Miami in the home opener 28-21. Yes! Season-ticker holder right here! Week 2 saw Grogan hurt and the Pats go to New York and get thumped by the Jets. Uh. Hey. Season-ticker holder. Uh. Over here...

Did I mention that the threat of a players strike had been hanging over the NFL all offseason? I believe my answer to anyone who said "You're buying season tickets? There's going to be a strike, you know." was always "Are you kidding me? The players aren't going to strike. They are making way too much money." The players had set a deadline for a settlement for the start of Week 3 of the season. I wasn't worried.

I was wrong. I can still see the sports front of the Boston Globe displaying a large NFL logo in color with the heavy black words "ON STRIKE" stamped across it. I had season tickets and the players were on strike. I was an adult.

FAN SUPPORT: On the line.

I still have the letter from Pats General Manager (and son of the owner) Patrick Sullivan. It starts "Dear season ticker holder: I regret to inform you that as a result of the NFLPA going on strike last night, we are left with no alternative but to attempt to field a competitive team for the balance of the 1987 season..." Regret that they will try to field a competitive team? Would they prefer to field a non-competitive team? Competitive is what I'm paying for. But how can they do that with no Grogan, no Stanley Morgan, no Steve Nelson? Replacement players. Scabs in pads. That's how. The Patriots like the rest of the teams in the league were prepared to play the real games without the real players.

The total cost for two season tickets in 1987 was $388. Regular season games were 21 bucks each while preseason games were only $13 (Preseason games at about half the price of regular season games... What an interesting concept). I was expecting to see professional football players for my $388. That's not what I got.

The Pats sent out a call for ex-pros, beer league players... basically anyone who could throw or catch a football. And they came. On a cold and rainy October Sunday me and my friend Jim, who also worked at the paper, headed to the stadium to see what kind of players they found. As we drove up to the entrance of the parking lot we could see a line of guys in raincoats carrying signs off to the side. Hey! It's tight end Lin Dawson. And there's Eason. The striking players milled about drinking coffee and looking not so much like pro athletes but a bunch of guys on strike in the rain. They just watched the cars of fans file by.

I didn't have a strong pro-player or pro-league feeling either way. Sports unions are not exactly Miners Local 1430. I'm a union guy, but I just wanted to see football. I was curious to see what kind of football it would be. Not many people shared my curiosity. Only about 14,000 out of the usual 54,000 decided to show up. Part protest, part good sense I guess. But this was my first year with tickets. This was only the second home game. I was going.

Jim and I had our pick of empty seats and settled in around the 40-yard line on the replacement Pats side. On the other side were the replacement Cleveland Browns. We watched the new Pats warm up. Hey! There's a guy named Bleier! Is that Steeler great Rocky Bleier? Did he come out of retirement to play for us? Nope. It's Bob Bleier. "I think that's our new starting quarterback," I said to Jim. Jim said nothing.

The game was not pretty. It shouldn't come as a surprise that guys who hadn't played football in a while and had never played together don't play very well. The replacement Browns were just a little less bad than the replacement Pats and won 20-10. "That was much worse than I expected," I said to Jim. Jim said nothing.

We walked down to where the players were coming off the field to get a better look at our new team. One of the players took off his helmet as he walked towards us. "That guy looks familiar," I said to Jim. Jim said nothing. "Did he used to play for the Colts?" I asked. Jim looked at me and this time said something. "I think that guy worked at the beer stand at the last game."

Not your Father's football game

TALES FROM THE TAILGATE
My years as a season-ticket holder are broken up into two parts. Part I was from 1987 (yes, the strike year) through the 1990 season (yup, the 1-15 season). Part II started a few years later in 1994 (the Tuna's second year) and is still going. The first time I had season tickets I was 25 and bought two in Section 210. The map said it was on the 15-yard line but that sure looked like the goal line to me. The Pats had been to the Super Bowl two years earlier and won their division again the next year. Things were good. Won't mention the drug scandal the day after the Super Bowl loss. Right. The biggest loss in Super Bowl history at the time. Won't mention the score. Or how the star young receiver "accidentally cut his hand in the kitchen while in an argument with his wife" the week before the Super Bowl. Never mind that. Things were good.

And then they weren't. By 1990 the Pats had fallen about as fast as a sports team can fall. The record had dropped to 5-11 and Super Bowl coach Raymond Berry aged 80 years and was fired. Going into my fourth year with the tickets the team had chosen as coach the only guy that every fan was in agreement should not get the job. Rod Rust. No doubt if Rod Rust's team had won nine or eight or even five games I might feel differently. But they won one game. And lost 15. And that one win came on the road. Eight home games. Eight losses. Please don't send me a season-ticket renewal form. (To the fans that stayed on through the next few years and were later rewarded: You really deserved that).

Even before the 1-15 season the mood among the fans was pissed off. This was not the Gillette Stadium experience that you get now. No McDonald's fries. No wide concourses with lots of bathrooms. No cup holders. And no seatbacks. This was the Sullivan Stadium experience. 90 percent guys ages 20-50. About eight bathrooms in the whole place. Ice cold aluminum benches. And no seatbacks. My Dad was not a big fan of standing outside in the cold so he had only been to a few early season games over the years. The Pats were playing the Packers in an exhibition game and the weather was great so my Dad said he would go. At the very least we could spend three hours talking about what a bum Rod Rust was... and he hadn't even coached a game yet. We picked up a few extra tickets (when your team is 5-11 tickets are pretty easy to come by) for my brothers and a few cousins. After a low-key tailgate we headed into Sullivan Stadium. Or as I called it the giant concrete toilet bowl. After a 40-minute cattle crawl through the gates we moved with the crowd up the ramp to the concourse. The concourse was really an extra big hallway under the seats. There was hardly a time when it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder under there, mostly because the lines at the few bathrooms spilled 30 or 40 out the door and into the hallway, er, concourse. As me and my Dad made our way past the bathroom we came to a chain link fence that a row of guys were taking a leak through. And another row of guys behind them waiting for their turn. I looked at my Dad and could see he wasn't quite sure he was seeing what he was seeing. He was.

Early in the game the Pats showed hints of what was to come that year and the crowd got soccer-level drunk in the sun. I'm not sure how many fights security breaks up in a season these days but I bet the number is pretty close to the number in one game back then. The place was an out of control party that when the team was good was a blast and when the team was bad was a different kind of blast. One not suitable for those who were not males 20 to 50. Sometime in the second quarter the fans were in full self-entertainment mode when two sections began a back-and-forth with the "Tastes Great. Less Filling" ad campaign from Miller Lite. One section yells "Tastes Great." The other section responds "Less Filling." Back and forth. Louder and louder. My Dad and I laughed as we watched them shout. "Tastes Great!" "Less Filling!" "Tastes Great!" "Less Filling!" "Tastes Great!" "Less Filling!" "F--- You!" "Eat Me!" "F--- You!" "Eat Me!" Louder and louder and louder... My Dad and I looked at each other again. "I don't think I'm coming to another game," he said. He never did. No matter how many times I told him that things were different and the Krafts had cleaned the place up.