Amidst the raucous celebration on the field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis following the first World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox after 86 agonizing years, an ESPN commentator sagely intoned, "This is a great time to be a sports fan in New England."
Well, duh.
|
JUMP TO STORY:
Editorial Tough Times Schindler Hudson Gallagher Mt. Views Citycide Billstuff Letters |
By winning it all for the first time since Babe Ruth was known primarily as an excellent left-handed pitcher, the Red Sox forever buried the curse bearing his name.
The New England Patriots, who fled Boston for the quaint village of Foxborough in 1971, entered Sunday's action riding the longest winning streak in National Football League history and possessing a more-than-fair chance at winning their third Super Bowl in four years.
But, as somebody really smart once said, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
Which brings us to Western New York's little corner of the sports world.
Also known as Loserville.
The Buffalo Bills -- by any measure, be it wins and losses, aesthetic appeal or excitement generated -- stink.
Worse yet, they're not even likable losers. One-time franchise quarterback Drew Bledsoe alternates between blaming his teammates and the referees for his shortcomings. Overrated defenders excessively celebrate the most routine of plays. Not surprisingly, fans are starting to find better things to do with their autumn afternoons: Sunday's game was the first to be blacked out on local television this year.
The Buffalo Sabres would stink, except that the National Hockey League's owners -- including local hockey savior Tom Golisano -- locked them out.
And while the area's "third franchise," heavyweight boxer Joe Mesi, still has a perfect record, the brain injuries he suffered in his last fight more than seven months ago all but guarantee his fistic career will remain in undefeated limbo.
We won't even get into the University at Buffalo football team, the region's only Division I entry. The first three are depressing enough. And, really, did you even remember that the Bisons won the International League title less than two months ago?
It isn't just a bad time to be a sports fan in these parts. Says here it's the worst time ever. Not that it has ever been easy. Other than the Bills' two American Football League championships in 1964 and '65, before there was a Super Bowl to test them against the NFL's best, no local team has ever won a major-league or major-college championship.
Compare that legacy to that of Boston, where the Bruins brought five Stanley Cups and the Celtics long ruled as the New York Yankees of the National Basketball Association through two separate and distinct dynasties, and New England fans start looking like front-runners.
Add the Bills' string of futility since becoming eligible for a Super Bowl title in 1966 to the Sabres since their 1970 debut and throw in the late, lamented-by-some Buffalo Braves' nine seasons in the NBA, and you've got a fan base that's endured 82 unrequited campaigns.
Sure, there have been plenty of good times.
For the Bills, there was the run of four straight Super Bowl appearances, the stretch from 1973-75 when no one ever used the name "O.J. Simpson" and the phrase "double murder" in the same sentence and the Chuck Knox era of contention in the early 1980s.
In Sabreland, there were the two trips to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1975 and '99, surrounded by the heydays of the French Connection and Dominik Hasek, respectively.
Even the Braves offered a brief respite from putridity, when Bob McAdoo won three straight scoring titles as Buffalo formed a fierce, if mostly forgotten, rivalry with the Celtics.
And then there were the bad times. But, looking at the most pitiful periods in the annals of area sports, none quite measure down to the present.
EARLY 1970s
In 1971, the Bills endured their fifth straight season of not only finishing with a losing record, but failing to win more than four contests in what was then a 14-game schedule.
For the second time in four years, owner Ralph Wilson impetuously fired his head coach shortly before the regular season began and forced his friend and scout Harvey Johnson to take over.
Some friend. By all accounts an amiable chap, Johnson wound up overseeing his second one-win season in four years.
Those Bills didn't just lose, they did so in spectacular fashion. They were shut out four times in 14 games, managing but three, seven and nine points in three other losses.
At least Johnson kept his sense of humor. After the last home game, he was asked about the 28,107 fans at War Memorial Stadium singing "Goodbye, Harvey" for most of the afternoon.
"I thought they were in tune," Johnson said.
Before the worst season in Bills' history began, the Sabres wrapped up their first inaugural season with a 24-39-15 mark. They actually won two more games than the equally new Braves, who went 22-60.
But nobody expected any better from expansion teams in those days, and the Braves finished seven games ahead of their first-year counterpart, the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Sabres had a guy named Gilbert Perreault, who scored 38 goals in his rookie campaign, to provide on-ice hope. They drafted Rick Martin in the 1971 draft and acquired Rene Robert late in the 1971-72 season, giving birth to the French Connection and the franchise's first golden era.
As for the Bills, Wilson rehired the only successful coach he'd ever employed to that point, Lou Saban. Saban finally gave Simpson the chance to do something more than serve as a decoy and within two years, he became the first back to run for more than 2,000 yards.
While they waited for their struggling pro teams to come around, fans could occupy themselves with college basketball. Bob Lanier had taken St. Bonaventure to the Final Four in 1970. That was also the year of Niagara's last NCAA Tournament appearance, and Coach Frank Layden led the Purple Eagles to the NIT in 1972.
MID-1980s
The Bills put together the two worst consecutive seasons in franchise history in 1984 and '85, bumbling to consecutive 2-14 finishes.
With Knox fired after producing two playoff appearances in his last three seasons, barely missing a third in the strike-shortened 1982 season, the Bills fell into chaos under Kay Stephenson and Hank Bullough. After an 0-11 start in 1984, it seemed things almost had to get better the next season.
They didn't. Former Los Angeles Rams and Toronto Argonauts quarterback Vince Ferragamo was acquired in July. Evidently, the man who led the Rams to the Super Bowl in January 1980 was either too dumb or too lazy to bother learning Buffalo's playbook, as he was still wearing a wristband cheat-sheet midway through the '85 season.
He was benched after the ninth game, and released a few weeks later. For the year, Ferragamo and his replacement, Bruce Mathison, threw but nine touchdown passes while completing 31 passes to the guys in the wrong uniforms.
The Sabres, meanwhile, were in the midst of the tumultuous Scotty Bowman era, missing the playoffs in 1985-86 and 1986-87 while the most accomplished coach in the game's history tried to decide what he wanted to do with himself and the franchise.
By the time Buffalo's hockey team had bottomed out, finishing with the NHL's worst record in 1986-87, Jim Kelly and Marv Levy had arrived, joining Bruce Smith and Andre Reed -- both rookies during that horrid 1985 season as the core of a team that would win a slew of games, but none with a Roman numeral in the title, over the next decade.
THE 1950s
The NFL passed on absorbing the original Buffalo Bills when their upstart league, the All-America Football Conference, folded after the 1949 season. The region spent the Eisenhower Era pining for a chance to prove itself a big-league city, but had to content itself with looking wistfully at Cleveland to the west and New York City to the east for baseball and football, and to Toronto for NHL hockey.
Still, there was plenty to cheer for back home.
Basketball doubleheaders featuring Niagara, St. Bonaventure and Canisius packed Memorial Auditorium. The hockey Bisons, owned by a Pepsi-Cola distributor who clad his players in bottle-capped sweaters, whetted the area's appetite for hockey at a time when the six-team NHL left plenty of talent for the American Hockey League, while Luke Easter slugged monstrous home runs for their baseball counterparts.
Buffalo's support for its minor-league teams, as well as the turnout at the Old Rockpile for NFL exhibition games and college all-star contests and a then-booming economy, made the region attractive to a wealthy young man from Detroit. In 1959, Ralph Wilson Jr. ponied up $25,000 and Western New York entered the world of big-time sports.
Fans looking for solace, and success, can look to their ancestors of a half-century ago. While things don't figure to get a whole lot better for the Bills, and it may be a year or more before the Sabres even have a chance to get better, area colleges have a unique opportunity to grab the spotlight again.
Joe Mihalich at Niagara and UB's Reggie Witherspoon lead men's basketball programs that ended last year on the upswing, and the Purple Eagles and Bulls each figure as contenders in their respective conferences.
Those seasons are still a couple weeks away, though. In the meantime, you'll just have to console yourself with the knowledge that things can't possibly get much worse.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 1 2004 |