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Truly, Boston is in the midst of its golden age of sports. Last night the Celtics destroyed the LA Laker 131-92 at Boston Garden in a dominating display of team-first basketball. I'm not really a hoops fan, but I'm a Boston Sports fan and I followed the Celts all year on the sports page, though I didn't watch the games. Come playoff time I watched them intermittently -- typically during road losses so I stopped watching them for fear that I was a jinx.

I watched most of the Finals games -- a couple of losses, but not the improbable game 4 24 point comeback. I turned it on at the half and saw the Celts were down by 20. As the third quarter started I said to myself "if I watch this they'll lose, if I don't they'll come back." I was prophetic. I put aside my irrational jinx fear last night and watched the game. It was was as dominating a performance as I've seen in any sports championship game. It was a great pleasure to watch the Celtics put their feet to the throats of the Lakers and never take it off until they climbed the podium at center court to accept their hardware.

Boston, as I've written elsewhere on this blog, has long been a town of also-rans. The Krafts changed that when they got serious about their ownership of the Patriots and hired Bill Belichik (who sat courtside with a hotty last night). The success of that franchise has spread to the Red Sox and the Celtics. It is amazing how the and desire to win seems to be infectious amongst the owners groups -- except for the Jacobs brothers who year after year put a mediocre product on the ice.

This, however, is not about those teams this is about the Celtics and their terrific season and their dominating performance in the finals. Watching this team was reminiscent of the great teams I watched as a kid with Bird, Parrish and McChale. Now a new generation has Garnett, Pierce and Allen, and banner 17 will be raised to the rafters at the start of next season.

Team Spirit

Mrs. Agricola recently bought the kids some Red Sox gear. Child One got a pink Pedroia shirt and Child Two got a blue Matsuzaka shirt. Each got a hat, one pink, one blue for C1 and C2 respectively. To state the obvious, they are very cute when decked out in their shirts. C1 now claims her favorite player is Pedroia and C2 says he wants to wear his "Mazooka" shirt.

What's interesting to me about this is that with these little purchases my kids have embarked on an affiliation with a team. That the team is the same team that I follow, my father follows, my grandfathers followed, and my great-grandfather followed is very cool. There is no guarantee that my kids are embarking on a life of Red Sox-fandom but it's interesting to be a father and see the seeds of this planted. It starts with a shirt and a hat.

Raptor On The Merrimack

Yesterday, I saw something I've never seen in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: a Bald Eagle. I was talking to the IT person at my current gig when I looked out the window and saw this large dark bird with a white head and white tail feathers swooping over the Merrimack River. It was a pretty amazing sight and it reminded that in August, after writing "Hawk vs. Crows" I had mentioned that I would post about some of the raptor activity I'd seen over the summer.

Well fall has passed as well and I never did that post, so here is a brief rundown of some of the more memorable things I've seen.

In late June Mrs. Agricola and I were at a Red Sox game. At some point in the early innings I looked into center field and saw a falcon soaring around. It alighted on the large John Hancock sign in center field, sat thee for a couple of batters and then was gone. I'm sure that it was the same falcon that I used to see when I worked in the Prudential Center.

In mid-summer a moving van nearly hit a huge Red Tail about 400 yards from the Quarter Acre. The bird swooped low across the road and banked sharply and nearly vertically up the front of the truck's box to avoid being hit. I got a great view of its breast and wings and tail feathers as I drove by in the opposite direction.

We visit Mrs. Agricola's father on Cape Cod frequently during the summer and the Ospreys are all over the place down there. As a kid it was rare to see the Sea Hawk, but they are everywhere now -- their huge nests resting atop perches built for that purpose as well as on power line towers.

Up until about a month ago I was working in Harvard Square where a Peregrine Falcon often caught my eye. I didn't see this bird too much this summer but did notice that it had returned in the Fall.

I jumped back into the freelance market in mid-November and took a job up in Newburyport, MA. I cover about 53 miles each way up I-95/128 and there are loads of Hawks along the ride. At least twice over the past three weeks I've seen a large hawk standing in the median strip, in the grass, in the same place each time. I don't why he's there but the fact that he's in the same spot leads me to believe that he's not just made a kill. His northern-Mass kin all sit in trees, but he's on the ground.

Nothing compares to the Eagle though, that was an amazing site.

Red Sox Win It All Again!

Sunday night the Red Sox clinched their second World Series Championship in four seasons. This represents a really interesting change for long-time Sox fans. This team, we were told was never going to win the championship, they were cursed, chokers, losers, perpetually in the shadow of the New York Yankees . . .

Now they've won it all for the second time in four seasons and the reality of this event still leaves me slightly befuddled. The win in 2004 was jubilant; a euphoric and completely improbable expiation of 86 years of misery. Finally, the organization and the city had dropped its negative mantle.

This year's victory has a different ring to it, is more mellow than the 2004 win but is as every bit as gratifying as the first. This year's win validates the '04 win and makes it seem not so improbable -- both teams rallied from deep holes in the ALCS and demonstrated that this organization is one of heart and grit. Despite the fact that the payroll of this team is $143 million per annum, these players are fierce competitors who actually subscribe to an old fashioned notion of teamwork. The ownership is dedicated to winning. The front office is definitely following a plan. The manager is proving to be a fine skipper who understands the modern athlete. Each of the factors combine to produce another championship team.

As a long-time fan I never expected to witness one World Series Championship in my life and now I've witnessed two in four years. I keep telling Child One that the Sox have won as many championships in her life as they have in mine and that's pretty amazing. In 1986 when that grounder got through Buckner's legs my father stormed out of the family room, said some naughty things and then looked at me and said:

They did it to my grandfather. They did it to my father. They've done it to me, and they'll do it to you too!

They had broken generations of hearts and everybody expected that to continue in perpetuity. No more. The Sox are champions again, it's amazing and something I'm still getting used to.

A Gem

Wakefield v Texas

Athlete-Media-Relations 2.0

Regardless of where you stand on Curt Schilling, he is a unique talent both on and off the field. While he rubs many the wrong way -- esp. The Boston Globe's curmudgeonly Dan Shaughnessy -- as a self-promoter, he is redefining the way athletes relate to the media and the fans.

We happen to think Schilling is terrific and we look forward to his weekly chats with Dennis and Callahan -- the morning drive guys on Boston's sports-radio-giant WEEI. He always sheds great light on the game, and provides terrific insight into how it's played at the highest level -- at least in his POV.

Schilling has long been an active participant on the Boston Dirt Dogs and Sons of Sam Horn bulletin boards. He's also known around these parts to sports radio listeners as "Curt in the Car." This spring Schilling launched his own blog, 38 Pitches. It must be a nightmare for team-management to have a guy as savvy, intelligent and opinionated as Schilling out and about, opining and talking about whatever he wants.
This is a perfect example of the issue of how brand owners are losing control of their brand. Ownership, understandably, wants to control, what their employees say, but they have to be even-handed and judicious in how hard, and when or if, they come down on a player such as Schilling. We think that ownership understands that they would surely lose in any war of words with Schilling. This new foray into the blogoshpere is certainly forcing them to walk a razor thin line.

For now, ownership of the Sox is showing forbearance and continuing to permit Schilling to be visible and opinionated. It will be interesting to see how long they permit this, especially as the season progresses and Schilling draws nearer to free agency. Like the Sox, Schilling also has a brand to maintain and he does so by being open and pushing his message across multiple channels. There have been athlete blogs in the past -- ESPN has contracted with marginal players to chronicle a season -- but this is about as high-a-profile a player as we know of to go the route of the personal blog.

We'd love to hear and see more players go this route as well. It will radically change the relationship between player and fans as well as player and major media outlets. Part of this, no doubt, lies at the root of the issues between Shaughnessy and Schilling. In Shaughnessy's world, the player is supposed to sit there, give good quotes to the grizzled, old-media pro and allow the latter to control the message. Alas, the days of the gate-keeping, myth-making, and mythical reporter as major arbiter of player access are numbered.

Welcome to Athlete-Media-Relations 2.0. People like Schilling are helping to change the field of play (so to speak). The ballpark scribes now need to compete with the athletes themselves for the scoop. As long as this foray into the brave-new-world of DIY news production, brand management and self promotion doesn't distract too much from on-field performance -- Schilling got lit up on Opening Day by Kansas City -- we are all for it and look forward to the evolution.