Bob Lobel: Is Boston the Luckiest Sports Town in America?

By Bob Lobel  @boblobel

 The last New England Patriot to wear number 12 before Tom Brady was another Tom. 

Tom Jansen, backup quarterback, started one game and played in seven. There will be no others, in case you might have wondered. Unless, of course, they change the rules and give #12 to everybody after it's revealed that it contains magical powers of some sort.

No, these power comes from within. 

There is a better chance that Tom Brady and Peyton Manning will run against each other in a future presidential election before we see the likes of either one on the football field again. How do you get better than that? Is Robert Kraft the luckiest person on the planet that the late Dick Rayburn spoke up in a draft room, somewhere, and told whomever was in charge of pulling rabbits out of hats to take the kid from Michigan, cause “you never know.” 

Remember it’s always easier to draft gangsters because they have some record somewhere that tells you they aren’t afraid of violent behavior under the right conditions. It’s so much more difficult to find the bearer the likes of number #12, unless it’s a casting call. Tom Brady is the Jennifer Lawrence of the National Football league. Monday night in a Foxboro freezer, he, like J-La, was on fire. 

Almost every arrow he let go hit its mark. It was an amazing performance for a 20 something, let alone someone who is close to the mandatory age of running for the top office in the land. 35 must be the new 25.

Epic moments have become routine in these parts… Ninth inning grand slams, 28 unanswered points after trailing 24-0, an umpire being overruled in a World Series game by 5 other umpires, the Celtics winning a game on the road, maybe a Heisman redo at Boston College and blah, blah, blah. 

Too many things are going our way. Could we tempt fate and ask for a very mild winter with plenty of snow in the mountains so we could ski there and golf here?  Is that asking too much? Not for us, it’s never too much for us. 

What the hell did we do to deserve this? Really? Just what deal did we make that enables us to thumb our nose at the rest of the wannabes? We aren’t especially good sports. The “Yankees Suck” chant will return soon because, now, they do suck. This past year it really was no fun at all telling them what they already knew.

Meanwhile, we will become preoccupied with the question that has no wrong answer. The beauty of the question is bathed in our own arrogance. All you have to say is  “2004 or 2013”,  and everybody knows exactly what you’re asking. I don’t disagree with the much maligned Dan Shaughnessy very often, but I do on this: He is a 2004er and I’m in the 2013 camp. I do freely admit he has more people that agree with his position than I do. 

That must be very painful for many of them, because they would never admit to agreeing with him in any argument. But in this, since there is no wrong answer, I’ll simply say I believe 2013 has more layers of more meaningful connections than simply breaking a curse that he invented to begin with. 

It’s his curse, as in “Curse of the Bambino,”  so naturally breaking his curse is more meaningful to him. I would feel the same way in his shoes, but when my book comes out, “There is No Bad Luck in 13," then you’ll see why Im a 2013er.  

What say you on this?