We had a moment like this once. The player’s name was Wade Boggs. The policeman’s name was Lt. Jim Higgins. At that precise moment – just before midnight on the evening of Oct. 26, 1996 – Boggs had been a major league baseball player for 15 years, Higgins a cop for 28.
Boggs was deathly afraid of horses. But the Yankees had just won a World Series, they were taking a victory lap around the old Stadium, and there was Higgins, proudly mounted atop a 16-year-old Bay gelding named Beau, and Boggs’ brainstorm consumed him before he could really think it through.
“The neighborly thing,” Higgins would say later, “was to let him get on.” So Boggs got on. And thus was born the iconic image of the first Yankees championship in 18 years, one that would usher in an incredible run of New York dominance.
Seventeen years later, the player’s name was David Ortiz, and the policeman’s name was Steve Horgan. Ortiz, in his 11th year as a cornerstone of Red Sox Octobers, launched a laser beam toward the right-field bullpen with the bases loaded. Horgan, in his 27th year as a member of the Boston Police Department, was assigned to the bullpen beat, had the best view of anyone as the ball landed just beyond the reach of Detroit right-fielder Torii Hunter, tying Game 2 of the ALCS.
And then lifted both arms to the sky, V-for-Victory style, encapsulating an evening of unbridled joy in New England … and then made sure Hunter was all right.
“It was an awesome feeling,” Horgan later told ESPNBoston.
We’ve had years like this, too: In the 16 months between January 1969 and May 1970, the Jets, Mets and Knicks all won championships, and in 1956, the Giants and Yankees pulled off a daily double, and in 1986, so did the Giants and the Mets.
That last pairing even lent us the kind of similarly divine intersection Boston enjoyed Sunday night, Ortiz shocking the Tigers only a couple of hours after Tom Brady and the Patriots had done likewise to the Saints.
On the evening of Oct. 27, 1986, Ray Knight hit the home run that put the Mets ahead to stay at Shea Stadium in Game 7 of the World Series; over at Giants Stadium, at that very instant, the roar provoked by news of Knight’s smash caused Redskins guard Joe Jacoby to false-start. The Giants soon scored a go-ahead touchdown to beat Washington, 27-20, and move into a first-place tie in the NFC East, the first of 12 straight victories on their way to their first Super Bowl title.
“I kept thinking, ‘What the hell’s going on?’” Phil Simms would say later, smiling, referring to the pockets of cheers that filled the Meadowlands at seemingly random moments.
There is something telling about this splendid stroll down memory lane.
The tenses: Had. Did. Was. Were.
That was the way we were, when New York wasn’t just the center of the universe because we said it was, but because our sports teams gave us cause to pound our chests and strut when we stepped. And, yes, we certainly aren’t in the kind of drought that, say, Cleveland (no titles in any sport since 1964) or Buffalo (none since ’65) or Atlanta (one, ever, since becoming a pro town in 1966 and hosting five teams in the big four sports) find themselves in.
Still. We can be forgiven if we feel a little Sports Envy these days.
Our baseball teams are beach-bound. Our football teams have one spike on the golf course already. All of our hockey eggs are in the Islanders’ basket. Basketball starts soon around here, but unfortunately it also begins soon in South Beach. It’s a little grim. Meanwhile, in Boston …
And it isn’t just there. There’s St. Louis, whose Cardinals are a remarkable mixture of everything that made the Mets likable at their best and the Yankees unbeatable at their best. There’s L.A., with all that baseball star power, where Kobe lurks, eager to poach Carmelo Anthony away from us.
But, as always, there is Boston, kid brother, where on Sunday its citizens had one of the great days sports fans will ever get (even if, it should be noted, tens of thousands left Gillette Stadium before Brady’s final drive, and there were streams of faithful seen exiting Fenway before Papi went pow), where the Bruins were Stanley Cup finalists a year ago and where, even in a down basketball season, Celtics fans can ask each other, “Which of those 17 championship banners is your favorite?”
Yes, it’s sports. It’s cyclical. The sun will shine on us again. But for now …