The Globe's biggest union expels its head

Media -- Dont Quote Me

Goal rush!

By ADAM REILLY | December 2, 2009

"Ask Pitino if interest declines when a team loses," Bridgen continues. "This market is incredibly passionate, win or lose."

Point taken. Still, the architects of Boston's burgeoning sports-media-industrial complex would do well to remember that, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, Bostonians weren't always the uniformly obsessive fans they are today. In "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," his classic New Yorker article on Ted Williams's last game at Fenway Park, John Updike mentions the size of the crowd that showed up, in 1960, to watch the final at-bat of the greatest Red Sox hitter ever. It wasn't 30,000, or even 20,000; instead, less than 10,500 people were there. Whatever the mitigating factors — and whatever changes professional sports have seen in the intervening half-century — the lesson is unmistakable: even in Boston, passion is never a sure thing.

To read the "Don't Quote Me" blog, go to thePhoenix.com/dontquoteme. Adam Reilly can be reached atareilly@thephoenix.com.

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