If you pour enough beer into die-hard hockey fans, they’ll put nearly anything on their heads. This true-blue (or make that true brew?) fan sat next to J at Saturday’s game between the Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres. Mr. True-Blue Bruin was one of a handful of middle-aged adults (some of them women) who sat on one side of us wearing foam bear-heads throughout the game; on the other side of us, two Army guys and a young family dressed in Sabres jerseys tried their best to cheer against the home team. Sitting between super-fans of opposing camps, J and I were something of a de-militarized zone, making sure True Blue Bruins didn’t claw any Invading Sabres. Hockey is, after all, only a game, so it’s best to leave the roughing to the pros.
This isn’t to say J and I weren’t dressed for the occasion. In the spirit of Almost-True-Blue fans, we both wore Bruins ball-caps, which seem to be the headgear of choice for the well-dressed fan; J additionally wore a long-sleeve Bruins T-shirt and fleece jacket while I sported a Patrice Bergeron jersey. During a year when the Red Sox are champions, the Patriots are undefeated, and Celtic pride has been resurrected by the signing of two new celebrity phenoms, it’s difficult to be a lowly Bruins fan. While every other Boston sports team is kicking butt, the Bruins are merely mediocre. When J and I went in search of Bruins-wear before our first home-game back in October, we had a hard time finding any. After finally finding a tiny section of Bruins paraphernalia at a local sporting goods store filled to the rafters with Red Sox and Patriots logos, we found most of their Bruins-wear was priced at clearance rates. “This is the first Bruins hat I’ve sold in three years,” a bemused cashier remarked as we bought two $15 ball-caps for $5 a piece and an $80 fleece jacket priced at only $10.
Sporting goods store prices notwithstanding, on Saturday there were plenty of fans sporting Bruins logos. On the T ride from Newton to the TD North Garden, J and I sat surrounded by other gold-and-black bedecked fans. In Boston, Red Sox hats are as common as blue jeans, especially in the aftermath of another World Series win. But when you see someone wearing anything Bruin, you know they grew up playing hockey, have followed the sport since the Bruins dominated, or are simply trying to go against the Everyone-Loves-the-Red-Sox/Go-Patriots grain. At time when everyone is saying how easy it is to be a Boston sports fan, rooting for the Boston Bruins is still something of a statement.
Although it’s easy to laugh at well-dressed super-fans, I suspect wearing the colors of your chosen team has a kind of ritual significance. During the rest of our lives, we try to stand out as individuals, striving to excel, outperform, and otherwise shine in our academic, professional, and personal life. When you don the colors of your favorite sports team, though, you immediately assume a group identity with anyone with similar loyalties: with one glance, you can spot your virtual kin by the colors they sport on their sleeves. Last summer in Dublin, I rode a train crammed with soccer fans on their way to watch a national tournament, each wearing the colors of their beloved county. As an outsider, it was fascinating to see regional loyalties literally emblazoned on people’s bodies: “This is who I am; this is who I root for.” One of my favorite sights from the standing-room-only T-ride home from Saturday’s win was that of a foam Bruins bear-claw clinging to one of the trolley hand-holds. We fans not only root as one, we take public transit as a team, too. There is no “I,” after all, in “MBTA.”
My favorite picture of well-dressed and hatted Bruins fans is this one. Super-fandom is only partly about hats, jerseys, and other logo-laden products; after the cost of your wardrobe has been tallied, spending some one-on-one time with your kid at a hockey game really is priceless. Hockey is, after all, only a game, but the bonds of family and fandom go more than jersey-deep. In a world that admonishes children not to talk to strangers, sporting events allow and even encourage us to scream our lungs out with folks we’ve never seen before. What better sign of unity, at least among fans of the home team, is that split second when the similarly hatted all jump to their feet in response to a well-earned goal?
Hoarded Ordinaries 
Nov 12, 2007 at 9:19 pm
So who won?
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Nov 12, 2007 at 9:27 pm
The Bruins, by a score of 2-1. The last photo shows fan response to what ended up being the game-winning goal, a prompt payback to a shorthanded goal the Sabres made to tie the game in the third period.
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Nov 13, 2007 at 5:23 am
Glad you asked, Dave 🙂
The older I get the more I see attempts at individuality in attire to be group identification, just with smaller and more “exclusive” groups. Defining out, I suppose, as much as defining in, thus yes the contrary to the unity of sports fandom where *allegiance* to is the specific rather than *opposition* to.
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Nov 13, 2007 at 6:32 am
Well, in high school I always marveled at how everyone wanted to “be an individual” by wearing the same fashionable brands. When I wore hand-me-down clothes from my sisters or the thrift shop, it was “uncool.” When the popular girls wore thrift-shop clothing, it was “hip” and “retro.”
Now that I’m far removed from high school, I’ve given up trying to prove myself as either an individual or a joiner: I’m just who I am, for better or worse. Wearing team colors to a game is fun, so if that makes me a sheep, well, that’s fine, too. Humans are social creatures, after all, so our incessant fascination with standing out as an individual strikes me as a bit misguided.
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Nov 13, 2007 at 6:35 am
This all being said, I don’t think I’d be caught dead wearing a foam bear-head. Even I have limits… 🙂
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Nov 13, 2007 at 7:32 am
I presume one’s face sticks out of that bear-head? Otherwise, who’d know?
Great pics! I used to follow the Bruins when I was a kid – Bobby Orr and all that gang. Back before they wore helmets on the ice!
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Nov 13, 2007 at 7:48 am
Yes, the bear’s mouth is wide open in the front, and that’s where your face sticks out. So it kind of looks like you’ve been swallowed by the bear & are looking out of its mouth, I guess.
Hockey was *not* a big sport in Ohio when I was growing up, although Columbus now has an expansion team. But I guess I’m the Bruins equivalent of a Red Sox “pink hat”: a fan-come-lately. The true giveaway for that is the Patrice Bergeron jersey: he’s the female fan favorite since he’s kind of cute.
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Nov 13, 2007 at 8:24 am
The hockey fan’s face
half-swallowed by a foam bear,
roaring drunk.
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Nov 13, 2007 at 8:57 am
“Roaring drunk”! Nice, Dave.
Lorianne, I’ve only ever attended one hockey game — a Bruins/Leafs game some years ago in Boston. I found the hockey gorgeous, and the skating likewise (it seems they only have to think of moving and they are in motion — like the way I sometimes fly, in dreams) but being there made me uneasy once the crowd started chanting “fight! fight! fight!” I was afraid the crowd would take their own advice and start punching each other, instead of just urging the players to do so on their behalf.
Still, this post opened a window for me, so thank you.
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Nov 13, 2007 at 1:03 pm
[…] Hoarded Ordinaries Yes, the bear’s mouth is wide open in the front, and that’s where your face sticks out. So it kind of looks like you’ve been swallowed by the bear & are looking out of its mouth, I guess. […]
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Nov 14, 2007 at 12:15 am
omg, I’ve been haiku’d! What an honor. “Roaring drunk” is classic, as is the image of a “foam bear,” evoking as it does both a sponge-foam bear-head and the foamy “head” of a beer-bear with bite.
Oh my. I think I’m going to veer from haiku straight into something Dr. Suessical!
I’ve been to a handful of professional hockey games and one serious high-school game, Rachel, and I haven’t seen any serious on-ice fights at any of them, just some minor roughing. The crowds sometimes get a bit vocal, but the ushers are good about keeping fan participation under control, with chants & jeers being tolerated but actual fisticuffs being verboten. At the two Bruins games I’ve been to so far this year, we’ve sat in a “mixed” crowd with both home & visiting fans, and everyone got along. So as long as you can withstand the occasional spilled beer, you should emerge from a game unscathed.
And yes, the skating itself is lovely: I actually find it hypnotic to watch the graceful back & forth. And as I’m slowly learning some of the game’s nuances in terms of what the penalties really mean, what rules govern puck possession, etc, I’m realizing that what happens on the ice is much more complicated than it first appears. So it’s as much about dancing an intricate, split-second spontaneous choreography of moves as it is about sheer manhandling.
Although that’s part of the fun, too. 🙂
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Nov 17, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Last night at the local packie (that’s a package store to you non-New Englanders, as in where one buys beah), the guy behind the counter was telling me about going to a Bruins game the night before (the “bastid cousin” in Boston sports). He said the beer was really flowing and he woke up feeling like he’d actually played the game. I said, “So who won?” He thinks a minute. “I think we did.” “That good, huh?” “Yeah,” he says, “I think we had just enough fun.”
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Nov 18, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Yeah, that sounds about right. 🙂
Did you watch last night’s game against the Montreal Canadiens? In the third period alone, there were a half dozen fights. The Bruins lost, but the announcers kept remarking that “fans got their money’s worth” because of the entertainment value of the brawls.
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