I first came across the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse during the 2010 NBA Finals, when a representative stopped at my table at Green Briar in Brighton and asked if I wanted a free hat. I then received a green and blue Cannons hat, which I thought at the time was the lacrosse team whose 80s-style theme song I occasionally heard on Pandora.
Nope. That was the Boston Blazers, of the National Lacrosse League. America has two different professional lacrosse leagues, and for awhile each league had a Boston team.
Like the Boston Braves, the Blazers bit the dust. Oddly alliterative coincidence, that is.
Since getting my Cannons hat, I have never seen a single person sporting Cannons gear of any sort. So when I arrive at the ancient and venerated Harvard Stadium in Allston Saturday night for the Boston Cannons’ season opener, I’m on a mission: find out if the Cannons have any actual, you know, fans.
“I’d never been to a lacrosse game ever,” says John Sheehan, an architect from Malden who saw his first Cannons game in 2005. “I went [to a Cannons game], I saw it once and I loved it. I was hooked.”
As it turns out, almost a third of the stadium fills up with people. Some wear actual Cannons jerseys, while many more sport the colors of their high school’s lacrosse team. Northborough, Southborough, Dracut, Malden, Medford, Belmont, Holliston – if you’re school’s within 40 miles of Allston, I probably saw it represented Saturday.
Over 9,100 people show up for the Cannons’ game against the Rochester Rattlers. I don’t think any actual rattlesnakes live in Rochester, but whatever. I’ve been to Harvard football games at Harvard Stadium with fewer than 9,100 people.
I probably didn’t get the best introduction to lacrosse when I watched BU play Notre Dame back in March. Not a lot of fans, not as fast a game, not as good a time. But there’s plenty to like about MLL lacrosse:
1) The faceoffs. They’re like watching two wolves fight over a piece of meat, with the rest of the pack waiting to scrap.
The Cannons struggle to control the first couple of faceoffs, and the Rattlers rattle (haha) off two goals in under a minute. The crowd goes quiet, hoping for a better start for the defending champion Cannons.
The goals seem to wake up the Cannons, however, and by the midway point of the first quarter, they’ve come back and tied the game. Trying to out-due the Patriots’ muskets, a full-blown cannon goes off every time the Cannons score.
It has already gone off twice when attacker Ari Sussman gives the Cannons the lead for good:
2) The speed and physicality. These guys don’t screw around.
Because the MLL has a 60-second shot-clock that starts the moment possession changes, MLL players have to really book it down the nearly football-length field. That leads to hard slashes, fore-checks, dives, and all the other physical contact that makes sports awesome.
“This is hockey on grass,” says Kaitlyn Shidler, a senior early-childhood education and sociology major at Salem State who played lacrosse for them. Like hockey, lacrosse originated in Canada.
The Cannons put everything together on their fourth goal-scoring drive:
3) The shot-clock. No stalling in the MLL. Shoot the ball, then go get it and shoot again if you miss.
Boston uses Brian Farrell‘s second-chance goal to kick-start a 6-0 second quarter, basically putting the game away before half:
By the time the Rattlers score their third goal of the game – a power play goal by attacker Greg Rogowski – they’re already down 11-2. And Ari Sussman does his best Bobby Orr impersonation to get the lead back up to nine:
“Rochester’s a fake team,” Sheehan says.
Sussman finishes with four goals, tying teammate Jake Beebe for the game-high. Paul Rabil – the 2011 MVP – scores three and hands out five assists.
Paul Rabil has developed a cult following among Boston’s lacrosse-playing youth. Every time he subs in, a chorus of enthusiastic, prepubescent voices fills the stadium.
“Rabil, who’s the best player in the league, I see him being very, very unselfish,” says Russ Sorin, a lacrosse coach at Waltham High who coached with Cannons head coach Stephen Duffy for 18 years, adding: “You have to have a guy who’s going to get the ball, dodge, beat his man, draw a slide and move the ball to the right spot.”
4) The family-friendly yet booze-tolerant atmosphere. If you don’t want to spend the equivalent of a Harvard tuition on tickets to a Boston sports event, the Cannons are a great option.
The Harvard athletic complex has lots of Cannons-sponsored activities for the kids to participate in before the game. During every timeout, something – usually involving kids – happens on the field. Afterwards, the players happily sign autographs right outside the field.
“It’s a fun fan experience,” says Tom Joyce, a network administrator. “The crowd, the kids.”
“The cannon,” adds Sean, Tom’s 10-year-old son.
Having said that, this isn’t an alcohol-free event. Bud Light is one of the MLL’s biggest sponsors, and plenty of people drink plenty of beers in the stands. Sheehan and his friends openly mock the Rattlers all night from a section’s front row, brandishing a duct-tape version of the Steinfeld Cup and sporting jerseys that read “Ballbusters.”
Wellesley-native Mike Stone has almost two full rows of supporters drunkenly and enthusiastically calling his name.
“Mike Stone, no mercy!” one guy shouts.
By the time the fourth quarter hits, they turn their inebriated attentions elsewhere.
“Someone dump an ice bucket on Duffy,” another yells. “This game’s over!”
Those are the two most-coherent sentences anyone in that row utters all night.
5) The dance team. Because after last season, it takes guts to associate a Boston lacrosse team with any kind of dancing.
For those unfamiliar, the Blazers decided that for the halftime show of their 2011 season-opener, they’d have three women give Scorch, their mascot, a lap-dance.
For some reason, this didn’t go over well with the general public, and now the Blazers don’t exist. I have no idea why.
“I was in the concourse while it was going on,” says Richard Yerardi, a Waltham resident sporting a Blazers jersey. “I didn’t learn about it until I got on the NLL message boards. I was like, ‘What the hell? This can’t be happening.’ And then I saw the video and finally believed it and thought we were doomed.”
So props to the Cannons for accepting whatever negative associations having a dance team would bring. The Cannon cheerleaders’ moves don’t seem any more or less risque than anyone else’s (excluding the Blazers of course), and I doubt parents had to answer any difficult questions on the ride home because of them.
Lacrosse gets a bad rap because of things like the Blazers’ idiotic halftime show and the Duke Lacrosse scandal. Because no one knows any actual lacrosse players, everyone assumes all players are misogynists at best, would-be rapists at worst.
Meanwhile, the NFL employs a dog murder and an alleged rapist of its own, while adultery has been commonplace in the MLB for 50+ years. So why’s lacrosse so bad, again?
Twenty-somethings looking for a cheap game to watch and parents looking for an athletic event without the nastiness common to Fenway Park or Gillette Stadium should check out the Cannons. Really, the only thing I disliked about Saturday’s game was the Cannons’ mascot.
As a celebrated mascot-mocker, I have to say: this thing’s pretty silly.
Matt Goisman is going to write about a game each and every week from America’s #1 city for sports: Here. We’re calling it 52 Games, because that’s what we’re going to end up with. Last week Matt had a blast at Phoenix Landing watching Real Madrid-Barcelona. This week, he saw the Boston Cannons open their Major League Lacrosse season at Harvard Stadium. Next week: Manchester United vs Manchester City! Keep up with him here.
//
