A game day in every state: Let’s explore what puts ‘New England’ into the Patriots (2024)

It was a byproduct of clumsy planning that the old Boston Patriots were re-branded as the New EnglandPatriots. Members of the upstart 1960s American Football League, the Patriots of Boston were sad, sorry wandering gridiron minstrels in those days, bouncing around from Boston University to Fenway Park to Boston College to Harvard Stadium, always with rumors aswirl about plans for a permanent home. And then things changed forever when the team moved into a franchise-saving place called Schaefer Stadium, located 26 miles south of Boston in the town of Foxboro.

Since the Patriots were no longer in Boston, the team’s owner, Billy Sullivan, came up with a grand idea: The Bay State Patriots!

This posed an instant problem, beginning with the uncomfortable visual of an oversized “B.S.” logo appearing at midfield and on the company letterhead.

And just think of the headlines!

Cheers of ‘B.S! B.S! B.S!’ fill the air as Pats lose to Bills

Worst team in the NFL? That’s B.S.

Giants step into B.S. and emerge with ugly victory

Boy genius Upton Bell, who in February 1971 was hired as the team’s general manager — this just after the name change had been announced — remembers arriving in Boston for his introductory press conference and picking up a newspaper at Logan Airport.

“I was thinking, oh my God, the B.S. Patriots,” Bell said. “People are going to be making fun of us all over the country.

“After the press conference was over that day, I called Billy Sullivan and proposed to the board of directors, look, we’re moving from Boston down to Foxboro, which is in the middle of the gateway from Boston to Rhode Island. Why don’t we rename them the New England Patriots?”

NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle got involved. According to writers Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson, co-authors of “The Pats: An Illustrated History of the New England Patriots,” Rozelle flat-out ordered the team to drum up the new name.

Among the major North American sports leagues, then, only the Patriots can claim a six-state region as part of their name. In that spirit I thought it would be educational to visit each New England state for a Patriots game experience, with no B.S. going on, and hang out with people who not only root for the Patriots but look upon them as blood.

What did I learn after watching six Patriots games in six states? While it is an immutable truth that the Pats are a dominant football theme in all the New England states, the fandom takes different forms. Remember when former Pats coach Bill Parcells once proclaimed, quite famously, “The Border War is over,” this after settling in as the latest savior of the Jets? He was wrong. The Border War is forever, and it takes place in Connecticut. What I learned, though, is that the Border War is waged between Pats fans and Giants fans, with handfuls of Jets fans shunted off to the side, unnoticed.

In New Hampshire, I learned that “Live Free or Die,” is just another way of saying, “Watch the Patriots or go home,” at least in one particular sports bar where I ran up a tab.

I learned that Burlington, Vt., provides shelter and a welcoming embrace to fans of all teams. And yet upon reflection perhaps this was no surprise at all: Burlington, see, is a certified sanctuary city. In this town, even Jets Lives Matter.

Anyway, away we go …

Maine: Where only the local grump hates the Patriots

The scene: Gridiron Restaurant and Sports Pub in Lewiston. Sunday, Sept. 8, for Steelers-Patriots game, 8:15 p.m.

The co-owner and head chef of the Gridiron is Schan Martin, and when you ask him about the unique spelling of his first name he ladles out different variations of the same answer he’s been using for years, ranging from “My mom screwed it up, I guess,” to, “My mom was drunk when I was born.”

But if you think his first name is interesting, wait till we tell you about the first name of Schan’s 15-year-old son. The kid is called Brady, as in Tom Brady, as in, yep, Schan’s son is named after the quarterback of the New England Patriots. As to how this came to happen, we need to introduce the otherco-owner of the Gridiron — Kim Martin, Schan’s wife, mom to Brady Martin, and the biggest fan of Tom Brady this side of the Androscoggin River.

“I’m a little obsessed with Tom Brady,” says Kim. “When I started following the Patriots he came into the picture soon thereafter, and I’m madly in love with him. And it has nothing to do with how he looks. It’s just the fact that he’s so good at football and plays with his heart every minute of every day he’s out there. It really has nothing to do with his looks.”

Their other kids are named Emma, Krysta and Izzy. I was kind of hoping for Edelman Martin, Wilfork Martin and Gronk Martin, but alas …

Kim grew up down in York County in the town of Buxton. Film buffs will remember Buxton as the place where Morgan Freeman’s “Red” character goes searching for a buried tin box in “The Shawshank Redemption,” which was based on a novella by local legend Stephen King. Kim slowly made her way from Buxton to the twin cities of Lewiston and Auburn, or as they say around here, “L.A.” She worked for a while in Portland, where in 1998 she met Schan, who was working as kitchen manager at a restaurant on Congress Street. He soon opened his own pizza place in Portland and then moved to Auburn, his hometown, to take over Thatchers Restaurant. Schan and Kim were married in 2002, and then, four years later, they opened the Gridiron.

“We did it by maxing out on all our credit cards and getting into a bunch of debt,” Schan says. “Thankfully we’re out of debt now.”

The Gridiron has a sort of roadhouse feel to it, located as it is on a stretch of State Route 196 about three miles from downtown Lewiston in a multipurpose building that houses an eye care center, auto repair shop and other businesses. Step inside and the first thing that jumps out is how huge the place is. That, and the glittering array of flat screens.

I arrive about a half hour before the defending Super Bowl champion Patriots host the Pittsburgh Steelers in the season opener. Already most of the stools at the bar are taken, an open spot here and there, but decorum guides me to one of the tables further back. The folks sitting at the bar have the look of grizzled Gridiron regulars who sit at the same stools, order the same food, order the same beer, and I figure the few remaining spots will soon be taken by late arrivals from Lisbon Falls or Sabattus.

These people are The Varsity, I decide. The table crowd is younger, louder, more wide-eyed. The table next to me, in fact, has a group of four: two young men and two young women who had already been put to bed on that February night in 2002 when Adam Vinatieri’s 48-yard field goal lifted the Patriots to a 20-17 victory over the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.

Alex Biron is 22. He was born and raised in nearby Poland and studied building construction and business management at Central Maine Community College before choosing to become an emergency medical technician. He loves the work so much, he says, that he plans to do it for the rest of his life.

Alex also loves his sports. He was a pitcher/first baseman at Poland High School, and on the day of his final game he was approached by his father (I want to call him Lord Biron but his name is Don), who gave Alex a gold chain. Alex hasn’t taken it off since. He also played baseball at CMCC, where he was named an All-American by the United States Collegiate Athletic Association. As for football, “I was watching it with my dad when I was this big,” he says, extending and lowering his right hand to suggest the size of a small child.

Alex never misses a Pats game. If he’s not watching at home, he’s here at the Gridiron or at Gippers, a popular sports bar over in Auburn. Tonight he’s happy to introduce me to his gang: “This is Alec Collins, he’s my best friend, and he’s Alec with a c,” he says. “I’m Alex, with an x. Alec has a sister named Taylor Collins, and that’s my girlfriend’s name. But I don’t date his sister, I date a different Taylor Collins. This is Taylor, my girlfriend. Alec’s girlfriend is Kirsten Lupher. She’s from Auburn.”

It’s a fun, lively group. And they’re popular: “Alex, don’t forget to add that I’m the best waitress,” says Kate Crepeau as she stops by to check on the gang.

I am called over to the bar by Schan Martin, who is making his first appearance of the night. This is Busy Time for him. To compound matters, tonight Kim is at Gillette Stadium — a drive of about three hours and 170 miles. The Martins got hooked up with a pair of season tickets a few years ago, but it’s usually Kim who goes with one of the kids. On this night it’s Brady. Besides, it’s really hard for Schan to get away on game night: those orders of Haddock Fish-N-Chips, wildly popular at the Gridiron, don’t cook themselves.

Schan introduces me to some of The Varsity, beginning with Chad Hopkins, a big, red-headed fella decked out in a blue Patriots shirt (No. 12, Tom Brady) and a throwback Pat Patriot ballcap. He’s the owner of the Apple Valley Golf Course in Lewiston and a 1994 graduate of Oak Hill High School in Sabbatus, where, he says, “I played a little football — a little running back, a little backup quarterback, a little cornerback.”

As a little kid he became a Pats fan, and one of his earliest memories was New England’s 46-10 loss to the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XX.

“Everyone was saying how fortunate I was to be able to see the Patriots in the Super Bowl, but I was in my living room, I was sitting there, I had my chocolate milk and my fish sticks on the coffee table, and watching and assuming like everyone that the Patriots were going to win,” he says. “And then the Super Bowl Shuffle Bears came in and absolutely annihilated us.”

And yet the outcome changed nothing: He was in this for keeps.

“It was Drew Bledsoe who really took it to another level for me,” he says. “And then Brady came in and it was a whole other realm of football and the record speaks for itself.

“I never thought we would be in that situation where I’d feel arrogant going into each season saying, ‘Who we playing in the Super Bowl this year?’ But don’t ever forget that the good football began with Bledsoe.”

Chad introduces me to his girlfriend, Kait Gallagher, 35, decked out in a white Pats shirt, also a Tom Brady No. 12.

They met at a bowling alley, Sparetime Recreation. He was out bowling with his buddies. She was a waitress.

“I don’t think we ever talked about being Pats fans,” she says. “I just remember football season started and it was, OK, we’re turning on the Patriots. We both just knew. And then it was basketball season and, OK, we’re turning on the Celtics.”

Excuse me, but I notice that two of the empty seats on Varsity Row have been taken by guys whose attire announces they most decidedly are notPatriots fans. One of them is wearing an old Los Angeles Rams shirt showing the No. 85 of Jack Youngblood, the Hall of Fame defensive end who played his entire 14-year career with the Rams. The other guy is sporting a Washington Redskins shirt, No. 72, retired defensive end Dexter Manley.

The Rams guy is John Thibault, 58, retired from the paint shop at Bath Iron Works. When he was a kid growing up in Lewiston, begins his lecture, the Pats weren’t on TV very much and he thus fell into a habit of watching whatever games were spit out by the networks. And the Rams, he says, were often the 4 o’clock west coast game.

“They’ve always had an interesting team,” he says. “I grew up watching Jack Youngblood, which is why I always wear his jersey. And I’ve stayed with them all these years. When they were the St. Louis Rams and played the Patriots in the Super Bowl I watched the game over at Gippers and I got yelled at.”

How about the Pats’ 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII?

“Yeah, yeah, everyone was squawking at me again,” he says. “I felt like I was all by myself. I was on an island.”

And it’s not just that he loves the Rams. It’s that he hates the Patriots.

“Pretty much because of their fan base,” he says. “They had no fans until they won the Super Bowl and then they all came out of the woodwork. And now it’s just gone to levels that are unbelievable.

“I generally don’t hang out with Patriots fans,” John harrumphs. “I’ll hang out with people who are Cowboys fans, Redskins fans, you name it. And when I have football Sundays at my house, I hardly ever have the Patriots on.”

His cohort, the Manley jersey-wearin’ guy, is Redskins fan Bill McIntosh, 48, a kitchen worker from Auburn.

“My family was all Pats fans, but my dad was one of those guys who could watch any game and be happy,” he says. “And he was watching a Redskins game once and I think I just liked the logo, to be honest. I was 10 years old maybe.”

As Bill continues to talk, qualifying that unlike John Thibault he doesn’t actually hatethe Patriots, there comes a loud cry from the tables behind Varsity Row.

“LOOK AT THIS!!!”

It’s Alex Biron.

The flat screens reveal what he’s screaming about: With 5:35 remaining in the first quarter, the game scoreless, Brady has thrown a lateral behind the line of scrimmage to Edelman, a former college quarterback, who then throws across the field to James White, who scampers for a gain of 32.

It sounded like Alex had sniffed out the play before Brady had even looked to Edelman.

Yes, that’s exactly what happened, his table gang confirms. You have to know Alex, they say.

But how?

“I saw Edelman in motion, and when he dropped back and the ball went back you could see the second option because they sent Josh Gordon deep,” he says. “And that was where he looked first and then he went back across the field to the other side to White. I always think it’s kind of cool to consider what’s going on behind the scenes, what they’re thinking, what they’re doing.”

One play later, Brady connects with Gordon for a 20-yard touchdown. The Patriots have their first lead of the young season. Everyone is cheering except crusty John Thibault, but in a matter of minutes Lewiston’s biggest Jack Youngblood fan becomes the center of attention. Schan Martin, who had gone back to the kitchen, now returns with a genuine autographed New England Patriots helmet that he had removed from its place of honor along the side wall. He’s now holding the helmet behind John’s head. John expresses mock indignation at first, but everyone is laughing and so he laughs as well.

Later that night, heading south on the Maine Turnpike following the Pats’ 33-3 victory, I was thinking that every sports bar needs a John Thibault, whose assignment is to hate the local team. Guys like this give the joint character, and, anyway, Thibault surely loves the attention he gets being the grumpy Pats hater in the house.

And one other takeaway from my visit to the Gridiron: Alex Biron needs to be brought down to Boston for a hit on one of the weekly football shows. He’s genuinely good. Bill Belichick would love this guy.

Vermont: Where the Patriots reign, but the welcome mat is given to others

The scene: Ruben James in Burlington. Sunday, Sept. 22, for Jets-Patriots game, 1 p.m.

Ruben James — to the locals it’s just RJ’s — is two doors down from what used to be the Flynn Theater but today is home of the respected Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. It’s part of a commercial block from the 19th century that has weathered many a cruel northern New England winter, but the businesses are very much of the 21st century: Kountry Kart Deli, Ahli Baba’s Kabob Shop, Manhattan Pizza & Pub … and RJ’s, which opened in 1985 as a bar/restaurant but got the sports-bar makeover when diehard Yankees/Redskins fan Jay Atkins bought it in 1994.

As I step into RJ’s, I move past the front entrance and see what looks like a driver’s license on the floor.I pick it up, examine it. It’s a driver’s license all right, from Maine, issued to a Matt McAlary of Scarborough. Age: 23.

“Anyone named Matt McAlary here?” I sort of shout out, and a voice shouts back, “I’m Matt!”

And that’s how I wind up meeting Courtney Thayer, who has lived lots of places in her 22 years but directs her football love to just one place: Foxboro.

But, yes, this all starts with Matt, whose driver’s license I dutifully return. He had removed it when he entered RJ’s in anticipation of being carded, and then he dropped it on the floor. He’s seated at a table as part of group of four — three dudes, one woman — and as a jumping-off point I ask, “So, who’s the biggest Patriots fan here?”

Matt and the two other dudes, Zach Buchanan and Zach Masi, quickly extend their arms and point to Courtney,the grand poobah of Patriot fandom at this table.

The others? Matt’s a sort-of Pats fan. A Maine kid, he knows a guy, a lobsterman, who — so the story goes — does a ton of tailgating at Gillette and often presents lobsters to the staties and other cops on duty. Zach Masi, 22, from Wolcott, Vt., is also a sort-of Pats fan.

As for Zach Buchanan, 23, he’s from Green Creek, N.J., which is south Jersey, which makes him an Eagles fan. A big-time Eagles fan. And he’s wearing the Carson Wentz jersey to prove it.

“Nobody else really watches football besides Zach, so I guess that’s why they all pointed at me,” says Courtney, referring to Zach the Eagles fan from South Jersey and not Zach the sort-of Pats fan from Wolcott. “I grew up in a bunch of different places but my dad was always a Pats fans so I got that from him.”

One of her favorite memories is from that time she tagged along with her dad to watch a Pats-Ravens game at a nearby sports bar, this at a time when the family was living in Ohio. She was 15. You know, family bonding and all that.

“It was a game-winning play for the Pats in the last few minutes, and my dad got so excited he flipped the table and drinks went everywhere. It was awesome.”

It sounds like the Pats’ 23-20 victory over the Ravens in the AFC title game on Jan. 22, 2012, at Gillette Stadium, the game where Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal attempt with 15 seconds remaining.

“Yes, that’s the game,” she confirms.

Did dad really turn over a table? A few days later we called Courtney’s dad, Chris Thayer. His take on that story?

“Well, close enough,” he said.

For Courtney and her gang this trip to RJ’s is about football, sure, but it’s also about food, about beer, about camaraderie. And in this case it’s about good planning: Courtney, Matt and the two Zachs have scored a prized table that offers a full-on view of the largest flat screen in the place, located directly behind the bar. And while several other flat screens at RJ’s are showing Pats-Jets, other screens are showing different games. The Eagles-Lions game, for instance, is being shown on a screen off to the left, which means Zach Buchanan can follow his team while hanging out with his buddies.

Upon closer examination, it appears that all of the 1 o’clock games are getting a viewing, even if some of them have been relegated to a small screen off in a corner. I step into the back room and see two women, one wearing a bright orange Miami Dolphins T-shirt that’s frankly too bright — geez, we’re talking about the Dolphins so maybe tone it down a little? — the other wearing a Green Bay Packers T-shirt the color of which is a respectable and calming hunter green. Thank you.

They are together, these women, and yet … not together. They share a table, they share drinks and, as we soon learn, they share a life together. What they do not share is football fandom. You can see it in their T-shirts but you can also see it in their eyes. This is because our Dolphins fan, P.J. Gibson, is glancing off to her right, at the smallish flat screen that’s showing the Miami-Dallas game, while our Packers fan, Katie Valade, leans to the left because she’s focused on the flat screen that’s showing Green Bay-Denver.

“We were trying to find a place that has both of our games,” says P.J., 38, a native of Fort Lauderdale whose career in federal law enforcement brought her to Vermont. “We called here and they said we’d be able to watch both games.”

These are serious football fans, which means this isn’t just a day out of the house. But while P.J. grew up a Dolphins fan, Katie, 39, is a native of East Thompson, Conn., whose love for the Packers came later in life.

Have you ever heard of anyone who fell in love with a team because they dated someone who was a fan of said team and then maintained that rooting interest after the relationship ended? That’s what happened with Katie.

“Yeah, I dated somebody who was a big Packers fan for about six years and I kind of fell in love with the team,” she says. “We stayed friends after we broke up. And I’m still a Packers fan.”

P.J. and Katie met in Provincetown during the 2009 Memorial Day weekend. “We were at the Boatslip, she was standing in front of me, and we struck up a conversation,” says P.J. “And the rest is history. I should add that back then it was Myspace and I remember seeing that she had a lot of stuff about the Packers. But the Packers weren’t necessarily a problem. The Yankees were the problem. She was a Yankees fan.”

Not too big of a problem, apparently. They were married in 2013. Challenges? Sure. What couple doesn’t have challenges? Such as when the Packers play the Dolphins.

“We’ve won once and you won one,” P.J. says to Katie. “Maybe you won twice. I know I won once and you were really upset about it.”

“Yeah, I was,” Katie says. “Nobody wants to lose to the Dolphins.”

Fact check: The Packers and Dolphins have played three times since that magical Memorial Day weekend in 2009 when P.J. and Katie met. And P.J. was right the second time: Green Bay has won two of the three games in the P.J.-Katie Era.

That these women are able to get out of the house and find a place where they can each get their Sunday afternoon football fix is because of some deft weekly planning by the aforementioned Jay Atkins, the proud owner of the RJ’s.

“We try to get every game on at least one TV, and whatever extra screens there are will show the Patriots,” he says. “The Patriots are always on the big screen.”

Experience has taught Jay that his clientele is about 75 percent Pats fans, followed by an even mix of Giants and Eagles fans, a smattering of sad Jets fans, “and then a few people for every other team.”

The trick is to make them all happy.

“In the middle of the week we look at what the schedule is and prioritize what games are going to be on the better TVs,” he says. “We look at when the Patriots are playing and then we work our way down from there. By Thursday we know which games are going to be on which screens. First thing Sunday we have these little helmet name tags we put on the screens so people know where to sit when they come in.”

Jay was born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., but the family moved around a lot because of his dad’s job with IBM. When he was five they moved to Manassas, Va., “and then we made the move to Burlington when I was in sixth grade.”

Jay’s unique sports fandom is rooted in his background. It was as a small child in Poughkeepsie he learned to love the Yankees (still does) and it was while living in Manassas he learned to love the Redskins (still does.) Given the weather-beaten Yankees cap that’s always on his dome — and by weather-beaten we’re talking about something that might have been lifted from Yogi Berra’s locker — it’s safe to assume pinstripe passion trumps Redskin passion.

“It’s not as old as it looks,” he says. “I’ve had this one two or three years. But I wear it just about every day and the kitchen is rough on it. My girlfriend is nice enough to buy me a new one every couple of years.”

It’s perhaps because Jay is a Yankees fan/Redskins fan living in northern New England that he has such great respect for people like P.J. and Katie, who dig football teams not named the Patriots. Jay has the face of a man who has worked hard all his life — he’s also the cook — and it’s important to him that fans of all stripes have a game to watch when they step inside RJ’s.

“I just think it’s the right thing to do,” he says.

As we will learn later on, much later on, not everybody shares Jay’s opinion.

Connecticut: Where the border creeps up on Patriots Nation

The scene: Jerry’s Pizza & Bar in Middletown. Thursday, Oct. 10, for Giants-Patriots game, 8:20 p.m.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Battle Cry of Freedom,” author James McPherson describes Civil War-era Baltimore as “a city rife with secession sympathizers,” this because Maryland had remained loyal to the Union despite being located south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Patriots fans living in 21st-century Connecticut can relate. Though part of New England — thus making it one of the six states supposedly loyal to the Patriots — Connecticut is a place rife with Giants and Yankees sympathizers.

And perhaps nowhere is this more prevalent than right here at Jerry’s Pizza & Bar, a longtime meeting place for hard-core sports fans in Middletown, a city of some 47,000 souls in central Connecticut. Going to the game? Which game? From the front door of Jerry’s it’s 114 miles to Gillette Stadium and 110 miles to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

Chad Slossberg, a regular at Jerry’s, breaks down the demographics as follows: “It really is a 50/50 split around here. It’s Giants/Yankees fans on one side of the room and Patriots/Red Sox fans on the other side of the room. You have some oddballs who are Jets fans, just as you have your oddballs who are Mets fans. But they’re just that — oddballs. They’re not part of this story.”

While Chad’s role as voluntary editor for “this story” is very much appreciated, it’s his fandom that’s the attraction. More than merely being a Giants fan he’s a pure Blue Blood, and not in that fancy-schmancy aristocratic way.

“I was raised in a Giants family,” says Chad, 47, a big, friendly, outgoing guy. “My father was a Giants fan. That first year they won the Super Bowl, the one against Denver, he was in Hartford Hospital. He had just had a double bypass. He watched the game from his bed.”

On this night as he arrives at Jerry’s Pizza & Bar — mostly to root for the Giants but also for the special added attraction of rooting againstthe Patriots — his observation about the place being a 50/50 split of fans of the two teams is on full display. There are Giants streamers and logos on the wall to the right as you walk in, and, further down, a similar arrangement paying homage to the Patriots.

“Around here you need to respect the fans of both,” says Carmela Schiano, 42, who owns Jerry’s and runs it with her three sons.

“In the beginning, we would just turn the TVs on. But people were always, ‘I want this game on this TV,’ and “I want that game on that TV,’ and so on. We have one customer who comes in, runs a tab, stays for the games, and it’s gotten to where sometimes he takes care of the TVs. And he’s a Giants fan, so the Patriots guys fight with him.”

Jerry’s Pizza has its roots in New York. Jerry Schiano, Carmela’s father, came over from Naples and settled in New York City, where his entree to the bar/restaurant business was as a dishwasher at Villa Pizza on Broadway, next to the Ed Sullivan Theater. Dishwashing led to waiting on customers — he says he once served slices to The Three Stooges — and soon he became a manager. By 1968 he saved up enough scratch to relocate his family to Middletown and open Jerry’s Pizza.

Jerry is now 86 and retired. But his reputation lives on: He made headlines in 2005 when he thwarted a pair of robbers by clocking one of them upside the head with a steel pizza pan. The robbers later crashed their getaway car and were apprehended.

Years later, after Jerry’s was moved from Washington Plaza to its current location on South Main Street, patrons from the old Mirage nightclub would stagger in after last call in pursuit of a late-night food fix.

“They’d come in here and put their feet up on the table and my father would throw them right out,” says Carmela. “I’ve had people come in here and say, ‘Jerry threw me out when I was 18,’ and I say, ‘Well, you’re still here today so it’s all good.’”

But here’s the thing about Jerry: Despite his New York roots and hardscrabble beginnings and despite spending most of his adult life working in an environment where people drink a lot of beer and watch a lot of football and baseball, he was never much of a sports fan — Giants, Patriots or otherwise. He was, and remains, a fan of good pizza.

This helps explain why Carmela tilted toward the Patriots while growing up. She later married local guy Matt Lockwood and they opened a place next door to Jerry’s — called Matty’s Next Door, naturally — but they’re divorced now and Jerry’s and Matty’s have been merged. Carmela runs the operation with her three sons, Antonio, Terry and Matteo Lockwood.

The three sons are Pats fans. Terry, 18, is a nutso Pats fan. It so happens he’s working at Jerry’s the night of the Pats-Giants game, and this leads to a comical scene when he walks out of the kitchen and sees … Chad Slossberg. Now Chad’s been coming here for so long that Carmela says “he was eating Jerry’s pizza when he was in the womb,” and he grew up on the same street as his buddy Matt Lockwood and he loves the three kids as though they’re his own. Yet he knows his favorite team is always going to get mocked by management whenever he walks into his favorite sports bar.

And so it is on this night. Poor Chad. He’s barely settled in and already Carmela’s middle son, Terry, 18, a 6-foot-2, 255-pound former football player at Durham High School, is getting in his grill.

“You have no receivers, you have no tight end, you have no running back,” hollers Terry. “You have nothing. NOTHING!”

Terry knows of what he speaks. The Giants are without star running back Saquon Barkley (ankle), and receiver Sterling Shepard and running back Wayne Gallman are out with concussions. Tight end Evan Engram is out with a knee injury.

“I’m a really mouthy guy with the Patriots,” Terry explains, unnecessarily. “We’ve been going back and forth on the Patriots and Giants for as long as I can remember. When we lost the two Super Bowls to them I never really had anything to say. But now? I have so much to say, and I’m gonna say it.”

Terry and his brothers are a rarity in this neck of the football woods in that their fandom could have gone either way, Pats or Giants. Grandpa Jerry wasn’t much of a sports fan and their father was more of a 49ers fan, even though “he’s kind of turned into a Patriots fan by association with us,” Terry says.

So, why the Pats?

“Tom Brady,” he says. “That’s it, right there.”

Such is Terry’s Patriots fandom that when New England won Super Bowl XLIX on Malcolm Butler’s interception he ripped off his Tom Brady shirt and ran around the bar, then ran outside and took a lap around the building. When the Pats famously rallied from a 28-3 deficit and beat the Falcons in Super Bowl LI he again took his shirt off and ran around the bar and then went outside and did the lap around the building. And when the Pats beat the Rams in Super Bowl LIII?

“I actually didn’t take my shirt off,” he says. “I knew we were going to win that one. I was calm the whole night so I just think it would have been weird.”

Terry’s got his No. 12 Tom Brady shirt on, of course, and Chad is decked out in his No. 72 Giants shirt for … journeyman defensive tackle Olsen Pierre, who has since been released?

“It’s 72, for 1972, the year I was born,” Chad says. “My son Devin gave it to me for my birthday. You wouldn’t believe all the Giants stuff they’ve given me over the years. I have Giants paper plates they got me for Christmas. They come with napkins and everything, with Giants logos. I have a Giants toy tractor-trailer truck they got me that’s still in the box. I won’t open it. It’ll stay in the box forever, or for as long I’m alive anyway.”

Chad even has a Giants-themed bus he uses for tailgating purposes. What he doesn’t have is anyone from management at Jerry’s offering him a kind word about the Giants when he walks into his favorite sports bar.

But if my informal count is correct, there are more Giants fans than Pats fans here on this night. One of them is a former Pats fan turned Giants fan. Let’s have that guy, Ryan McLean, 31, explain himself: “When I was in high school I had a girlfriend who was a Patriots fan and you know how that can be. Love can make you do some crazy things. I even had a Brady jersey and I have no idea how it could get to that. I regret doing it. I was in high school and I didn’t know any better. My friends don’t know I was a Patriots fan and I’d rather keep that hush.”

Got it.

History being our guidepost, it’s entirely possible Ryan would dig out his old Brady shirt if an attractive female Patriots fan wandered into Jerry’s and gave him the nice smile. For now, though, he’s a Giants fan. While it’s true that at its core Jerry’s is a New England sports bar owned by New Englanders loyal to the Patriots … watch out for the Giants fans.

The place is rife with them.

Massachusetts: Where ‘everyone’s into the Pats’

The scene: Shortstop Bar & Grill in Westfield. Monday, Oct. 21 for Patriots-Jets, 8:15 p.m.

We could have left Massachusetts out of the story, right? The Patriots were conceived in Massachusetts, hatched in Massachusetts and grew up in Massachusetts. And their daddy, Billy Sullivan, was born in Lowell, attended Boston College and spoke with a nasally Boston twang. What you don’t need, then, is for me to introduce you to Bay State joints that dote on the Pats. Simply step outside your door, close your eyes and walk in any direction. You’ll bump into one in two minutes flat.

I decided, then, to make this one personal.

I decided to go to Westfield.

My first job after graduating from UMass in 1978 was in Westfield, with the Westfield Evening News, and I was told on Day One that I’d be writing often about a kid named Danny Trant, the star of the local high school basketball team. My introduction to Dan was not on the hardwood but during the fall soccer season, and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about; he was just a scrawny kid, skin and bones as they say, maybe 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-2. But he was quick and graceful, effortlessly moving up and down the pitch, and, as I would soon learn, he had a sweet, small-town co*ckiness that seemed from another time.

Basketball season started, and it was as though the soccer had been a vehicle for Dan to keep in shape. For while he loved soccer it was in hoops that he showed his true magic, not just with the shots but with the moves, the passes, the confidence, the look that made opposing players think he knew something they did not. The only thing Dan lacked was size, which is why he prepped at Suffield Academy for a year and then happily accepted an offer to move on to Division III Clark University. And he was a star there, too, leading his team to back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances. No, he didn’t make it into an NBA game with the Celtics, but he was nonetheless part of a historic 1984 draft that was top-heavy with Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. In the documentary “The84Draft,” produced by NBA TV, there’s an awesome soundbite from ESPN analyst and former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy, who played against Trant during his Nazareth College days: “He had game. And the most important thing was, he had confidence. He had that swag before I even knew what the word was.”

I never saw Dan Trant again after Westfield. He later played professional basketball in Europe and then settled on Long Island; he was at his job as a bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center on that September 11th morning in 2001 when America was attacked. He left a wife and three kids.

And so I find myself thinking about Dan Trant while driving to the Shortstop Bar & Grill from Boston, which gets me to thinking about Todd Marcyoniak, who had been Dan’s soccer teammate, backcourt mate, and, more importantly, one of his best friends. I had spent time with Todd during a memorial event at Westfield High School a few months after the terrorist attacks, and now, more than 18 years later, as I’m traveling west on the Mass Pike, I’m thinking: why not invite him out to the Shortstop Bar & Grill?

I arrive about a half hour before kickoff. It’s a little outside downtown Westfield on Route 20, which is the road you take if you’re headed to the annual Eastern States Exposition — the Big E — in West Springfield. The place already is quite busy, trays of beer and pizza and wings heading in every direction, the flat screens honking the pregame show, just about everyone decked out in Pats caps and shirts. But not a single person is decked out in Jets anything, even though we’re just a three-hour drive to Met Life Stadium.

The first people I notice are a man and woman who are dressed in such a way as to suggest that watching a football game is a formal affair, like a high school prom or the annual Howell cotillion from “Gilligan’s Island.”

Remember that night in Lewiston? Mastermind Pats fan Alex Biron was wearing an old Patagonia ballcap and an American Eagle pullover. And here’s this man in the crisp black suit and this woman in an expensive-looking black and white dress.

“We don’t normally dress like this,” explains Eileen Rockwal, 50, who works in human resources. “We’re coming home from a funeral.”

Lucille Swan, Eileen’s mother, died on Oct. 9. She was 89. The funeral had been held earlier in the day at Sacred Heart Church in Newton, and Eileen and her husband Mike were returning home to Westfield when they decided to stop at the Shortstop.

Part of the reason they’re here is because they enjoy watching the Patriots. But there’s more than fandom involved.

“Well, we know the owners, and our son Kevin played baseball with their son at St. Mary’s High,” says Mike, 51, who works in finance. “Everyone has a place they go to unwind when they’ve had a long day, and this is our place. And we had a long day. So we came here to get something to eat and relax.”

Not far from Mike and Eileen we find consummate Boston sports fan Brian Towle. The name may not be familiar, but Brian had a few ticks of fame on the night of April 14, 2017, when he wound up on TV while attending a Red Sox-Rays game at Fenway Park. That he was wearing a Bruins sweater, a facsimile red leather Patriots helmet while determinedly bolting down a Fenway sausage is probably what caught the attention of NESN’s cameras.

“How about thatlook, huh?” said Sox analyst Jerry Remy. “He’s ready for the playoffs, he’s ready for football season, he’s at a baseball game. He’s got everything going.”

He sure does. He has three sons, twins Brandon and Zachary, 22, and 19-year-old Nathan. On this night he’s with Brandon, who was diagnosed with a stuttering disorder when he was just a year old. He later attended a stuttering camp in Michigan and now is busily working on his dream of bringing a similar camp to the Berkshires. It’s scheduled to open next May.

“I’m proud of him,” says Brian, 52. “For a kid who used to be afraid to speak and now he wants to have a platform to help other kids that stutter and gain more acceptance … yes, very proud.”

“Camp Words Unspoken,” says Brandon, announcing the name of his dream. “It’s going to be for kids all over New England.”

New England …

“Sports has helped him with his stuttering his whole life,” says Brian, beaming. “He can announce all the Patriots players, where they’re from, what position they play, and do it fluently. Sports plays a huge role for him.”

Brian is asked why he’s not wearing his facsimile red leather Patriots helmet.

“I’m a little crazy when it comes to sports,” he says. “But I generally only wear it when I’m at games, like at Fenway. And I wear it when I’m tailgating at Gillette. I’m known for it. When you see me wearing that helmet you know it’s a party.”

Now Todd Marcyoniak arrives, and my own Patriots party, Westfield edition, takes a different turn. We are soon joined by Jim Jachym, the retired longtime baseball coach at Westfield High. Jim played basketball for Dee Rowe at UConn and pitched on the baseball team, and his nasty curve earned him a season as a Houston Astros minor-leaguer. He then returned home to Westfield.

The three of us talk some Patriots, because that’s the assignment, but we talk a lot of Danny Trant because that’s the mood. Todd goes on and on about his old backcourt buddy, getting particularly animated as he tells the story about how Danny uncharacteristically missed the bus to Pittsfield and when he finally showed up Bombers coach Tom Daley benched him for a quarter. Danny was pissed. So pissed that in just three quarters on the floor he set a school scoring record.

“I think it was 47 points, maybe 49,” says Todd. “When all the old guys get together, we’re talking baseball, football, whatever, and when we talk basketball Danny’s name always comes up. He wasn’t just a good player, he lookedgood. He looked good turning the ball over.”

Later, a call was placed to Tom Daley, the retired basketball coach at Westfield High.

“It was 47 points,” he said. “With two minutes left in the first quarter I said to him, ‘Are you ready to go in?’ and he said, ‘I was ready six minutes ago.’ He was not happy with me.”

Whereas Danny Trant moved on to Suffield Academy and Clark before getting his shot with the Celtics, Todd took hisskills to American International College in Springfield, where he played soccer (two-time captain) and a couple of years of baseball. He then returned to Westfield, got married, raised a family, and forged a career in the aerospace industry. He’s 58 but still looks like he can put the ball in the net, or at least dish it off to Danny.

Todd’s always been a Pats fan, but, he says, “Not like I am now. And that’s true of everyone, I guess.Years ago, if the guys were watching a Pats game the women would say, oh, we’re going shopping. Now it’s entire families, men, women, kids. That’s the big change. Everyone’s into the Pats.”

To get things back on track I ask if Danny Trant was a Pats fan.

“I can tell you we talked a lot of soccer and we watched a lot of soccer,” he says. “We used to watch a show called ‘Soccer Made in Germany.’ It was a TV show that ran on WGBY, the Springfield PBS station. It was on Saturday nights at 11 o’clock, I think, and we’d go to his house or mine and watch.

“And then we’d see each other at school on Monday and talk about Bundesliga, the German soccer league, for days. That’s the football we talked about.”

Rhode Island: Where the Patriots are like family

The scene: Laura’s Bar and Grill in Smithfield. Sunday, Nov. 3 for Patriots-Ravens, 8:20 p.m.

Jay and Laura Dunlea, husband-and-wife Rhody natives, started off with Laura’s dream come true. The native of Smithfield — where the Patriots held training camp at Bryant College (now Bryant University) from 1976-2002 — was only 14 when she punched in as a bus girl at what was then known as Scramblers, continued on as a waitress while attending Salve Regina University (major: business management) and was still working there when the place was renamed the Pleasant View Diner. She and Jay eventually bought it in 2008, and now it’s known as Laura’s Pleasant View Diner.

There was talk they might expand the diner, but instead, thinking bigger than big, they kept the diner and in January 2018 opened a sports bar on the other side of Stillwater Reservoir near the Exit 15B exit off I-295. So now they own Laura’s Pleasant View Diner and Laura’s Bar and Grill, and we can only hope business will be a-boomin’ to the degree that Jay eventually gets a place named after him.

Laura’s Bar and Grill is clean and upbeat on the inside, with a clean, upbeat slogan on the outside: “Eat. Drink. Be Family.” And the family atmosphere is bouncing off the walls on this night, the early arrivals including booths filled with lots of couples and happy, boisterous bro-ey types, heavy on the Bryant University hoodies. Jay and Laura are not on duty, so the place is being capably run by Shaelyn Deighan, a bartender/manager at Laura’s who has been on the payroll since Opening Day.

Shaelyn, 26, is a cheerful, fast-paced, outgoing woman, and she provides careful, over-the-top consideration to all of my questions, such as when I ask how many of the customers on hand she actually knows. I wasn’t really looking for an exact number, but away she goes: “Hold on,” she says, turning around and scanning the room, and then scanning it again, and then looking toward the entrance to see if anyone is waiting for a table at the reception area.

“I’d say I know 70 percent of the people here,” she says. “We get a good local crowd, lots of regulars who come here for all the games. We also get business travelers from the two hotels and they all seem to blend in.”

I ask Shaelyn to point out some of the true Pats fans in the house, and soon my little table off to the side is being visited by Alex Medeiros, 23, and Jacob Hammen, 27, who work as bartenders at Terrazza, a Mediterranean restaurant about a mile down Douglas Pike. Alex’s credentials are boilerplate: He’s from East Providence, been a Patriots fan all his life, etc. But what makes Jacob stand out isn’t just that he was born and raised in France but that his reason for moving to the United States in the first place was that, like the late Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting,” he came to see about a girl.

The relationship didn’t work out. Jacob decided to stay anyway. He does, after all, have American roots: His father, who still lives in Paris, was born in the states. But Jacob likes working in Rhode Island, likes working at Terrazza, likes the whole American sports thing.

Alex and Jacob return to their table. Shaelyn returns and points out a lanky guy near the front and waves him over. The lanky guy is Jared Giorgio, a 21-year-old Bryant senior majoring in project management and sales. I ask what distinguishes him from other Pats fans and he rattles more of the usual stuff — “I have memories from just before my fourth birthday and watching them beat the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl” — and then he adds, almost matter-of-factly, as though everyone has one, “I have a custom-made Patriots poncho from Mexico.”

A custom-made what from where?

“A poncho, from Mexico,” he says. “I got it on a family vacation around 10 years ago, when I was 10 or 11. There was a woman on the street making them. I noticed she had done some with sports team logos and I asked her to do one for the New England Patriots. She said it would take a few hours, so me and my family went to dinner and then we came back to get it. It was really big on me. It’s still big on me. It’s huge.”

Jared doesn’t have his Patriots poncho custom-made in Mexico with him on this night. But he has some photos. He returns to his table, where he’s been watching the game with a buddy, to get his phone.

Shaelyn, who had hustled off to do manager things, is back. I tell her I’m curious about the Laura’s Bar and Grill slogan — Eat. Drink. Be Family. — and where it came from.

“I’ll need to make a call,” she says. “I’ll be back.”

A text arrives from Jared, who is sitting no more than 30 feet away. As promised, it’s a photo of his beloved Patriots poncho custom-made in Mexico. It’s a view from behind. It doesn’t look like a Patriots poncho custom-made in Mexico. It looks like a French flag.

I wander over to Jared’s table. He introduces me to his buddy, Matt Ryan (“Not thatMatt Ryan,” he confirms), also a senior at Bryant.

“Jared,” I say, “your Patriots poncho custom-made in Mexico looks like a French flag.”

“It is nota French flag,” he says, the tone suggesting he’s heard this before.

Matt Ryan — not thatMatt Ryan — chirps in.

“It might actually be a French flag,” he says.

“It’s not a French flag,” Jared says again. “A French flag doesn’t have a Patriots logo on it. You just can’t see the logo because the photo was taken from behind. It’s a poncho, and it’s a lucky poncho.”

Lucky poncho?

“The Patriots always seem to win when I’m wearing it,” he says. “They’ve lost games when I’m not wearing it. That’s a fact. And the Super Bowl when they beat the Atlanta Falcons? The 28-3 and all that? I wasn’t wearing it early in the game, and then I swear I put it on at halftime and you know what happened.”

The Pats staged one of the biggest comebacks in sports history and emerged with a 34-28 overtime victory is what happened.

“That’s right,” he says.

Lucky poncho.

I am summoned by Shaelyn. She has made inquires about the logo — “Eat. Drink. Be Family.” She opens her notebook and carefully rips away a page on which she has written, in perfectly-executed block lettering, “Came up w/ eat, drink and be family because they started off with the diner and it is a very cozy family atmosphere and they wanted to bring that here. They are Patriots season ticket holders and it all started with a scratch ticket.”

Scratch ticket? I jot down a reminder to call Jay and Laura to ask about the scratch ticket.

Laura’s Bar and Grill becomes a quieter place as the evening drones on. The Patriots trail 10-0 after the first quarter, close to within 17-13 at halftime, and then things fall apart after the Ravens’ Marlon Humphrey scoops up a Julian Edelman fumble and returns it 70 yards for a touchdown.

Final score: Baltimore 37, New England 20, the Patriots’ first loss of the season. So much for that best-evahdefense everyone’s been talking about.

On the way out, it occurs to me that Jared Giorgio hadn’t been wearing his lucky Patriots poncho custom-made in Mexico.

“I came here from work,” says Jared, a waiter at Tavern in the Square over in Cranston. “I didn’t have a chance to stop by and get it.”

One wonders how that excuse would fly at a day-after Bill Belichick film session.

My own day-after is to reach out to Jay and Laura Dunlea and ask about the cool logo (“Eat. Drink. Be Family.”) and the scratch ticket.

“There’s a saying, ‘Live, love, laugh,’” says Laura over the phone. “I was looking for something like that, something that was catchy but also speaks to family, which is what we’re all about. And that’s what a sports bar should be about, right?”

The hope was that Shaelyn’s intel about the scratch ticket would lead to a story about how a lucky purchase at a convenient store had bankrolled the entire operation. That’s not the case, but the scratch ticket does speak to Jay and Laura’s Patriots fandom. Laura had been scooping up discarded scratch tickets at the end of each day and entering the numbers in the Rhode Island Lottery’s “Second Chance” drawings, and they won a pair of Patriots season tickets. They liked the Gillette Stadium experience so much that they re-enlisted by getting in on a pair of season tickets being given up by a friend. They also have season tickets to the Celtics and the Providence College men’s basketball team.

“That’s really what we love to do, go to games,” says Jay. “So when you open a sports bar and you’re putting up the TV’s and all the sports murals, the Pats, the Celtics, all that, and you have a great place to watch a game, it’s all a labor of love.”

Laura’s Pleasant View Diner. Laura’s Bar and Grill. Are we ever going to get a Jay’s … anything?

“Laura’s the hometown girl,” Jay says. “She’s lived in Smithfield her whole life. Everyone knows her. I’m from Middletown, Rhode Island, down by Newport. Nobody would come here if we called it Jay’s.”

New Hampshire: Where the Patriots are the only game in town

The scene: Delaney’s Hole in the Wall, North Conway. Sunday, Nov. 17 for Patriots-Eagles, 4:25 p.m.

There’s a warning sign inside Delaney’s Hole in the Wall: “Beware of Local Wildlife.”

And then you step deeper and deeper into this festive, have-one-on-me kind of place and discover there are two types of “local wildlife.” You have your local locals, those being the folks who were born and raised in the area and who naturally root for the Patriots and the other Boston teams because of geography. But there are also what we’ll call the Bostonlocals — that is, folks from The Big City who’ve owned second homes up here for years — and there are enough of them here on this day to make you feel like you’re at The Fours across from TD Garden.

Take, for instance, Jason Richardson, 45, and his longtime girlfriend Nikki Alconada. He’s a Boston cop, she works in commercial lending for Eastern Bank. He grew up in Wrentham, she grew up in Mendon. They now live in Dorchester — can’t get much more Boston than that — but they have the second place up here. And the Hole in the Wall is where they come to watch the Pats.

Jason and Nikki are two people with pleasant dispositions and gleaming smiles. They’re urban folk, yet they love the rural charm of this part of New Hampshire, partially because of the skiing and the hiking, but also, says Jason, “the beauty of the mountains.”

They bought their place about 11 years ago, “but we had been coming up here long before that,” he says. “And we got to know a lot of people from around the area. As for Delaney’s, it’s good food, good service, but most of all good company. And you know the Pats’ll be on.”

Says Nikki, “Delaney’s is definitely our home away from home. I know this is going to sound corny but it’s like family.”

Not far from Jason and Nikki sits Joe Cochran, 56, who grew up in Yarmouth until his teenaged years, which is when he started spending nights sleeping on a mattress in the basem*nt of John Donovan, a Chelsea native who happened to be legal counsel for the Red Sox.

“I worked with his kid, Johnny Jr., at Bass River Sports World in South Yarmouth,” says Joe. “Then my father died, and my mother and Johnny Jr.’s mother got talking and they said, ‘Let’s get him off the Cape.’ You know, that whole drill.”

So John Sr. made a call and got rootless Joe Cochran on the grounds crew at Fenway, a first stepping stone which led to him being added to the clubhouse staff in 1989.

Joe’s baseball resume is pertinent to this story for one reason: As a longtime clubhouse attendant at Fenway Park, both on the home side and the visiting side, he has been the happy recipient of more than a few World Series bonuses. Joe and his wife used one of those checks to purchase a home up here.

Why North Conway? It’s mostly because of their friendship with Dick and Lanette Delaney, who own the Hole in the Wall.

“I’ve known them since, geez, the mid to late 80s,” Joe says. “Dick was a bartender down at Horsefeathers in Boston. In those days we’d meet every Friday night, drive up from Chelsea, ski all day Saturday, tear it up, chill out Saturday night, go home on Sunday.

“There’s definitely a big Boston crowd up here,” he says.

And then there’s Richie Vargus, a Hole in the Wall legend. On the night the Red Sox lost Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS to the Yankees on Aaron Boone’s walk-off home run, Richie, who was standing on a bar stool, lost his emotions to the degree that he reached up and punched the ceiling.

But while evidence of Richie’s infamous punch remains — yes, there’s a hole in the ceiling at Delaney’s Hole in the Wall —what you can’t see, ever, is any other NFL game that happens to air at the same time the Patriots are playing.

Stop for a moment and think about the stops we’ve made on this six-state New England Patriots Travelogue. Think about the bars we’ve visited, the people we’ve met, the games we’ve watched. Remember how back in Lewiston, Maine, there’s that devoted Rams fan, John Thibault, who is looked upon as a lovable if kooky local character?

Remember how back in Burlington, Vt., the staff at Ruben James makes sure that even the most obscure NFL games — even those featuring the Bengals! — are showing on a screen somewhere off in the corner?

Remember how Pats fans and Giants fans find a way to peacefully (and at times comically) co-exist at Jerry’s Pizza & Bar in Middletown, Conn.?

Toss all that out as we reach last call at Delaney’s Hole in the Wall, a place where everyone knows your name but nobody cares about any other team other than the one that plays its home games at Gillette Stadium.

The place has seven flat screens that are placed in such a way that when the Patriots are on you can twist your head in any direction and not miss a play. But you won’t see any other NFL game.

They don’t care if you like another team because back in the day theirs were the only games on TV. They don’t care if you dated someone who rooted for the Packers and so now you root for the Packers.

And they don’t care if, say, you’re a ski bum from Jersey in town for the weekend and, hey, would you mind putting on the Giants game? You know, Big Blue? Can you help a fella out?

“I just say no,” says Dick Delaney. “I tell them very nicely that we’re a Patriots bar and when the Patriots are on that’s the only thing we watch.”

So wait … a guy comes walking in … make it three guys, four guys, they’re from Philly, here for the skiing, or the fall foliage, or the hiking, and the Eagles are playing the ‘Boys, and they have credit cards and appetites. And they’re thirsty.

“No,” Dick says. “I do lose quite a few people because of that, and sometimes they give you that surly, dirty look. But I’ve never had anyone insult me or get reallyupset. The way I look at it, I’m full with Patriots fans anyway so it works for me. I think I’d have even more hassles if I had three games on.”

So let’s play it this way: Spike Lee, the famous movie director and famously over-the-top New York sports fan, is in town and he asks to watch Giants-49ers, and …

“If the Patriots are on at the same time? No,” Dick says. “But if the Pats are the early game and the Giants are the late game, thatI’ll do. We’d love to have him.”

Delaney, 61, is a native of Dedham, just south of Boston. It’s tempting to suggest that his white hair, his white beard and his white mustache are a casualty of watching a lot of really bad Patriots football in the 20th century, but no: “It’s genes,” he says. “My father was a redhead when he was young, but he had gone white by the time he was 30. Same with me.”

What is not debatable is that he’s been a Boston sports fan his entire life. He was also a ski bum growing up, which is what led him to New Hampshire. He’s been here since the early 80’s. He was a bartender back in the day. He met a gal, Lanette, who was a server. They fell in love, got married, started having kids, and then, in August 1994, they teamed up with Dick’s sister Maryellen and opened Delaney’s Hole in the Wall.

“We had been looking for a long time and things kept falling through,” he says. “We were getting frustrated, but then this kind of fell into our lap.”

His lawyer, whose office was across the road from a restaurant/watering hole called The Snug Harbor, told him it was available. And here we are.

Dick Delaney reminds me of the late, legendary Eddie Griffin, an irascible and opinionated Maine sports promoter who for years ran a bar in South Portland until 1993, when the cancer got him. Eddie was a unique guy in all kinds of ways, but what matters here is that he seemed always to be on the patrons’ side of the bar instead of filling beer mugs or working in the kitchen. Eddie was a yahoo who happened to own a bar, not a bar owner who happened to be a yahoo, and I sense some of that about Dick Delaney as the Pats-Eagles game begins. He’s in the thick of things with all these Pats fans, cheering with them, kibitzing with them, slapping backs, and then occasionally disappearing for a few minutes, presumably to take care of bar business.

“I’m more focused on the front of the house than with the kitchen anyway,” he tells me. “I’ll loop into the kitchen every 15 minutes or so, but if there’s a big play and everyone is screaming I’ll stop what I’m doing and get right back out here.”

I ask some of the locals — local locals as well as the Boston locals — how they feel about Dick Delaney’s No Other Games When the Patriots Are On and That’s That policy.

“There are other bars down the street,” says Jason Richardson. “If we had friends who wanted to watch another game I’d tell them to go to the other bar and we’ll meet up.”

“Yeah, go to the other bar,” says Nikki.

“Shenanigan’s has the Game Day package,” says Jason.

“It’s right down the road on the left,” says Nikki. “It’s a great bar, but …”

“We haven’t been there yet,” says Jason. “We used to go there before, when it was a barbecue place.”

I ask Joe Cochran to share his thoughts.

“I’m sure if you walked in here and wanted to watch another game they could find you a TV somewhere in the corner,” he says.

No, Joe. No. They don’t do that here, he is told.

“No? Hey, I honestly didn’t know that,” he says. “I’m just so focused on the Patriots that I never even noticed. But that’s pretty cool. I like that. I guess it’s a Patriots bar.”

Not only that, Joe, but it’s a … New EnglandPatriots bar.

And that’s no B.S.