Boston Sports

(CBS4) He did it! He did it! Flutie did it!!!

With his retirement last week, Doug Flutie officially ended my childhood – and the childhood of my peers – at least as it applies to watching sports. Based on his lengthy decision process following the season and the points he addressed during his press conference, Flutie clearly weighed several factors before settling on his choice to retire. However, it would seem closing the book on my days as a young'n was not one of them.

Alright, so by no conventional measure of marking time and age did I have a right to claim any remaining semblance of youth. I just turned 33 years old. While my struggles with adult responsibilities might frustrate and baffle my wife, most would agree that living through eight presidential elections already more than disqualified me from expecting dirty laundry miraculously to find its own way from the floor to the laundry. Same with used plates and their odysseys to the dishwasher.

Fair enough. But I don't think I'm the only one who watched Flutie draw the curtain on his career and felt nostalgic for an era before mortgages and car payments, before all-nighters and fraternity parties, even before proms and varsity letters.

Don't get me wrong. My days of fawning over Doug Flutie as a football player ended a long time ago. Working in sports media has the inevitable and somewhat unfortunate effect of dulling the emotions associated with following the games we love and the men who play them. Adoration downshifts to appreciation and respect. My assigning large meaning to Flutie's retirement was rooted entirely in selfishness. Quite simply, it made me feel old.

Although nationally, many mistakenly remember Flutie's stardom essentially beginning with the 1984 Miracle in Miami, we here in New England know differently. He took over B.C.'s starting quarterback job – and with it, the entire Chestnut Hill campus soon thereafter – in 1982. At that time, I was at an age, nine, when most children naively believe a career as a professional athlete is possible. Little did I realize that my most, ahem, "noteworthy" athletic achievement of the ensuing 24 years would come in a high school intramural floor hockey championship. A hat trick in a 4-3 loss. Do you believe in miracles? Not exactly.

Flutie's career explosion coincided with the explosion of the size of my head. In the mid-80s, my physical form resembled, to borrow a phrase from the father in the Mike Myers movie "So I Married an Axe Murderer," an orange on a toothpick. Just recently, my body finally attained a size in proportion to my head, literally if not figuratively. But I digress.

As with events of legitimate historical significance, local fans remember exactly where they were when Flutie completed his Hail Mary to Gerard Phelan. Most of those stories probably sound a little more grown up than mine. After a rousing afternoon of Nerfoop with a classmate while casually following the B.C.-Miami game, I adjourned to my grandmother's for dinner. The offensive fireworks made the game a marathon. Grandma got antsy as dinner got colder. With six seconds on the clock, my cousin promised Grandma we'd eat in a moment. "Either they score here and win, or they don't, and they lose. Either way, it's over after this play." Or something pretty close to that.

In a way, it was over right there, but in another very real way that game will never end, something it seemed we might also say about Flutie's career (and we still say about his feathered hair).

While the Miami game introduced many casual football fans to Doug Flutie, it actually served as the beginning of the end of his college career. He officially ended it with a win over Houston in the Cotton Bowl. But in between, he and those close to him provided more lasting memories of childhood. Eight days after beating the Hurricanes and a month before beating the Cougars, Flutie and the Eagles took care of the Holy Cross Crusaders in Worcester.

Remember the logo painter's caps that were all the rage in the 80s? Hideous, right? Would you think that about mine if you knew it was signed by B.C. wide receiver Darren Flutie outside Fitton Field? OK, yes. But it was pretty cool for an 11 year old.

Meanwhile, my Aunt Barbara, the doting wife of a B.C. alum, happened upon the future Laurie Flutie in the restroom. She dutifully toed the line between dedicated spouse and semi-stalker by quickly asking for an autograph from the Heisman Trophy wife-to-be. A gracious Laurie proceeded to give new meaning to Brent Musberger's words from a week earlier: Flutie flushed […and then signed a program].

A short time later, with friends and fans waving and cheering, a helicopter whisked Doug away to the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City where he would collect the hardware emblematic of college football's most outstanding player. Very rarely does a Heisman Trophy winner play a game on the same day as the award ceremony. Then again, Doug Flutie was pretty rare himself.

During his first stint with the Patriots, Flutie famously helped pull out a win over the Colts in 1988 with one of his classic naked bootleg touchdown runs. New England's radio play-by-play voice at the time described the Foxboro fans' reaction in a most memorable fashion. I am embarrassed in any number of ways to admit that when it came time to put together my senior write-up for the high school yearbook several years later, I included the phrase "Icky Balookey." Ah, kids.

Much as we might wish otherwise, the local sports stars of our childhoods inevitably say goodbye. One by one, the dominoes fall until we look up and realize the arrival of their athletic fallibility signaled the departure of our youth. Bird, Neely, Bourque, etc. And now Flutie. Sort of depressing.

Wait a minute. Roger Clemens could still return to Boston, right? I watched him when I was a kid.

Rob Gill is a sports producer for CBS4.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CBS4 or CBS4Boston.com
Email Rob at rpgill@boston.cbs.com.

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