So, in the past 24 hours over 30 inches of snow has fallen on New England--cars are buried under drifts six and seven feet high and they say that tomorrow maybe Logan Airport will open one runway. As such, corwin and I were not confident that when we left our house at 6pm this evening that we would find a place within walking distance of our house where we could watch the AFC Championship Game. The first place we came to, the pizza shop on the corner, was closed, which was an ominous sign, since that place never closes. But a bit further down Mass. Ave. we found most of the bars open. We picked a place called the "Forest Cafe," though in the neighborhood it is more usually known as "Mexican Cuisine," which is what their sign says.

The place is a typical Cambridge watering hole, of which there used to be a lot more before "gentrification" came to town. The place is split down the middle, a bar on one side and dining seating along the other, a place where families come to eat and locals come to drink. The density of customers at the bar was fairly heavy, so we picked a booth where we could see the wide-screen TV, ordered some appetizers, and got ready to watch the game along with several dozen other souls who dug out their front doors from snowdrifts and braved the still-biting wind.

We are not football fans. We are baseball fans, but we watch football from time to time, and the Patriots in particular have been fun to watch on their run of championships. What I know of football I know from three sources. The first was playing the sousaphone in my high school marching band, which meant attending every football game and absorbing some of the rules by watching, since after all, it helps to know when to get ready to pick up the big heavy tuba. (Our team was so bad, though, we didn't play the school victory song once the whole first year I was in the band...) The second source for me is sports talk radio, which I listen to just trying to catch the baseball hot stove talk. This means that between people griping about Pedro taking more money from the Mets and speculating about where Randy Johnson will pitch next year (it's the Yankees, if you haven't heard...), I hear various interviews and phone calls that relate to the current big sports story here in Boston, which is the Patriots. The third source is my boyfriend corwin, who isn't that much more of a football fan than I am, but he did watch last week's game with some friends who are, so he learned a lot of useful things that he could pass on to me. For example, those fanny-pack-like things the players are wearing? Their hand muffs. Yeah, like those things Victorian ladies stuck their hands into to keep them warm on snowy carriage rides.

Now as a baseball fan, I always turn every situation in football into a baseball analogy. I think of it sort of like each down equals one base--four bases, four downs--so as you advance toward potentially scoring the stakes go up. Advancing gradually up the field is like playing small ball, pecking away, whereas throwing a long bomb for a touchdown is like a home run.

In this game the Patriots kept getting into situations to take advantage of the other team's mistakes. They weren't big mistakes, but they cost a lot. Many times the Patriots were able to get a call to go their way, or capitalize on a small crack in Pittsburgh's armor. It was as if every time the opposing pitcher hung a pitch, the Patriots were able to hit it for a grand slam. After they had scored the first ten points, I began to wonder if Tom Brady held a record for the shortest amount of time spent on the field by any quarterback up 10-0.

Tom Brady, I was shocked to find, has his hair somewhat shaggy in the back and a scruffy beard starting to come in. I can only assume this is a part of the strategy, since it worked for Johnny Damon and the Red Sox. Take your teen heart-throb and scuff him up a little? Or maybe it was just to keep his chin warm against the helmet strap in the 11 degree weather.

Damon isn't the baseball player Brady reminds me of most. No, I think Tom Brady is the Derek Jeter of football. All you will hear from other team's fans, analysts, and detractors, is about how this guy really isn't that good. They will quote you stats, they will give examples of other guys who are "better" (Peyton Manning, Nomar/A-rod, etc...), they will be so sure that this time his weaknesses are going to be his team's undoing. And then... he doesn't. He executes when he needs to, leads by example, and wins. And just as the Jeter-bashing has not stopped because Jeter has how ever many World Series rings, the Brady-bashing continues. Just last week I heard many commentators go on and on about Peyton Manning's superior skills. Yet the Patriots came out with a decisive win. As they did again here, a real spanking of the Steelers.

Around halftime, as we felt flushed with success and a big lead, some guys at the bar tried to start up a "Yankees Suck" chant. Nobody else picked it up, and the guy in the booth next to me and corwin disparaged them. Just yesterday I was talking with my friend Jude, a born Mets fan but who roots for the Red Sox now that she has lived up here for years. She described going to the Red Sox victory parade and someone trying to start the chant and them being booed down. Maybe, finally, some Red Sox fans are starting to think more about the Red Sox and less about the rival from the Big Apple. What was odd there in the Forest Cafe, though, was that the next thing they started to chant was "Let's Go Red Sox."

Basically, it is no exaggeration on my part to say the Red Sox are the lifeblood of New England sports fandom, and all winning, or losing, is associated with them, even in other sports. And now that the Sox have become world champions, the fan base would like another Superbowl to go along with it. But the Superbowl is dessert--the ALCS and World Series were the main courses. People are excited about the Patriots, but not as hyped up, emotional, and crazed as they were for the Sox.

This is partly because the Patriots are so good, so efficient, that they engender almost a feeling of complacency. Maybe confidence is a better word than complacency, but even in last year's Superbowl, where the game was won on the final play, the final kick, I never felt like the Patriots ever let the game get out of hand. They always seem to have a plan and execute it, even if that plan seems to depend on unpredictable turnovers and referee calls. The game never seems to get away from them.

This is not to say there were not some fans who were nervous. Who wouldn't be, with every media outlet and analyst trying, once again, to convince us that the Patriots are not greater than the sum of their parts, and that the Steelers were? The Steelers were the team that snapped New England's record 21-game winning streak back in October. They had themselves gone on a 15-game streak. "Nobody stops the Bus (Jerome Bettis)." With the skills of the teams so closely matched, the home-field advantage PIttsburgh held was supposed to figure hugely in the game. And yet, wham, bam, the Patriots stunned the Steelers with an early field goal and a very early touchdown, stifling the fan support. (In fact, the crowd issued some boos to its hometown guys as the score reached 24-3 at the half, according to NFL.com.)

Adam Vinatieri, for me, is sort of like a cross between David Ortiz and Keith Foulke. Ortiz because he gets you the points in big moments, the RBI man who gets the runners in or sometimes hits the walk-off in the ninth (like the winning kick in last year's Superbowl). But like Foulke he is a reliable guy who comes in and makes his crucial contribution game after game after game. To put those first three points on the board, he had to kick a 48 yard field goal this game, the fourth longest in the history of Pittsburgh's Heinz Field. Not too shabby.

And how about Rodney Harrison snagging the ball out of the air like the ball was meant for HIM and not some guy on Pittsburgh's side, and then running 86 yards for a touchdown? Hmm, I don't have an equivalent for that in baseball. It would be like turning an unassisted triple play and then running and touching home plate yourself and it counting as a run. Wild. I am reminded of the day Pokey Reese hit the two home runs, one over the wall and one inside-the-parker, while also playing eye-popping defense. But even Pokey didn't do all those things simultaneously!

And the replay reversal. This was a play where Patriots player David Givens caught a ball, then fell down, and it was ruled that he fumbled the ball. This would have given Pittsburgh the ball, but Bill Belichick called for a referee to review the play -- and it was ruled, correctly, that Givens' knee had touched the grass before the ball came loose. It was a catch, and not only did the Patriots keep the ball, they got another 15 yards on a personal foul that happened after the play ended! It reminded me exactly of the moment in Game 7 of the ALCS this past season, when Jeter scored from first on a play where Alex Rodriguez hit a comebacker and appeared to reach first safely when the ball came loose from Bronson Arroyo's glove on the tag. But the umpires conferred, and not only was A-rod called out for slapping the ball out of Arroyo's hands, Jeter was sent back to first. The opponent might have had a big opportunity, but a reversal by the officials provided just the opposite.

This time, the Patriots scored on the very next play--another slam, bam. Every time there was the slightest crack, the Patriots would blow through the door. As when the Red Sox put the Yankees away in the ALCS, they won it running away and although the other team scored a couple of points near the end, it did not matter and they did not act like it mattered.

Now the question is, can the Patriots put away the Philadelphia Eagles in four quarters the way the Red Sox put away the Cardinals in four straight games? I have no reason to doubt them and the win would be icing on the cake for an incredible season for Boston sports. But you know that the Patriots victory parade won't compare to the six-mile land-and-sea extravaganza that was the Red Sox celebration. There's still nothing that can compare to the eighty-six year drought, and the generations of baseball fans who have tied their hearts to the Olde Towne Team. As such, I'll end with a story told by Leigh Montville last weekend at the SABR Boston Regional Meeting.

Montville was on hand to talk about his new book, "Why Not Us: The 86 Year Journey of the Boston Red Sox Fans from Unparalleled Suffering to the Promised Land of the 2004 World Series." He described going out to dinner in Boston's North End (our version of Little Italy) with a friend who is not from around here. "I don't get," the guy was saying to him, about not understanding the whole Red Sox Nation thing, "What's it all about?"

The waiter grabbed the guy by the arm and said "You want to know what it's all about? I'll tell you what it's all about. My father had a stroke and he was in a coma for two years. I was by his bedside when he woke up, and the first thing he said to me was 'How the Sox doing?' I told him 'not too good, pop' and he went back into the coma and died two weeks later. That's what it's all about."

Yes. A Patriots win would be nice, and we'll celebrate and be entertained better than any Hollywood production or television series could ever hope to entertain us. But baseball is a religion here, and the Red Sox have been both penance and salvation. Remember, Lent ends February 8, and pitchers and catchers report on February 17th...