Sport: A Sudden Flash of Patriotism

While emotions in Chicago have been gathering force all season, the elation in Boston and environs qualifies as a flash fever. Only a little more than a month ago, goodness had been confirmed, but greatness was still unsuspected by even the most exuberant of the Patriots' worn and wistful constituency. As recently as last year, this was a fifth-place team behind the Boston Celtics, Red Sox, Bruins and Fluties. At least a modern Super Bowl record must have collapsed when, in contrast to the Chicago lottery, the Patriots were able to accommodate every season-ticket holder (count them, 7,500) with two ducats apiece for the big game. Twelve hundred and fifty people demurred.

Like a storybook character, the humblest wild-card team followed the thorniest of al1 the play-off routes, a treacherous path that wound through New Jersey (the Jets) and Los Angeles (the Raiders) before coming out at Miami's impregnable Orange Bowl. Since 1966, the Pats had opposed the Dolphins there 18 times and won exactly never. Coach Don Shula's division champions split two games with New England this season, home and away, but the third try turned out to be charming (and emphatic, 31-14). "I feel like Alice in Wonderland was a true story, like I'm inside a wonderful fantasy," said American Football League Pioneer Billy Sullivan, who is entangled in a legal quarrel with minority stockholders and has had to tag his precious team for sale.

The Patriots have not ascended to a final championship game since the pre-merger season of 1963, when they lost to San Diego, 51-10. That was the year Chicago last claimed the National Football League championship. Though a lopsided score is conceivable again, the Bears would be wise not to dismiss Patriot Tackle Brian Holloway's contention, "We have some magic." No one could mistake its source: Coach Raymond Berry, 52. Capping his first full season on the job, the legendary Baltimore Colt pass catcher was hoisted jubilantly aboard his players' shoulders and given an extended ride about the stadium such as no pro and few college coaches or even matadors have ever enjoyed. "They did carry me off the field, didn't they?" Berry said later in the self-effacing manner he brought to the National Football League 31 years ago from Paris, Texas. "I was floating already anyway."

Back when Berry was the favorite receiver of Johnny Unitas and just about everyone else, his attention to minute detail was as much a part of his lore as the one leg shorter than the other or the feeble vision and sensitivity to light that sometimes required him to wear the only football helmet ever equipped with sunglasses. On the road, Berry actually carried his own bathroom scale to be sure of a consistent reading. If he played best at 182 lbs., he did not intend to be 181 or 183. Unitas still marvels at the diving catches Berry insisted on rehearsing without much concern for the skin on his elbows and knees. When no passer was handy, Berry's habit was to run phantom patterns over and over, pausing now and then to consult the file of index cards he kept with him on the sidelines in a cigar box.