What's With Your Blog Title?

Why "The Wrong Foot(ball)"? Let me tell you a story...

I went over to the new CBS Scene restaurant last week, on January 2nd. It's right next to Gillette Stadium, where the New England Patriots play, and is part of a large new shopping and entertainment complex called Patriot Place. I live only a few minutes away from the stadium and I have always enjoyed going to sports bars, especially those in the vein of an ESPN Zone. From what I understood of the CBS restaurant, it was supposed to be an upscale sports bar littered with high-def televisions. Walking in, that's just what I saw.

The FA Cup was scheduled , Tottenham v. Wigan, but I did not see it on any of the myriad sets on the top "bar" floor of the CBS Scene. My wife and I sat at the bar, and I asked the bartender to turn on the game, which was on Fox Soccer Channel or Setanta that day. He disappeared for several minutes, which left me wishing I'd ordered drinks and an appetizer before inquiring about the game. When he returned, he told me that they did not subscribe to either of those channels, and therefore we could not watch the game. I'd figured something like this might happen, and I decided to tease him a little bit about the lack of attention to the world's most popular sport.

"This is a SPORTS bar, right?" I asked, grinning. Burn! To his credit, he knew I was just ribbing him, and he gave it right back.

"Yeah, this is a sports bar. That's why we don't show soccer." Zing!

"I understand. It's only the most popular sport in the world, and the local professional team plays 200 yards from here, but I understand why you provincial yahoos don't have it." Burn! (Or at least it would have been a burn if anyone knew what provincial meant.)

The other bar denizens around started to pile on at this point, but not in a good-natured way like the bartender. A fat middle-aged slob in a Bruins jacket two stools down basically told me to leave, and I couldn't tell if he was serious. He certainly didn't say it with a smile on his face. I'm kind of a physically imposing guy--six-three, 220 pounds, shaved head--and not a lot of people pick fights with me. There are easier targets. I obviously wasn't about to get in a fight over this, especially with my wife on hand, so I let it drop. My wife was horribly embarrassed by this point and was begging me to quit it. We got our meals and drinks and watched the loop of SportsCenter with the closed captioning on. I enjoyed my burger, but my wife didn't like her meal and even felt sick to her stomach later that night. We won't be returning to the CBS Scene anytime soon, and in this economy, it may be gone soon. Based on the closings of other "attractions" at Patriot Place, I wonder if anyplace other than the Bass Pro Shops will succeed in Foxboro.

The reason my blog title is "The Wrong Foot(ball)" is twofold: it's a wordplay on "We got off on the wrong foot" and it's because in this country, I follow the wrong football. If I'd asked for the bartender to show the NFL network, there would never have been a problem. Oh, well. I'll just have to go into Dorchester to the Banshee Pub. (Way to close on a plug!)