Legacy as big as Texas
Wilfork was and always will be a Patriot
Remember when Mike Napoli helped lead the Red Sox to a World Series championship and then ripped off his shirt and galloped through the Back Bay like a sort of hardball Lady Godiva?
That was October 2013. He was one of our guys back then, one of our sports buddies, a local hero.
And then, just like that, he was gone. He hung around with the Red Sox until August 2015, was traded to the Texas Rangers and later signed on with Terry Francona’s Cleveland Indians.
When Nap played for the Tribe in the World Series a few months back, nobody around here thought it a weird sight, and for one simple reason: Players come, players go. We live in an age of free agency, opt-outs and a flurry of deadline deals if (enter name of your team here) is out of contention. We’re used to it.
But it’ll be different come Saturday night when Vince Wilfork appears at Gillette Stadium as a member of the visiting Houston Texans for their playoff showdown against the Patriots. We can all agree, I think, that Wilfork isn’t just another former hometown player who now wears the uniform of another team. In another words, he’s not Mike Napoli.
Vince Wilfork is the latest addition to a group I like to call Athletes Who Never Look Right in a Different Uniform. The gold standard for this discussion, of course, is Bobby Orr. That our beloved No. 4 ever climbed into the sweater of the Chicago Blackhawks remains one of the biggest crimes in the history of sports, the
second biggest crime in the history of sports being the accursed pinball machine that depicts Orr in his Blackhawks uniform.
I won’t bother to dredge out the complete list again, other than to point out some obvious examples: Carlton Fisk with the Chicago White Sox, Dwight Evans with the Baltimore Orioles, Dave Cowens with the Milwaukee Bucks and Bob Cousy (very briefly) with the Cincinnati Royals. (I would also include Ted Williams of the Washington Senators, even though it was in a managerial capacity. I never saw Williams as a player, but I did see him as a manager, and it didn’t look right.)
Vince Wilfork played 11 seasons with the Patriots. This includes the 2013 season, which came to a jolting stop in Week 4 when Big Vince tore his right Achilles tendon during the gameopening drive of the Patriots’ 30-23 victory against the Atlanta Falcons at the Georgia Dome.
As Gerry Callahan wrote in the Herald: “Wilfork was the second-most important player on this team, the heart and soul of a defense that allowed 27 points in the first three games. He was a captain, a leader, and a rock the size of Rhode Island that made every other defender’s job easier. And now he was gone, carted out of the picture for the rest of the 2013 season and perhaps beyond.”
Wilfork did return in 2014, starting all 16 regularseason games and earning his second championship ring when the Patriots toppled the Seattle Seahawks (thanks again, Pete Carroll) in Super Bowl XLIX. But then he was gone, latching on as a free agent with the Texans.
The speculation is that this is his final season, which means the 35-yearold nose tackle will likely end his career where it began, at Gillette Stadium. (Fun fact: In his first NFL game, a 27-24 New England victory against the Indianapolis Colts on Sept. 9, 2004, Wilfork, a “surprise starter” over journeyman Keith Traylor, was credited with forcing an Edgerrin James fumble late in the fourth quarter on the 1-yard line and recovering the ball.)
But even if the Texans somehow upset the Pats, and even if they somehow go on to win Super Bowl LI on their home turf at NRG Stadium (come on, work with me here), Vince Wilfork will never be known as a Texan. And it’s not just that he played all those seasons in New England. Hall of Famer Frank Robinson played only six seasons with the Baltimore Orioles and 10 seasons with the Cincinnati Reds, but he will always be
an Oriole. And while it was with the Oakland A’s that Reggie Jackson made his bones as a big league superstar, he will always be remembered as a Yankee, even though he played in New York for just five seasons.
So, what sets Wilfork apart? For one thing, he played on two championship teams. That’s key. For another, his pure physicality set him apart from his teammates, so much so that you could instantly pick him out of the crowd when the Pats emerged from the tunnel.
But Vince Wilfok was also a citizen-athlete. He was involved in this or that cause. He made appearances. He pressed flesh.
We thought, maybe, just maybe, he’d be a Patriot his entire career. That didn’t happen. But Vince Wilfork will always be a Patriot.