2010 Winter Classic: The Fans Really Stole The Show

The song “Sweet Caroline” may never again carry the same sweet melody.

At least that was the plan. It was a complete flop.

The crowd didn’t care. At all. There were more moans and groans than anything resembling rhythm and tones. Maybe it was too cold to sing. Maybe it was because the home team was losing, 1-0, and playing one of its ugliest games of the season.

But for whatever reason, the “Faithful” wasn’t holding true to its name.

Typically, Red Sox fans love the “Sweet Caroline” singalong, even if the Sox are getting spanked on the scoreboard. It’s something you’re guaranteed to hear and sing to when you’re at Fenway. If the good people in the Red Sox organization decided to ditch the Neil Diamond classic, cars on Yawkey Way would be on their roofs faster than Theo Epstein could jump in a gorilla suit.

Now, though, with two foreign teams playing a foreign sport in a not-so-foreign stadium, it just wasn’t the same. The phrase “same old song and dance” does not apply.

Immediately after whatever that was , I tweeted a very simple message:

The “Sweet Caroline” debacle was evidence of that. As much as the NHL, the Bruins and the Red Sox organization wanted the two to be one in the same, it wasn’t going to happen. One franchise is coming off of two championships in the last six years while the other hasn’t touched significant hardware since 1972.

Regardless, there were fans at Fenway Park on Friday. Some real diehards. Most of those fans, though, were wearing orange instead of gold.

I still don’t know how it was done (I think Flyers fans hijacked a few trains and just piled in supporters until there was no more room to blink). There were so many Flyers fans at the Winter Classic that it was easy to forget it was Fenway Park and not Citizens Bank Park.

Being on the streets before the 1:40 p.m. puck drop, I talked with a lot of fans. When I asked about the masses of people, Flyers fans were excited about how much Philly support made the trek up the coast; Bruins fans seemed to be in awe. And a little scared.

(Maybe that’s why “Sweet Caroline” hit harder than a lead balloon: half of them were from Philly and had no freakin’ idea what was going on. Since it was on NBC, I’m sure 75 percent of the audience had no clue either. That’s a lot of people saying, “Why the hell are they singing that song by The Jewish Elvis?”)

There were a lot of differences between Flyers and Bruins fans on Friday. A lot of Bruins fans considered the game and everything surrounding it just a spectacle. After all, some like to dub the Winter Classic the NHL’s “Super Bowl.” Meanwhile, Flyers fans were treating the event like it was game seven of the Stanley Cup finals -- a finals game jacked up on Red Bull.

Flyers fans acted like it was a game of war and they just took the capital building. They marched down the streets with beer in hands, waving Flyers flags and chanting. I stepped out of Fenway and onto Brookline Avenue at noon on Friday to hear a group of Flyers fans singing “God Bless America” while high-stepping through the brisk 35 degree air.

It was so much better than “Sweet Caroline.”

They cared. They cared a lot more than Bruins fans did -- almost.

With the crowd essentially out of it before Clarke butchered every word of “Sweet Caroline,” they were officially knocked out for the count when the song was over. It was a lifeless crowd that was watching their team go from over-excited, to horrible, to OK, to just a giant mess.

And then all of a sudden it was like David Blain magically appeared, standing on the Green Monster: poof. There was life once again.

Before that, a magical voice over the speakers in the press box told the media to head down to the locker rooms with five minutes left in the third to avoid a rush for the elevators. So myself and other media members did just that, despite not wanting to miss the final minutes. As we waited outside the locker room entrance with the time ticking down, from above us, Fenway exploded. We didn’t have to look at the television near the beer stand to know the Bruins just scored to tie up the game.

We all moved over to the television to see the Made For TV delayed goal. It really was a goal; not just a massive prank by the crowd to screw over the media. If it were, that’d be a story in itself. A funny one at that.

Instead of heading back up to the press box, a couple of us walked out behind home plate to see the boisterous crowd. This was not the crowd we just left from the rafters of Fenway. Those fans were trying to stay warm while munching a Fenway Frank. These fans were jumping all around and sharing big, Boston-sized hugs. All of a sudden there was life in Fenway Park -- like it usually does April through November.

The crowd exploded while the Bruins players piled into Sturm on the boards. With every one of the 38,112 standing -- and still in attendance, despite the B’s bad performance for most of the game -- it didn’t seem like a cold, bitter January day. It seemed more like one of those muggy, hot July nights that area is so familiar with.

Maybe I’ll never hear “Sweet Caroline” like I did before, but the smooth melody of the Faithful stays the same.