E-Mail This Article to a Friend The comeback kid (continued)

Perhaps the best evidence of Boston’s 2004 makeover occurred in the pages of the New Yorker. Late last February, after the Red Sox had feverishly pursued Alex Rodriguez, Yankees evil emperor George Steinbrenner threw bundles of money at the high-paid diva, crushing every Sox fan and sealing a deal endlessly described as having "Babe Ruth–like proportions." The magazine quoted Mayor Tom Menino figuratively shaking his fist at Rodriguez — "Alex, you may’ve gotten away this time, but we will get you this summer" — but attributed the line to Mayor Michael Menino. The mistake didn’t seem like sloppy reporting as much as an indication of how forgettable Boston’s municipal emissary was to the rest of the country. To outsiders, our venerably crotchety mayor was that crank up the street whose name you can never remember. No one would ever mistake Michael Bloomberg’s first name for Thomas.

But in July, South Boston got its very own feature story in the New Yorker — with Menino correctly identified — made timely by the impending Democratic Party invasion. Written by Fort Point Channel resident and acclaimed scribe Susan Orlean, the 4000-word story chronicled how the newly gentrified harbor-side neighborhood had morphed from Whitey Bulger’s violent, racist stamping ground, full of decrepit housing projects and bedraggled children, into the kind of well-scrubbed environs where young urban professionals could settle into an $800,000 luxury condo. Boston had been vilified for its busing-crisis bigotry since the 1970s, so the gentrification of one of the most infamous bastions of prejudice was an invitation to outsiders: it’s safe to come in.

And if there was beckoning, it was to the planeloads of pundits, delegates, and rubberneckers who would soon be descending on Boston for July’s Democratic National Convention. Menino cleaned up the city like a bedroom before a big date, resurfacing Newbury Street sidewalks, removing all the potential-weapon news boxes near the FleetCenter, and rebuilding the Charles Street T station. (A Slate writer who’d gone to school in Boston and fled to New York City didn’t like what he found on his return, yearning instead for the "grimy city of yore," the "lovely backwater" of Yankee prudery, provincialism, and quaintness. Can’t please ’em all.)

The local media spooked the natives with overblown threats of vehicular gridlock, anarchists, and terrorism (as if Al Qaeda would bother with the Democrats), so they all went elsewhere. Left with a ghost town, reporters by the thousands hunkered down in Boston, transmitting their live feeds to the rest of the world. And celebrities of all stripes rolled in: Leonardo DiCaprio, P. Diddy, Rob Reiner, John Cusack, Russell Simmons, Ben Affleck.

But despite the photos of red-eyed, blotchy-faced Affleck in the dailies, the DNC was John Kerry’s party. This wasn’t only the senator’s homecoming — it was his coronation. Kerry’s relationship with his hometown is a funny one: he wants Boston more than Boston wants him. Still, the city was rooting for Kerry, no matter how aloof, dorky, or stilted he seemed. After all, he was the only candidate who scored high enough on the "electable" meter to get the left’s collective thumbs-up. His craggy face was plastered across newspapers worldwide, as he spoke in Las Vegas middle schools, confabulated with St. Louis senior citizens, rode motorcycles, and strummed guitars with Moby, making headlines wherever he went.

When the election came, though, Kerry’s Massachusetts connections probably hurt him in the red states. He’d spent 19 years in the US Senate representing the Commonwealth, which inextricably linked him to the gay-marriage issue. Exit polls on Election Day indicated that when voters pulled the lever, they were motivated by "moral values" — a not-so-veiled reference to gay marriage. And since Massachusetts is the only state in the union to rule that gay couples have the right to marry, Kerry was guilty by association.

The rest of the country felt the reverberations of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in other ways. In his State of the Union address, President Bush urged the country to "defend the sanctity of marriage." San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples, until he was forced by his governor to stop. Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith finds less fault with polygamy than with same-sex marriage, tried to interfere, even whining about the court decision in the Wall Street Journal. But it was a major victory for gay rights in America, even if it contributed to Kerry’s election loss.

The biggest, most ballyhooed, most universally celebrated victory of all, though, was one that had taken longer than a Halley’s comet cycle: the Red Sox won the World Series! The greatest comeback in baseball history! The embarrassing defeat of the Yankees! Curt Schilling’s bloody ankle! The reverse of the curse! Johnny Damon! Manny Ramirez! Drunken college students celebrating in the streets! Even Santa, in The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, knew the surefire way to excite a Boston crowd. Forget the Rockettes — at a recent performance, Santa simply mentioned the Red Sox victory, calling it "an early Christmas present" for the city, and even the blue-haired ladies in the audience shrieked, "Aaaaah!"

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com