The photo is long gone, lost over time, but the image remains. A young boy with chubby cheeks and a thick mop of black hair smiles beneath the thick, dark frames of his eyeglasses on a gray afternoon – what else – in late-autumn Buffalo.
He’s standing in an end-zone seating section of what was then Rich Stadium, well before it became Ralph Wilson Stadium and, after its naming rights were put up for sale, New Era Field and Highmark Stadium. He is there with his dad and some family friends, two hours from their home in Central New York.
This is his first in-person NFL experience; the Bills are hosting the Dolphins. Other Sundays, he watches at home from the sofa that doubles as his broadcast perch, where he mimics the announcers talking from his TV, and a goalline pileup he attempts to leap over during commercial breaks.
Unfortunately, those fullback dives onto his couch will mark the extent of his gridiron glory. Luckily, playing an NFL broadcaster is something he’ll someday get to do for real. And the first time he’ll do it in the regular season will be back in the place where he saw his first game.
By then, several decades later on a bright, season-opening Sunday in September of 2013, his once full head of hair will be thinned out. His glasses too. The boy is now a forty-something with kids of his own.
Back in Buffalo as the new broadcaster for the Patriots on Boston’s 98.5 The Sports Hub, he sees Tom Brady lead a fourth-quarter comeback. Short, crisp passes primarily to Shane Vereen and Danny Amendola, making his own New England debut, set up Stephen Gostkowski for a 35-yard field goal try in the final seconds.
Gostkowski drills it. “It is good!!! And the Patriots take the lead with five seconds to go!" the radio call concludes, just before the game officially ends in a 23-21 Pats’ win.
On Sunday night, that kid, this voice, returns to Orchard Park for the 14th time. Unless there’s a playoff rematch, it will also be his final time inside the Bills' home since 1973. Next season they are scheduled to move next door about 500 feet away, into what we can now call ‘new’ Highmark, which will soon be completed at a projected cost of $2.1 billion.
The change in scenery will be drastic, from the stadium’s bowels to the bulbs that illuminate the action on the field. Upgrades in space, amenities and necessities for the teams. Luxurious club suites to house the corporate class. Surely, more spacious facilities to pacify the hard-to-satisfy press.
From the sunk-in old concrete-and-steel bowl to the assurgent new joint, gleaming as it wraps the seats and field with ‘iron-spot’ brick and glass, it will seem like going from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. It will truly be no place like the old home.
As my Sports Hub colleague and Boston Globe columnist Chris Gasper said to Jim Murray on their radio show Saturday morning, there will be no tears shed when Old Rich-Ralph Wilson-New Era-Highmark comes down. Demolition, by the way, is set for March 2027.
But Chris was also correct in noting that it may be different for my partner Scott Zolak and me. Well, at least for me. And not, only because of sentimental reasons.
It’s a football stadium, not an arcade or amusement park. Once the table-breaking ends in the parking lot and the ball is kicked off, entertainment is all about the game. The atmosphere is as close to a spirited college setting as there is in the NFL. Bills veteran Dion Dawkins compared it on the Green Light with Chris Long podcast to an SEC environment.
As an old-school, football-first-last-and-only stadium, it affords us radio guys a good view. The booth is open to the sounds and energy of the crowd. It’s close to midfield. It’s close, but not too close, to the field itself. Nowadays, stadiums are built with the high-rollers in that space, and our space is assigned to a different galaxy. Often with a corner window.
Not that you should care. Nor should you care about my sentimental attachments to the old place: first game as a kid, first broadcast as a grown-up. But you might care to recall some of the other memories I’ll share from our past visits to Orchard Park.
Start with six of Tom Brady’s 16 wins in 18 starts at Buffalo, the first being the aforementioned 2013 rally. Continue with Devin McCourty’s pick-six on Monday Night Football in 2018 and his buddy Matthew Slater’s lone career score off a blocked punt a year later on a sunny afternoon. Keep going to December of 2021, again under the lights, when a Tyler Bass field-goal try was blown sideways into the stands, the Pats passed three times and Damien Harris raced straight ahead, 64 yards to the end zone.
But in addition to the joys of six, thanks to passes, runs and punts, there are other unforgettable, only-in-Buffalo moments one can’t overlook. Like the time I thought official Keith Washington had dropped a flag, as I caught an object out of the corner of my eye landing in the end zone just as the Pats were about to score from the goal line.
Of course, I quickly realized it wasn’t a penalty marker, but rather a toy intended for playful consenting adults. Just like the one that landed near Kendrick Bourne when he scored late in a January 2022 blowout loss to the Bills at Highmark.
Since that one, the Pats haven’t won in Orchard Park. Their four straight defeats at Old Highmark have followed the franchises' role reversals since Brady left New England and Josh Allen came into his own for Buffalo. Not only do the Patriots have that history to overcome, they must try to halt the Bills’ 14-game home winning streak against all regular-season opponents.
For this next encounter, the Bills will be wearing their “Cold Front” rivalry uniforms. Bills Mafia is being asked to dress for the occasion and make it a ‘White Out.’ Would they really leave their red and blue Zubaz at home? Either way, the visitors will be met with a frosty reception.
Feisty, too. From the first number-one finger salute upon entering the stadium parking lots to the last upon taking the field.
Yet, for the first time since the howling winds of that victory Monday in 2021, these Patriots can bring the fight too. They’re 2-2, coming off a blowout of Carolina. More importantly, their young quarterback Drake Maye is showing signs of coming into his own.
It should be fun. You should be excited. I know I am. The little boy, whose picture in the crowd went missing so long ago, will soon hit the airwaves.
Here’s hoping the finish at Old Highmark winds up like the first time he got to live his childhood dream, when the next stadium was nowhere in sight and the current one was known by another name.
That, like an image imprinted in memory, would be indelible.
Bob Socci is in his 13th season calling play-by-play for the Patriots Radio Network on 98.5 The Sports Hub. He'll join Scott Zolak on the call of Patriots at Bills on Sunday night.
