Super Bowl champs glad to meet demands

BANGOR – It has been an offseason unlike any other for the New England Patriots.

It’s amazing how much more intriguing you become when you add the words “Super Bowl champion” in front of your name.

Has a nice ring – as in the ring of a cash register – to it, doesn’t it?

Owner Bob Kraft thinks so.

“It’s like Lawyer [Milloy] said, if the Rams had won, it wouldn’t have been so special,” said Kraft, in whose lap rested the shiny Vince Lombardi Trophy as he was driven back to the airport following a Wednesday afternoon victory rally at Bass Park.

“If the Rams had won, I don’t think too many people would have been that interested because everybody expected them to,” Milloy said. “That’s why it’s so great to be on this team and win it the way we did it, against all odds and representing all of New England. I mean our area’s really the only area that gave us a chance. That’s what makes it special and now we’re giving a little back to the people we really matter to.”

Kraft, defensive captain Lawyer Milloy, defensive end Bobby Hamilton, and clutch placekicker Adam Vinatieri visited Bangor Wednesday to show off the trophy won with a 20-17 Super Bowl upset of St. Louis a little more than two months ago and thank fans for their support – both emotional and economic.

“I mean, our team has the highest-selling video with over a half-million tapes sold,” Kraft explained. “Our hats… the backorders are over a hundred thousand of them. We’ve sold 600,000 hats so far and the previous high was something like 250,000, so I think being a team, hanging together, being an underdog and being red, white and blue has really captured this region, and in some ways the entire country.”

It has certainly made the offseason much busier for New England’s players. Vinatieri appeared on the “Late Show with David Letterman” and kicked footballs from the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater onto the roof of a parking garage as New York billionaire developer Donald Trump looked on.

“It’s been exciting to do different types of shows like that,” Vinatieri said with a wide grin. “It’s been pretty crazy, but it’s not very often you get an opportunity to do a lot of these things like winning the Super Bowl.”

Vinatieri didn’t say which was tougher – the Letterman kicking challenge or the game-winning, 45-yard field goal he drilled in blizzard conditions against Oakland in a playoff game – but Kraft said jokingly he was more impressed with the leather pants Vinatieri wore on Letterman’s show.

Milloy has also been in demand.

“Everybody wants to hear our story, but the feeling you get while you’re on the field, that’s the feeling you realize… I’ve been playing football all my life for,” said Milloy, who is a native – ironically enough – of St. Louis. “That feeling, at least for me, is enough. That’s a feeling that’s going to keep driving me the rest of my career.”

Ironically, four days before making his first trip to Maine, Milloy was spending some rare down time with friends by watching the University of Maine’s hockey team play Minnesota for the NCAA national championship.

Lawyer Milloy … watching hockey?

“It’s all about expectations. I mean you look at Maine hockey, I watched the game and everybody was pulling for them because they were kind of the underdog, like us,” Milloy explained. “I like competition and it doesn’t matter what sport it is. I watched the whole thing. It was a great game.”

Just like that 20-17 thriller against St. Louis, which should go a long way toward brightening and lightening that pessimistic, Puritanical outlook that affects the thinking of many veteran New England sports fans, who keep waiting for the other shoe to drop when it comes to following their favorite teams.

“I’ll let you make that judgement whether we’ve done that, but I hope so,” Kraft said. “When our family bought this team in 1994, my dream was to help in a small way to do whatever I could to bring this championship home. We’re really excited to have been part of this and help make this happen.”

Milloy and Vinatieri, who were part of the Patriots team that lost the 1997 Super Bowl to Green Bay, certainly appreciate the win. But even players like Hamilton, who had never before played in a Super Bowl, are keenly aware of their accomplishment’s magnitude.

“I might never get my chance again, so right now it’s a really exciting and we’re really enjoying this moment because we don’t know when we’ll ever get this chance again,” Hamilton said.