No disguise, Fauria is just one of the guys

HOUSTON -- Christian Fauria is now officially one of us.

His pipes froze.

The man who maintains that he spent seven years in Seattle without ever really "embracing" it says he was feeling like a New Englander even before he received that phone call from his wife telling him their pipes had burst in our nice little freezing temps. We all can relate to that.

Call that development his final rite of passage. This is a man who already has done the Freedom Trail, visited Plimoth Plantation, and seen Plymouth Rock. He is fascinated by our history.

"You see something in Boston, and it's from 1750," he marvels. "In LA they'll say, `How about this? Tommy's Hamburgers, established 1950!' You have to laugh."

Christian Fauria is a tight end for the New England Patriots, No. 88 on your program. There may not be a more unjocklike person on the team. Sure, he looks like a jock and he can play the game, but he carries himself so casually and comfortably in the presence of nonjocks, like, for example, the media, that it's as if he's your brother, brother-in-law, or next-door neighbor and he just happens to play football.

Am I making any sense?

Some media-friendly athletes seem, ultimately, a bit forced (Exhibit A: Gary Carter). Others, however, are just genuinely normal, well-adjusted people who aren't threatened by those who aren't exactly like them (Exhibit A: Dennis Eckersley). Fauria is from the Eckersley School of Jocks.

Sometimes when a player is especially good with the media he hears about it from his mates. "I don't think there's any problem," Fauria says. "Although Bobby Hamilton does say that every time I put on my socks there's a microphone in my face."

One-liners and assorted references easily tumble out of his mouth. Here, for example, is Fauria on ex-teammate Cortez Kennedy: "He'd go into the lunch room and you could hear him getting fatter."

And imagine the surprised look from the Japanese television reporter who asked Fauria to say a few words for the Japanese fans when Fauria responded with a smattering of Japanese. It turns out his Hawaiian-bred wife Rhonda was born in Japan.

When he finally spoke to the camera in his native tongue, he said, "It's gonna be a good game. Tune in. Follow the little brown ball. No. 88 is the No. 1 guy."

If the average Patriots player is about a 9-plus on the excitement scale about being here for Super Bowl XXXVIII, then Fauria is about a 12. Here's a 32-year-old nine-year veteran who never even had been in a playoff game until this season. "Sure, I'm excited," he says. "I've waited a long time. I know how hard it was for me to get here, and I'm going to enjoy myself. If it means I make a fool of myself, one, two or three times, I'll be able to handle it."

He's talking about showing overt enthusiasm, not about partying. He's down with the Patriots' program, or else he wouldn't be here. He's one of the many anonymous team-oriented veterans who have been targeted by Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli as being dedicated enough and intelligent enough to join the firm, as it were, and don't think he isn't flattered to be so designated. So you think he was going to do something stupid at the 11th hour, when he and his teammates were so close to claiming the big prize?

"This is my big chance," he says. "I'll be buckling down. No excuses. I don't want any visions in my head when I'm 40 about what I should have done." No need of that as the Patriots claimed a thrilling 32-29 victory.Fauria already felt he had some atoning to do. He knew very well there wouldn't have been so much talk about the offense having problems in the red zone against the Colts had he not had a severe case of the oopsies that day, dropping two passes in the end zone. This was highly uncharacteristic of the usually sure-handed Fauria, who had seven touchdown receptions in the 2002 season and two this season. Those are not pleasant memories. "I take that red zone talk very personally," he says. "That's been the hardest thing for me to handle. It was the biggest game I had ever played in. It was something I'd waited a long time for. To be honest, I wasn't as excited after that game as I should have been because I was very upset with myself. I get angry when I drop a 2-yard diagonal, and then to drop the ball in the end zone? Some guy came up to me last week with a picture of the drop and asked me to sign it. I said, `I dropped this ball. And you want me to sign it? Sorry, I can't do that.' " And he says, "But it's such a great picture!"

He's hardly the only working-class offspring on the team, but he may be one of the great products of an environment the club has. His father was a bricklayer, and he brought Christian and his two brothers into the trade early.

"My father had his rules," Fauria recalls. "No one ever sat down. If someone else is working, you had to be working. We used to toss these 16-inch blocks at each other to see if we could scratch each other's legs."

The lessons sunk in. Fauria never has been afraid of hard work, which makes him an ideal Belichick player. "I feel like I turned out pretty well," he says. "I hope I'm passing it on to my own kids."

A writer worries sometimes when a guy is this likable. Could there be a con going on? But then John Clayton, of multipurpose ESPN fame, starts chatting up Fauria, whom he covered for years during his newspaper days in Seattle. When they are done, I ask Clayton, "Is this guy for real?"

"This is the way he's been since his first day as a rookie in Seattle," Clayton confirms.

Good to know. So nice to have you, Christian, and I hope you have the name of a good plumber.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.