Shipping up to Boston
As the lone Boston sports fan on this blog's roster, I feel that it's necessary for me to take up the city's mantle and point out the day Boston sports teams had yesterday.
Three major teams—the Bruins, the Celtics, and the Red Sox—all had games yesterday. Two of the three teams had crucial playoff games. All three won, two in dramatic fashion.
Any one of these games would have been a pretty good day for a city. Any two would have been great. But all three in one day is a pretty remarkable feat (though considering the recent resurgence of Boston as a sports city in the last decade, a feat that seems like it happens there more often than you'd expect).
First off (with a 7:30 start time) was the Boston Bruins' Eastern Conference semifinals Game Five against the Carolina Hurricanes. The Bruins had lost three straight in the series to go down 3-1, making this an elimination game.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
The Bruins showed up, though, besieging the Canes with 40 shots and scoring four times. Tim Thomas, the Bruins' star goalkeeper (I say "star" because I, a non-hockey fan, have heard of him) made 19 saves to preserve the 4-0 shutout.
Next up (an 8:00 start, and the next earliest finish) was the Celtics' Eastern Conference semifinal Game Four against the Orlando Magic. The Celtics were down 2-1 in the series going in, and a loss would likely have crippled them and reduced their odds of moving on to face the LeBrons in the conference finals to nil.
They played a much closer game. Neither team was able to extend a lead to double digits, and with 11.3 seconds to play, the Magic were ahead by one. The Celtics were able to run a set play to get their third option—Glen "Big Baby" Davis, who has referred to himself also as "The Ticket Stub"—open for a long jumper at the buzzer to give them a 95-94 win, and a 2-2 series tie going back to Boston.
Which brings us to the evening's grand finale, a Sunday Night Baseball game between my Red Sox and Peter's Tampa Bay Rays, which I believe is either the best or second-best rivalry going in Major League Baseball right now (if the Mets and Phillies have a fist-fight this year, which is highly possible, they'd probably be the outright winners).
It was a tight game, with both Josh Beckett and Matt Garza pitching fairly well, but with both offenses able to get a few shots in. In the bottom of the eighth, the Red Sox' new Captain Clutch, Jason Bay, followed David Ortiz's leadoff double with one of his own to put the Sox on top, 4-3.
So the closer, Jonathan Paplebon, came in to shut the door in the ninth. He promptly put the tying and go-ahead runs on base with no outs, and was facing three-quarters of the Rays' Murderer's Row—Carlos Pena, B.J. Upton, and Carl Crawford, but thankfully not Evan Longoria—in a position where he basically had to strike all three out to avoid blowing the save. He then struck all three out to avoid blowing the save.
There are a lot of cities with multiple major sports teams, but I honestly can't remember a time when one city's teams were all so good, at least not a city with so many teams. In 2003, the Pacers won 61 games and the Colts went to the AFC Championship Game (losing, appropriately enough for this post, to the New England Patriots).But that's only two teams, neither of which was able to win a championship.
The New York Giants won Super Bowl XXI only a few months after the Mets won the 1986 World Series (again, appropriately, against the Red Sox), but the Yankees finished second in their division (missing the playoffs) and the Jets lost their last five games, still making the playoffs but losing to the Cleveland Browns (the Browns!) in the second round.
So neither of these examples quite measures up to the last decade of Boston sports: three Super Bowls, two World Series', and an NBA Championship, with more possibly to come.
This is really just an interesting coincidence, since these teams don't really affect each other that much (though surely having other good teams in the city excites fans at each event, and it's been documented before how Patriots players and Red Sox players go to Celtics games, and Patriots go to Fenway, etc.). But as a fan of Boston sports in general, it's an interesting coincidence that makes sports a little bit more fun to watch.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
