By Jaime Gweshe
“If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.”
Any Bostonian would tell you Mark Twain may as well have been talking
about sports.
Boston sports fans have seen their fair share of historic collapses, heartbreaks, improbable wins and celebrations, particularly in the past 25 years.
In the 80’s the Celtics were dominant during the Larry Bird Era, cementing their place as one of the most storied franchises in the NBA, winning championships in 1981, 1984, and 1986. Elsewhere in Boston things looked promising, but teams were unsuccessful in reaching the pinnacle of sports glory. The Patriots made it to the Super Bowl in ’86 but were defeated, and the Red Sox saw the same fate that year with the infamous between-the-legs Buckner blunder of the ‘86 World Series. The Big Bad Bruins followed suit when they lost in the Stanley Cup Final in ‘88.
Afterwards, things were quiet in Boston.
“When I got here we used to struggle with what we were going to write about,” said Joe Sullivan, editor of the Boston Globe’s sports section who arrived in 1994. “The Red Sox were sometimes a contender, sometimes not. The Patriots were building, the Celtics were just mediocre if not awful, and the Bruins were cheap and never went anywhere in the playoffs.”
However, with the new Millennium, a new era began in Boston. In the past decade confetti has rained down on the city as duck boats filled with champions rolled through the streets.
The New England Patriots kicked off the trend of victories with a trio of citywide celebrations for their Super Bowl wins in ‘01, ‘03, and ‘04. The Red Sox followed suit winning the World Series in ‘04 to end the Curse of the Bambino and won again in ‘07. The Celtics won in ‘08 and the Bruins followed with a Stanley Cup Championship in ‘11.
“It’s this incredible sequence of championship teams in Boston,” said Sullivan. “Now all the teams are not only expected to be contenders, but usually are. It went from sort of an afterthought to this incredible cauldron of competition between the big four sports. They’re all good and all championship contenders. It’s really kind of an amazing streak; if you look elsewhere in America it just doesn’t happen.”
With a new decade of winning, Boston teams have been put under a microscope, and the City of Champions has become the City on the Hill.
“The biggest change is probably expectation,” said Globe sports writer Kevin Paul Dupont. “The Red Sox had lost since 1918 – the Patriots were never much from the time they started in 1960 – they used to call them the Foxboro Follies, so I think the biggest change in culture and atmosphere is the fact that everyone expects more.”
What captivates the fans isn’t just the expectation to win, but thriving on the drama of big losses just as much as they do with big wins. This makes recent failures of teams and changes not that big of a deal in terms of fan interest.
“I feel there’s almost more interest during the bad times,” said CBS sports reporter Mike Hurley. “As much as people complain about the media blowing things out of proportion, the fact is that human beings love drama… It all probably stems from all the losing over the years; it’s just what we’re all used to.”