Wait a minute — weren’t the duck boats supposed to be rolling through City Hall Plaza right about now?
It was just a question of who would mop up first, the amazing Bruins (Stanley Cup favorites just six weeks ago) or the unbeatable Celtics?
The fan’s dilemma: Which parade to attend? Both, obviously. Hey, we’re “working” remotely, who’s going to notice?
There is no need to rehash the “Hindenburg-like” hockey implosion or the whodunit collapse of the storied Green (Butler did it!) on the TD Garden parquet late last month. To invoke a sports metaphor with a dagger-edged resonance for Boston fans, the prospect of twin championships in June has rolled placidly between our cleats.
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Boston has feasted on the greatest sports championship run of the century: 12 titles, almost double our nearest rival, Los Angeles. That number doesn’t include two Stanley Cup near-misses by the Bruins and some ersatz Super Bowl “victories” by gridiron poseurs from New York and Philadelphia.
And now? We’ve moved from the string of sumptuous victory banquets to a two-top at Applebee’s. It’s food, but it’s nothing special. Almost overnight we’ve become a sports town on a par with San Antonio, which became an American city on or around our 215th birthday. Or with New York, a city south of Attleboro, the thrice-accursed home of the former Mr. Jennifer Lopez and the Least of the Many Mannings.
What does the future hold? A double helping of Nothing Special. The Red Sox are muddling through a break-even season, again without injury-prone staff ace Chris Sale. Sated with Fenway happy talk, the cynics (“who are often right” — New York Times columnist Russell Baker) are nursing a creeping suspicion that if Alex Cora doesn’t have a garbage can to bang on, maybe he can’t conjure up a winning season.
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The Patriots? OMG. Bill Belichick, the man whom sports columnist Jason Gay calls the Grumpy Lobster Boat Captain, is waxing grumpier than ever, freighted down with two coaches integral to last season’s ghastly 8-9 losing record. Bill always has warm, supportive words for his colleagues, in this case the inept journeyman coach Joe Judge: “Yeah, he’ll do whatever I ask him to do.”
Speaking of warm and supportive, you have to chuckle knowing that the Bruins fired coach Bruce Cassidy last year for not being, well, warm and supportive; “Cassidy’s tough stances with young players caused friction,” the Globe reported at the time. What are we running here, a hockey team or the Self-Realization Fellowship?
I remember eating cereal from a box with legendary Canadian goalie Gump Worsley on the front panel. “My face is my mask,” was how Worsley explained his reluctance to wear a mask and his numerous trips to the dentist.
But I digress. Where is the disciplinarian Bruce Cassidy now? Um, in the Stanley Cup finals with a team younger than the Bruins. Fancy that.
As for the hoopsters, one would want to share former Celtics star and president of basketball operations Danny Ainge’s super-positive view of the 2022-2023 roster: “This team found joy.” Because Ainge is an “out” Mormon (“I’m always a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’m always a representative of the Boston Celtics”), I am reminded of the famous David Foster Wallace quote: “There’s always a Mormon around … trying your patience with unsolicited kindness.”
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Let’s get real. The Celtics’ young stars wilted when it mattered and the coaching was nothing to write home about. Why will next year be any different?
So, no roar of the duck boats for us. Only “the exquisite music of that strange procession,” according to C.P. Cavafy’s famous poem (and Leonard Cohen’s magnificent song) about the god Bacchus’s midnight abandonment of Marc Antony before his defeat in battle and subsequent suicide.
Indeed, the sports gods have abandoned Boston. Stick a fork in us, we’re done.
Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @imalexbeamyrnot.
