Why You Should Root Against the Patriots: As far as me and my buddies can tell, no American city has captured all three of the big pro sports championships (baseball, football, basketball) in one twelve-month year. But Boston has one in hand right now (baseball), a football team that’s a freakish juggernaught, and a basketball team that’s one of the best in the East. Mark my words: If Boston pulls off all three championships, their sports fans will achieve a level of smug insufferability that will make all the rest of us miserable. (And remember, I’ve got to sit near Bostonian Mearls, so this is a very real danger.)
And I genuinely like the Celtics—how can you not admire Garnett’s intensity and work ethic? So please, someone beat the Patriots so I’m not forced to root against the Celtics.
As a side note, someone with some sort of sports-database access could probably tell me whether it’s actually true that no city has captured all three championships in the same year. I could think of only one city that pulled off two-out-of-three: Boston in 2004 (Sox and Patriots). There may be others. And if you include hockey or college sports, then that muddies the waters further, but there might be some really neat “this was the perfect time to be a fan” moments in history out there.
And if you accept the premise that three championships in a 12-month period is the best thing that could happen to a city’s sports fans, then perhaps the most soul-crushing thing would be for a city’s three teams to all reach their respective championship games, then lose. I don’t think that’s ever happened either. I could think of only one city that did a two-out-of-three. Surprise, surprise—it’s Boston, whose Patriots lost the January 1986 Superbowl to the Bears, then whose Red Sox lost the World Series (the Bill Buckner grounder, remember?) the following October. But the Celtics were pretty darn good during that timespan.
This suggests that there may in fact be something special about Boston sports fans, who’ve experienced the greatest highs (2004 and maybe now) and the most crushing lows (1986) in the last 25 years. As someone with a genetic mandate to root for Chicago sports teams, I can’t tell you how much it pains me to admit this.
