Welcome to Paradise

Published November 6, 2007
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By Joshua Applebaum

“Is this heaven?”

“No, it’s Massachusetts.”

I hate to break it to you, Ray Kinsella, but your ghost-channeling Iowa Field of Dreams has been dwarfed in sport divinity by the home state of a 37-foot-tall Green Monster. Beside the epicenter of Red Sox Nation, at 100 Legends Way, the New Garden is incubating the glorious rebirth of ultimate Celtics Pride. 22 miles southwest, Gillette Stadium has become a modern-day football colosseum, with a monopoly of 21st-century Patriots Super Bowl banners to prove it. The Boston College Eagles at Chestnut Hill? Try the #8 college football team in the nation and Matt Ryan for Heisman on for size.

Welcome to Massachusetts, the 2007 sports mecca of the universe. Never before has a single regional fanbase been blessed with such professional athletic greatness at once. If you’re a Boston sports fan, this is heaven.

Ever since The Single Greatest Comeback in Sports History, the Red Sox DNA of die-hard New England fans has been infused with Human Growth Hormones even Bud Selig couldn’t detect. The 2004 bubble has burst and a new winning culture is here to stay. After 86 cursed years of postseason futility and failure, two championships in four years is just a start.

The 2007 world champion Red Sox feature a pair of 27-year-old flamethrowing aces in Josh “Big Game” Beckett and Jonathan “Irish jig dancing fool” Papelbon. At 24, Jacoby Ellsbury is a Shoeless Joe Jackson incarnate and Dustin Pedroia the AL Rookie of the Year. Dice-K’s 27 and he’s just getting used to life in America, let alone baseball (he’s still got the gyro up his sleeve). Jon Lester is a 23-year-old southpaw cancer survivor who just threw 5.2 innings of World Series-clinching shutout ball. That scrawny kid who no-hit the hapless Orioles in September? Clay Buchholz, 23. In a land where Papi and Manny are forever kings and the bullpen is the Next Great American Band, a youth movement that puts Celtics GM Danny Ainge to shame is blossoming into a perennial champion.

But in 2007, Boston is sports heaven. The Celtics are 3-0 and Ainge is no longer a mindless wanderer fascinated by trades, expiring contracts and acquiring draft picks. Instead, he is the NBA Executive of the Year. As much as Bostonians hated to see the future sacrificed by letting Big Al go, the new-look Celtics are so loaded it’s scary. Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett? Are you kidding me? Terence Mann must have been channeling Tommy Heinsohn through Kevin Costner when he said “the people will come, Ray, they will most definitely come,” because the Celtics have Allen and the sold-out Garden is back to being the Garden. A year after the passing of the immortal shamrock godfather, the Celtics have renamed the famed parquet floor Red Auerbach Court. The planets have aligned. The New England Patriots? Robert Kraft, Scott Pioli and Bill Belichick have built it and the championships continue to come. Dynasty? Try four
Super Bowl rings in seven years. The 9-0 Patriots are so good they can’t even be jinxed, just ask Peyton Manning.

Tom Brady and his 52 men could take on Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in Sparta and still beat the spread by running up the score. In a post-Spygate world, the hooded genius has a chip on his shoulder and the greatest offensive firepower ever assembled to work with, i.e. Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth, Laurence Maroney and the greatest signal caller in the history of the solar system. Welcome to the zenith of the Patriots dynasty.

The big-bad Bruins? Hey, I love Patrice Bergeron (get well soon) and Tim Thomas more than anybody but no heaven is that perfect, right?

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