This sports week is about as good as it gets in Boston
This sports week — beginning with the Red Sox-Yankees reintroduction Tuesday night and culminating with Monday’s Patriots Day festivities — is about as good as it gets here.
Which is to say that these seven days are as good as being a sports fan gets anywhere.
Is that arrogant? I can see how fans in another market, envious of a Boston sports fan’s assorted riches this century, could take it that way. Especially in New York.
But more than anything, it’s the truth.
Just look at what we’ve got going on right now, in the recent days that have passed and the ones immediately ahead.
The Bruins opened their first-round series with the talented Maple Leafs under the assumption that the teams were fairly evenly matched — or at the least, that the Leafs would be a worthy foe. For a well-played first period and moments in the second in the opener Thursday night, they were.
Then the Bruins tapped the accelerator and pulled away from the Leafs a in 5-1 victory that was so satisfying and reassuring that you’d think it followed a script submitted by a Bruins fans.
The Bruins excelled on the power play and the penalty kill, and were pretty darned good 5-on-5 too.
David Backes and his teammates celebrate a second-period goal in Game 1.
They solved Leafs goalie Craig Anderson, with five different Bruins scoring.
Meanwhile, Tuukka Rask stopped 26 of 27 shots, some in spectacular fashion.
Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy were impenetrable, looking like the most well-rounded defensive pairing in the NHL.
David Krejci — the player who has led the NHL in points in two different postseasons — found his playoff form. And Playoff Krejci is a dominator.
Brad Marchand agitated in an especially creative way. There are no penalties or punishments for smooching a nemesis, right?
Amusingly, the best baseball play of the night might have happened in the hockey game, when the Bruins’ Sean Kuraly bunted in a puck out of thin air for the home team’s fourth goal of the game.
But there was plenty of compelling baseball action to be found a few miles away at Fenway yet again. Rick Porcello — sensational in 2016, suboptimal in ’17 — pitched like he’d found that old Cy Young form, pumping in sinking strikes to keep the allegedly mighty Yankees hitless into the seventh inning.
I’ll cop to believing Porcello’s Cy Young season was a fluke — he’s not going 22-4 again — but if he can be 90 percent of the pitcher he was that season, the Red Sox will have the best No. 3 starter in the American League.
He was as good Wednesday night as he has been in a Red Sox uniform. And it came at a relatively meaningful time.
His performance and the Red Sox’ awakened offense propelled the Red Sox to a 6-3 win and their second victory in the three-game series. Given what happened Wednesday night — a good ol’ fashioned donnybrook in which the Yankees’ Tyler Austin charged Sox pitcher Joe Kelly after getting a retaliatory plunking in the ribs for a dirty slide earlier — Thursday’s victory felt as meaningful as any can on April 12.
(Kelly’s almost casual “Let’s go’’ callout of Austin probably caused him the largest one-day rise in popularity among Red Sox fans since J.D. Drew’s grand slam in Game 6 of the 2007 ALCS.)
It is nice to have some real contentiousness return to the rivalry.
This Red Sox-Yankees rivalry feels like it’s heading somewhere memorable this season.
The Red Sox and Yankees look like ascending powerhouses in the American League, with new managers and reloaded rosters. While the champion Astros are the team to beat, this could be the first year since 2004 that the Red Sox and Yankees have a chance to end each other’s season in the playoffs. This feels like it’s heading somewhere memorable.
Their first clash of the season did nothing to quell the notion that the rivalry is back at full-throttle. It’s nice to have some real contentiousness back. Even better is winning two of three and entering Friday night’s series opener with the Orioles with a 4.5-game lead over the Yankees already.
Toronto is 2.5 back entering Friday night’s game, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s about the Sox and the Yankees, finally and again.
The Red Sox and Yankees don’t meet again until a four-game series in the Bronx beginning May 8. That one is worth anticipating. But in the immediate interim, there’s so much to keep a Boston sports fan entertained.
The Bruins and Leafs clash in Game 2 Saturday night. The Celtics take on Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks in their first-round playoff series starting Sunday. Red Sox-Orioles games can get pretty contentious, too. And Monday is the best day of the year — the late-morning Red Sox game overlapping the Boston Marathon.
Is it arrogant to acknowledge our sports riches? Go ahead and let the outsiders call it that. We’ll be too busy appreciating all we have to pay it much notice.
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