Picture this: you’re watching baseball. Baseball, in the year of our lord 2024. In a world of one-handed catches by using the defender as the other hand, Olympic skateboarders doing this, and Jaylen Brown existing, you’re watching a guy wait 20 seconds to throw a ball at an invisible rectangle while another guy with a stick attempts to hit it an arbitrary distance. Another couple of guys stand far away picking grass, and half the players on a team may not touch a ball for three hours.
It’s August, and for Boston sports fans like myself, it’s days like these when I wonder what I’m doing with my life. The Red Sox are the only Boston-based team currently in session, and while I accept the rhetorical need of baseball to the English language — writers have been using baseball metaphors since McKinley was president — I have to hold myself hostage every July and August and pretend I care about if the Red Sox are 3.5 or 4.5 games behind the Kansas City Royals for the final wild card spot.
It’s a nightly struggle. I watch all the games while doing something productive or just actually entertaining on a second screen, looking up every once in a while whenever the players decide to actually play the sport I’m allegedly watching. I check if the Royals have won or lost before bed. Let that sink it: I check if the Kansas City Royals have won or lost a baseball game like I actually care. Who am I kidding?
Since I was old enough to let the Boston sports calendar be a roadmap for my emotional wellbeing, the two-month stretch between the end of the Boston Celtics season and the beginning of the New England Patriots season has been a difficult time for me. I’m a sports addict, and will watch anything available to me in some vain attempt to fill a void left by the fleeting glories of the Patriots and the present triumph of the Celtics. And there are great sports on TV. The WNBA season is in the stretch run, the Olympics happen every once in a while, and there are even a few tennis tournaments here and there.
But I need someone to root for that isn’t the Red Sox. My enjoyment of sports is not driven by mere excitement: it’s about sheer Boston rooting interest. The Red Sox at least have that, but baseball is like watching your neighbor mow their lawn and wondering if they’re ever going to get that last patch they seem to be missing. Of the sports that are actually exciting, is there anyone around that can save me?
Well, the Connecticut Sun are absolutely awesome and are cooking with gas at second place in the WNBA, but the league lacks a team based in Boston proper which limits my feeling of connection to the team. I’m from Massachusetts, not Connecticut! And then there’s the chilling fact that people from Connecticut might like the Yankees or the Knicks! I can’t share a basketball team with those people.
Fortunately, the Sun are really starting to lean into the Celtics connection. They played in front of a sold-out TD Garden crowd with several Celtics in attendance on Tuesday, the first ever WNBA game played at the Celtics’ home venue. DeWanna Bonner even called the Celtics their “brother team.” Maybe in the near future, the Sun can rebrand to the “New England Sun,” icing out all the New Yorkers and claiming the mantle for the other five teamless states. This is by far the most promising and exciting option.
What about tennis players from Boston? (Checks notes) Nope, no player who has been even one percent relevant in my lifetime hails from Massachusetts, let alone Boston. I guess the 2021 Lavar Cup was at TD Garden, but like… come on, man, we are just grasping at straws here. How about some major league soccer? I studied abroad in Germany, so I kind of like soccer now… aaaaaaand the New England Revolution are in last. And I don’t know what’s worse: being in last, or that I didn’t know that.
Perhaps this is the universe trying to help me. With how worked up I get about Boston sports year round, maybe a little two-month meditation is exactly what I need. Just relax. Take in the world. See some trees, touch some grass. Enjoy the sports that are on without clamoring for someone to root for. Learning how to live without the Celtics and Patriots would be a nice bit of personal growth.
But screw that. Rooting for Boston teams isn’t a disease or an addiction; it’s about feeling alive. It’s about searching for salvation in 48 minutes of basketball, and striving towards something that feels impossible but actually isn’t. I can put on a happy face for July, but by the end of August, I need my teams back.
But even with my total ridiculousness, this is a blessing in disguise. It is precisely because my teams go away that I love them so much, because no matter how stressful or out-of-control my life is, they always come back. They say the lone constant in life is change, but — barring full-blown societal collapse — the other constant will be my teams returning from hiatus. And August is the time I get to irresponsibly hope without fear of repercussions.
This year, Drake Maye will prove he’s the future of the Patriots and the Celtics will defend their title. I’m not counting on the Red Sox for anything, so I need the other two back ASAP.