Paradetown?

“Things are changing, and I think that’s an incredibly exciting thing to watch, and witness, and be a part of. This is a town that has a chance to literally have two or three parades a year for the next decade.”
--Curt Schilling on the new face of the Boston pro sports scene

Wow.

The period in Boston sports from 2001-2005 almost seemed like an embarrassment of riches. The Red Sox actually won the World Series before I died and the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Three times. Typing that actually still makes me want to giggle a little bit. The sum total of those long-awaited and hard-earned championships brought me enough joy, satisfaction, and outright happiness that, as Bill Simmons noted, I would have no right to complain about anything for years.

Cut to: 2007. Suddenly not one, not two, but three of my hometown teams have legitimate and simultaneous championship aspirations. The last, and maybe only, time that we came close to achieving the unprecedented "trifecta" was in 1986, when the Celtics had the best team of all time and the Sox and Pats each lost the championship in different yet painful fashion. I even remember proudly wearing a "City Of Champions" t-shirt emblazoned with the logos of all three teams. But that title wasn't thoroughly accurate. Close, but not quite.

It's amazing to think that we could possibly be on the precipice of topping '86. The Patriots have to be the favorites, and naturally I see nothing less than another Lombardi trophy this year. Even during the recent championship seasons, I said that I thought that the Patriots hadn't been as good as they could be, and this season could prove that. They aren't just going to be good, they are going to be ridiculously good. Mark my words: this is the Pats team against which all others will be judged. The Randy Moss acquisition is such a coup that the transaction itself will be looked at with sheer disbelief by future generations. Moss will have a plaque in Canton and a couple of New England Super Bowl rings, and people will wonder how the hell we ever pulled that off. Tom Brady to Randy Moss. Sick!

Kevin Garnett is a Boston Celtic, finalizing a rash of moves that made Celts GM Danny Ainge look like a college freshman with his first credit card. The most amazing thing about the current state of the team is that he has completely shredded the entire team concept and the way that the whole roster had been put together in the span of one summer. We had a nucleus of promising young talent that looked to be 2-3 years away from possibly being a factor in the playoffs. Instead, we now have the best trio this side of Phoenix and we're the odds-on favorites in the Eastern Conference. And if you don't believe that, then just tell me the rest of Cleveland's starting five, aside from LeBron James, that led them to the Finals this year. Heck, name two other starters. Right. The Ray Allen and Garnett trades are a huge dice roll, to some degree. We parted with picks and talented young players that could have helped us with the previous plan. But now there's a new plan: win. Win now. For the first time in five years, the Boston Celtics are relevant again, and for the first time in around fifteen, we're actual contenders. And man, will they be fun to watch.

Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox have the best record in baseball, due in large part to the game's best bullpen (pen ERA of 2.74). So what did they do? They added the game's only active reliever that won a Cy Young award, the nasty Eric Gagne, who will now be tasked with setting up for Jonathan Papelbon...along with Hideki Okajima, who has only put up an eye-popping ERA of 0.87 so far. Our bullpen, as I noted before, was great before. Now, if they all stay healthy, I'm not sure I even know which adjective to use. Filthy? Sick? Disgusting? Unfair? Pick one. It's a pen built for October, and with the way the schedule break the Red Sox could conceivably win the Division Series using only six pitchers: Beckett, Schill, Dice-K, and the lights out relievers.

Naturally I'm looking at all of these scenarios incredibly optimistically. There are still lots of things that could go wrong for each of my favorite teams.

But if a few things go right, we might have three more parades in less than a year.