The Red Sox once again are on the outside looking in. The Sox have failed to make the playoffs for the third year in a row and the fifth time in six years. The Sox had appeared destined for a playoff spot at the midseason All-Star break, only to falter miserably in the second half of the season, a pattern of the past three years.
As for the pathetic Patriots, it’s hard to imagine them winning more than one or two games for the remainder of the year, which means they will finish up even worse than last year’s four-win team, leaving them out of the playoffs for the fourth season in the past five. Even worse to contemplate is that the future for the Pats appears dim. As long as Allen, Mahomes, and Jackson are still in their prime, the Pats at best will be a .500 ballclub for the next decade.
Although both the Sox and the Pats enjoyed incredible success in the first two decades of this century, the downward trajectory for both teams is not all that surprising. The Sox and the Pats may be rated among the most valuable sports franchises in the world — the Patriots recently were ranked the fourth most-valuable NFL team — but the ownerships of both teams take their incredibly loyal fan base for granted and appear disinterested in constructing a championship-caliber team.
The Pats’ demise must be particularly galling for owner Bob Kraft, who often speaks of being a Patriot fan from the founding of the franchise in 1960 and then enduring the decades when the Patriots were among the worst teams in the NFL.
Although younger Boston sports fans came of age during a 20-year period of excellence, the woeful performances of the Sox and the Pats these days bring back sad memories for older fans of the early 1960s for the Red Sox (“When April’s high expectations turned to September’s tears”, in the words of Ken Coleman on the Impossible Dream record) and the latter half of that decade when the Pats were the worst team in the NFL.
Ironically, when the Pats and the Sox were awful in that era, it was the Celtics who brought us success with their incredible run of NBA titles led by Bill Russell — and once again the Celts seem to be our only hope for joy once again, just as they were six decades ago.
With the tough summer for Sox fans behind us and the fall football season fast-forwarding (so it ends quickly) for the Patriots, hopefully the Celts will bring us some salvation this coming winter and spring.