It’s just after 8 a.m. Sunday morning. Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals is 12 hours away. Right now, I have no idea if the Boston Bruins are going to win and send the series to a deciding Game 7, or if the St. Louis Blues and their fans are enjoying the party of their lives.
I guess that makes this a message in a bottle of sorts. It applies if you’re lamenting a Boston Stanley Cup that slipped away, or if you’re winding yourself up for Game 7 on Wednesday.

Enjoy this. Wrap your arms around every second of this run of Boston sports success. Not that you need reminding, but the Stanley Cup Final is the third championship appearance by one professional sports teams in a one city in seven months.

This is a four leaf clover riding a unicorn to cash in a winning lottery ticket. The Red Sox and Patriots are world champions. There is no reason to be upset about anything Boston sports related.
After dominating all comers in 2018, the Red Sox are sputtering through the 2019 season around .500. The Red Sox were so dominant last season they made it look easy.
It is not easy, and maybe last year we the fans lost sight of that. Now that the team struggles to find its footing in 2019, we the fans grow impatient. We want a sequel of the romp, not a reimagining in which the hero must overcome adversity.
The Patriots received their Super Bowl LIII rings this past week. At this moment, your local high school team is probably deeper at tight end than the Patriots. Maybe Rob Gronkowski will abbreviate his retirement and maybe he won’t. Unless you’re Bill Belichick or Josh McDaniels or Tom Brady, early June is not the time to waste one second thinking about it.
Maybe it’s because the championships come one after the other in a conga line of victory that we don’t seem to relish them as much as we could. Win, parade, and on to the next. If the next isn’t another parade, we get surly.
The recent death of former Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner is a reminder we can be vicious. People can cite the standing ovation Buckner received in his return to Fenway Park in 1990 as proof fans had “forgiven” him a long time ago.
This view ignores that Buckner never needed to be “forgiven” in the first place. He was an unfair punchline for more than 30 years.
So, it’s Monday morning and the Stanley Cup Final is over and you’re fuming about non-calls on obvious penalties. Maybe you’re wondering what you’re going to do with that day off you planned for the Bruins parade.
Maybe the Bruins won and you’re tying yourself in knots in anticipation of Game 7. Wednesday night isn’t far off, but the mind can wander.
Upset or eager, pause and enjoy it. There are fans all over the continent who would love to have our problems. The next time one of the Boston teams wins a championship, the collective groan of frustration from the rest of North America’s sports world will register on the Richter Scale.
Ignore it, and make your applause louder.


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