BOSTON: A CITY ACCUSTOMED TO EXCELLENCE
Toronto will never measure up to steady stream of champions crowned in beantown
When I was a kid, I became a fan of the Boston Red Sox.
It was a natural thing for a 10-year-old to do in Toronto. The Maple Leafs of that time — the baseball team not the hockey team — happened to be the triple-A farm team of the Red Sox. So it was natural, that when Reggie Smith went from playing shortstop in Toronto to playing centre field in Boston, and when Dick Williams went from managing the Leafs to almost winning the World Series in Boston in 1967, they became my team.
My fascination with Boston sports began with my dad. He was the baseball nut in our house. He would tell me, mostly by reading box scores and The Sporting News, that Ted Williams was the greatest hitter there ever was, the greatest he ever saw, even though I wasn’t certain he’d ever seen him play in person.
Over time, the Blue Jays arrived and the Maple Leafs ball team moved to Louisville and I left the Red Sox behind and somehow have spent a life writing stories about sports, still with some kind of fascination of all that is Boston sports and all that isn’t Toronto.
There is a statue of Bobby Orr, maybe the greatest hockey player ever, outside the TD Garden, home of the Bruins. There is a statue outside Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena called Legends Row. There are 14 Maple Leafs players of note being honoured there. None of them are in the conversation of greatest ever. Outside Toronto’s Rogers Centre, there is a statue of the late Ted Rogers, who deserves a statue of some kind, as a leader of commerce.
I send a cheque to the company Rogers founded every month to pay for cellphone, cable, internet, home phone and security. For that, he deserves a statue.
Boston is about all-time greats. Toronto is about business and celebrating wealth.
Since the Blue Jays last won the World Series in 1993 — a group that is being honoured next Saturday — Boston has won 10 major sporting league championships.
The NFL’s New England Patriots have won five Super Bowls and lost three of them. That’s eight title games alone at a time when Toronto has had none. The Bruins have won the Stanley Cup once, but if you go back to the last Leafs championship, in 1967, Boston has won three Cups and has reached the finals six other times. That’s nine times playing for the championship Canadians cherish the most. The Leafs, now contending in this summer of uber-hockey excitement, have been a non story through all this Boston success.
Since 1993, the Celtics have won an NBA championship and lost in the Finals. They’ve won 16 NBA titles in my lifetime, with so many all-time greats like Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, John Havlicek and Larry Bird. Now they have a dynamic young team that may be about to take over the Eastern Conference. The Raptors have won nothing, and you can argue between DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry, Chris Bosh and Vince Carter about greatest player in team history. Russell and Bird they are not. Some cities just get fortunate regarding who winds up playing for their teams and who ends up elsewhere. Boston had Orr and Williams, Russell and Bird, Carl Yastrzemski, Phil Esposito and Raymond Bourque. It is where Roger Clemens began and Mookie Betts has grown into the second best player in baseball.
And Tom Brady, well, there is no comparison to Tom Brady anymore. He stands alone, the way Orr stood alone, the way Russell stood alone, the way Bird stood alone, the way Teddy Ballgame stood alone. Legend upon legend in maybe the greatest and deepest of American sports towns.
The best Blue Jays player in history, in my mind, has been Roberto Alomar. He played only five seasons with the Jays. He did everything back then. But I don’t suspect that 50 years after he’s retired that anyone will be making documentaries about him the way in which they write books and make films about Williams.
Dave Keon was voted the greatest Maple Leafs player in franchise history, and that designation could change before Auston Matthews’ career comes to an end. Keon was a marvellous player who contributed wonderfully to four Stanley Cup teams in the 1960s. But he didn’t change the game the way Orr did, didn’t dominate statistically and with awards. On any list of the Top 100 players in history, it starts with Wayne Gretzky and Orr, one and two or two and one. Keon might find a place somewhere about halfway down.
Then there is this Red Sox team in Toronto for a series against the faceless Blue Jays. They are headed for their first 100-win season in 72 years. Quite likely, they’ll win the most games they have ever won, this coming in a year in which the Bruins knocked off the Leafs, the Patriots are again Super Bowl threats, and the Celtics played in the Eastern Conference Final.
I still have clear memories of that 1967 World Series, the first one I cared about, the excitement learning Leafs call-up Gary Waslewski was the surprise starter for Game 6 against the St. Louis Cardinals. A season with a name: The Impossible Dream. It made me a baseball fan for life. And a sports lover appreciative of decades of talent Toronto has never known.