Opening shots were delivered
PHILADELPHIA — It was closing in on 10 p.m. as the Red Sox were meeting around the pitchers’ mound at Citizens Bank Park on Friday, enjoying a celebratory handshake line after a tidy 5-3 win over the Phillies.
With that, Phase 1 of the great Boston takeover of Philadelphia was complete.
One down, one to go.
Right about the same time, just a few parking lots over and a short walk down Broad Street, the Celtics were looking to make it a double Boston knockout, but it was one of their own who’d been knocked down.
Grant Williams, on the wrong end of a Joel Embiid size-17 high top, was face down on the hardwood, an involuntary faceplant leaving him more than a little bit dazed and, as seen once he made his way back to the bench, bleeding from the mouth.
But the Celtics, like Williams, got up from the mat, using the final five-plus minutes to fight off one last run by the 76ers for a win and a 2-1 lead in their second-round playoff series.
A big 3-pointer from Malcolm Brogdon, another by Al Horford, then 7 straight points from Jayson Tatum and a Philly five-second violation turnover, and the home fans were streaming for the exits.
They wore the same sad faces of their baseball counterparts.
And thus was it two down, three to go in this epic Boston-Philadelphia sports weekend, a five-games-in-three-days basketball-baseball bonanza that put two of the most rabid and most loyal East Coast sports cities in the same ring, daring each other to emerge victorious.
The early returns lived up to the worst of the Philly fan night-
mares, aptly described under a Friday Philadelphia Inquirer headline, “The Bostons are Coming, and Philly is Wicked Chapped,” in which local columnist Marcus Hayes opened with the line, “Like a springtime Nor’easter, the Red Sox and Celtics descend on Philadelphia on Friday. They will only be slightly less welcome than locusts, or plague.”
“Should be an intense weekend,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora mused before his team’s first pitch Friday, only joking that he might just get himself tossed so he could head over to watch the Celtics game in person. That didn’t happen, of course, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be checking scores all weekend.
“It’s too bad we’re playing at the same time, and Sunday we’re hopping on a plane to Atlanta . . . These guys last year, they fell short [losing in the NBA Finals to Golden State], and they’re on a mission. When they’re playing at that high level, intensity, it’s hard to beat them. But it’s the playoffs. It should be fun.”
With a big win by the Sox (a Chris Saleanchored gem for the team’s seventh straight) followed by an important win by the Celtics (a balanced, dominant effort that recaptured home-court advantage), it was a fun night for the Bostons, especially for those who made the journey south to make sure their Celtic green jerseys and Red Sox red numbers were represented among the throngs of people filling the streets around the area known as the sports complex. But if the visitors were like salmon swimming upstream early, they were the last ones left standing late.
A win for chowder over cheesesteaks, for Dunkin’ over Wawa, for Ben Affleck over Bradley Cooper, the Tea Party over the Liberty Bell, and Sam Adams over Ben Franklin. As sports cities go, Boston and Philadelphia might have more in common than they care to admit, small big cities, who, in the words of Sox DH Justin Turner “wear their emotions on their sleeves, who cheer you on when you do good things and let you know when you’re not doing good things.”
But don’t be too fooled — though they might be bound by their mutual disdain for all things New York, they are distinct rivals with a rich and longstanding history of their own, of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale rueing the inability to stop Boston Strangler Andrew Toney, but of getting their revenge across a decade of Celtics greatness.
It didn’t stop with the Celtics. Overall, Boston owns 39 titles in the four major sports. Philly? 17. Even better: Boston has won 12 of those since 2001. Philly? Two.
And on it goes: The Celtics have beaten the Sixers in 14 of their 21 previous postseason series, including the last five. Heck, Friday night’s Sox win made it eight in their previous 12 appearances at Citizens Bank Park.
There have been blips of course, moments Boston would rather forget. Philly
Philly will live on in infamy, that “Philly Special” Super Bowl trick-play-fueled victory in Minnesota forever leaving a stain on Tom Brady’s amazing Patriots reign. But nothing changes the fact that the Patriots still won six Super Bowls with Brady and Bill Belichick together. The Eagles’ hero of that Super Bowl LII shocker, Nick Foles, was released on Friday by the Colts.
And even while the Bruins shake off the embarrassment of going from this year’s Presidents’ Trophy winners to first-round playoff losers, they can at least claim a Stanley Cup this generation, their 2011 win far more recent than the Flyers’ last one in 1975. That back-to-back title run did start at the Bruins’ expense, coming a year after the Broad Street Bullies rode a Bernie Parent shutout in Game 6 to beat the Bruins for the Cup.
Now it’s all up to the Celtics, and as they swallowed Embiid’s pregame MVP award presentation with their convincing win, as they silenced Game 1 hero James Harden with their dominating defense, as their baseball brethren Red Sox worked next door to mute Bryce Harper’s emotional homecoming after a rapid return from Tommy John surgery, it was an all-Boston night in Philadelphia.
With the first two wins down, it was three more to go for a sweep. Score one for the Bostons.