For the third year in a row and fifth time in six years, the Red Sox appear doomed to fail to reach the playoffs, a stretch of futility that the Patriots promise to mimic almost precisely if they fall short of the playoffs for their third straight season and fourth time in five years.
Both of our beloved teams enjoyed unprecedented success through the first two decades of this century, with the Pats winning six Super Bowls and the Sox winning four World Series.
Thanks to that streak of success, both the Sox and the Pats rank among the most valuable sports franchises in the world, even amidst an exponential increase in the value of all pro sports teams worldwide.
Both the Sox and Pats enjoy an incredibly loyal fan base — and the ownership knows it. They have calculated that the fans will continue to shell out large sums for the “experience” of being at Fenway and Gillette in person, even if it’s to watch a mediocre (or worse) product.
When the current owners took over the Sox and the Pats more than 20 years ago, they vowed to reinvigorate what had been moribund franchises for decades — and they delivered on those promises. For the ownerships of both teams however, the Pats and the Sox today constitute just a piece of their global sports enterprises.
Sad to say, it would appear that the owners of both the Sox and the Pats are content to sit on their past laurels. It would seem that they’ve grown weary of the pursuit of excellence — with the result that for local sports fans, there’s no longer any joy in Mudville on Sunday afternoons.