A Storied Boston Sports Weekend

The day started out as a pretty ordinary day. The Celtics were at the Garden hosting the toast of the league, Lebron James' Cleveland Cavaliers. For the past few years the Cavs have been the team to beat in the East and every year, they have been beaten. This year, though, will be different, according to all of the analysts. This will be the year of King James' coronation. But, that's not how it shook out yesterday.

The Celtics surged to a 22 point lead late in the third quarter only to stave off a fourth quarter surge by Lebron James and win 117-113. It was the Celtics, the team who had been around the block a few times, the team who had hung a banner or two in the rafters, the team with the most recent ring that would hang a big game on Lebron and his Cavs, serving notice that the Celtics were not going to quietly ride off into the sunset in 2010.

The win by the Celtics alone would've been enough to satisfy the appetite of a Boston sports fan that is dying for some good news these days, but the day was barely half over when a click of the remote flipped on pre-game chatter for Opening Day at Fenway Park.

The most storied rivalry in all of sports. The dreaded, New York Yankees, who came into the historic Fenway Park as World Champions, were in town to kick of the 2010 season. Many analysts have the Yankees repeating and some place the Boston Red Sox in third place so on paper, this might not have been much of a match-up, but paper means nothing when these two teams collide.

Josh Beckett on the mound vs. CC Sabathia was bound to be a pitchers duel and through three it was pretty close to that, but it all started to unravel as the Yankees jumped out to a 3-1 lead on back to back jacks off of Beckett and it looked like the pundits were right, this year the Red Sox would continue to not be a match for the Evil Empire.

But then, a resurgence. The Boston Red Sox, trailing 5-2 at the end of five innings, rallied with back to back 3 run innings to surge past the Yankees 9-7 in an Opening Day shot across the bow that served as a warning to the league that this Red Sox team would not be pushed around.

Neither win carried all that much weight in the grand scheme of the season. The greatest importance either game held was that the Celtics were jockeying for the three seed in the playoffs, but it was the spectacle of the day. A beautiful day in Boston. The sun was shining. The duck boats were out (not on parade just yet) and our beloved sports teams were winning.

It's that magical time of year between April and June or September and October when two of our most beloved teams, (the Celtics and Red Sox or the Red Sox and the Patriots) are playing on the same afternoon and the results are positive on both fields of play. It's a great feeling to have and something that very few cities ever have the opportunity to experience.

So, no matter what happens in the Celtics playoff push or the season series with the Yankees, we'll always have April 4th, 2010 as one of those special days in Boston sports where two of our teams knocked off two of "their" teams to bring home W's to our beloved city.