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Boston and Los Angeles don't have much in common. We have miserable winters, they have palm trees. We have Ben Affleck, they have everybody else. They have Rodney King, we have Skip Gates. It's a different world.
So when someone at ESPN decided that sports were a good way to measure two cities, as well as pump up readership for their new Boston-centric site, our friends at LAist took them to task. First, pointing out the oft-heard complaint that a Boston-centric ESPN site is redundant. Then, claiming that there are as many "sushi-eating, frappuccino-swilling, spray-tanning airheads" in Boston as in Southern California. We're not going to try to rebut either of those arguments. We love sushi.
In fact, we're going to skip over the "our fan base is better than your fan base" argument entirely. We would have gone to the mattresses with this argument ten years ago, but since we've been spoiled by success and almost passed the pink-hat-point-of-no-return, it's not something we're eager to talk about right now.
But then they get into the crux of the ESPN column: which was the better sports decade for a particular city, the 1980s in LA, or the 2000s in Boston? The verdict is that Boston won four of their arbitrary categories to LA's three. Whatever. We're going to break this down sport-by-sport, and our analysis just might bleed over the lines of the decades in question. Here goes.
(more after the jump)
Baseball. Two World Series (2004 and 2007) to two (1981 and 1988). Kirk Gibson's signature HR might be a more memorable specific moment than anything that happened in '04, but the nonstop parade of signature moments that October wins in our biased minds. Seriously, "The Homer" could be from anyone (Mazeroski? Aaron? Duane Kuiper?), but "The Steal", "The Sock", "The Slap" and "The Comeback", are pretty much locked up for good. As far as we're concerned.
The '81 Dodgers won in a strike year with a jury-rigged postseason, true, but they beat the Yankees, so we'll give them that. It can come down to Orel Hershiser in '88 versus Pedro, or Lasorda versus Tito, but we're never letting anyone beat 2004 in our analysis. We'll also give the Dodgers credit for keeping the Canseco A's from starting a dynasty. If it's still a tie, we'll ask Manny which city he loves best, and he'll probably answer Las Vegas.
If you're including the Angels (and they seem to, since Los Angeles is one of the cities they call home), we'll still take Dave Henderson's 1986 HR and recent postseason events anytime.
Football. Three Super Bowls. Best coach of all time (we did admit our bias up front, right?). They won in '84 with the Raiders, and the Rams got there in 1980, but whatever the office politics involved, for a city to have two teams move away doesn't get it a lot of points. For the purposes of our rigged analysis, we're not counting college football or AAA baseball.
Hockey. Not really a fair fight, since large swaths of our population live and breathe and grew up on hockey, and we don't get the sense that that's the case in Southern California. Since we haven't won a Stanley Cup since the 70s and they didn't win one until a couple of years ago, we'll call it a wash.
Basketball. Here's what it's going to come down to. The only sport where there is a for-real Boston/LA rivalry.
The fact is, this isn't just a rivalry, it's a rivalry that's defined the NBA. There's even a lengthy Wikipedia page, with the stirring summary, "East Coast vs. West Coast, Working class grit vs. Hollywood glitz, old tradition vs. air-conditioned luxury, and some believe white vs. black". Oh, those Wikipoets. We've known of households divided along Yankee/Red Sox lines, due to orneriness or simple geography, but we've never heard of Celtics and Lakers fans coexisting peacefully.
In their decade (the 80's) they beat us two to one head-to-head. If they hadn't gotten scraped by the Rockets in 1986, it would have been two to two, and we don't think even the most partisan LA fan would deny that. In our decade (the 00's), it's 1-0 head-to-head (and the numbers "131-92" still make us smile).
True, in both decades, the Lakers won several additional titles against non-Green teams. But in the Finals, head-to-head, it's 9-2 Celtics, so that's what we're leaning on. And don't even get us started on "Red vs. Phil."
Rick Sawyer and Kelly Greene contributed to this post.
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LAist pointed out the rings
8-6
Booyah.
Only Boston fans could claim a 6-8 victory. and considering that Anaheim is closer to LA than Foxboro is to Boston, the '02 Angels and '07 Ducks titles count as much as Spygate Bill's Superbowls, which puts the 00's at six-all. If my college athletics choices were Wellsley and MIT, I wouldn't want to count USC's two football titles as a tiebreaker either. Thank you, drive through.
Hmm...
Celtics did have a 20+ game losing streak. I guess you guys got us beat there.
How about the existence of the Clippers for a tie-breaker? LA's secret shame...