The Bostons are coming, and Philly is wicked chapped

BOSTON — Like a springtime Nor’easter, the Red Sox and Celtics descend on Philadelphia on Friday. They will only be slightly more welcome than locusts, or plague.

The petty Philadelphia feels toward its older, uglier sister goes far beyond Pilgrims getting more origin credit than Quakers, or the fact that I-95 runs directly from the Cradle of Liberty to Miami and you have to divert in New Jersey to get some Brotherly Love. The Cradle of Liberty had all the cool stories, while Philly was Nerd Central when the nation was born. Yes, all the patriotic paperwork was dictated in Philly’s Old City, but New England told us The British Are Coming not long after their Tea Party. Boston gave us Aerosmith. Philly? Hall and Oates.

Philly’s greatest coup: Ben Franklin was from Boston, but he chose Philadelphia. He even lied about getting a girl pregnant to escape.

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These days, the petty goes far beyond those old jealousies.

You see, Boston has won 39 championships in the four major sports, more than twice Philadelphia’s 16. Worse, it has won 12 of them since 2001. Philly has won two: baseball in 2008 and football in 2017. What used to be commiseration — Eagles fans rooted for plucky Tom Brady in his first Super Bowl and the Sox were so cursed for so long that many Philly fans adopted them as their American League surrogate — but ever since Dave Roberts stole second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, well, the region has grown utterly insufferable.

Well, more insufferable. You’d think a region with 58 colleges would understand the value of humility, but no. Between Harvard’s eight U.S. presidents and MIT’s radar legacy, the Athens of America has always looked down on Philly’s academic scene. Hey, at least we’ve got Trump.

After all this winning and all this history, Bostonians’ breath no longer smells of beans and chow-dah; rather, it reeks of self-satisfaction. If “smug” had a perfume, it would be called “Bas-tin Hah-buh.”

If you hate sports’ devolution into analytics, then blame Boston, where Bill James founded the cult and where Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey presides over its annual pilgrimage, the Sloan conference at MIT. If you go, carry breath mints. To hand out.

The Red Sox and Bruins have, at least, earned a measure of respect. The Sox have two World Series titles since the Mets and Yankees won their last. The Bruins bounced back to win the Stanley Cup the year after their history-making choke in the 2010 playoffs, when the Flyers came back from a 3-0 series deficit.

But Boston has the curious distinction of producing not only the most despised basketball team in NBA history but also the most hated football franchise, coach (Bill Belichick), and quarterback (Brady, but Aaron Rodgers is gaining).

The Eagles lost Super Bowl XXXIX to NFL’s kings of cheating, but exacted revenge in Super Bowl LII. Meanwhile, the Celtics have beaten the Sixers in 14 of their 21 postseason series, including the last five. They’re supposed to win this one, too — they made it to the NBA Finals last season and they have beaten the Sixers four times in six games this year — but they stand at 1-1, and Joel Embiid’s knee feels better today. We hope.

I’m not a native of the Philadelphia region, so that gives me a measure of objectivity unusual for a Philly writer. That is, as objective as someone can be who grew up worshiping Julius Erving and loathing Larry Bird.

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What this wry and mirthless seaside city boasts in brains and titles it lacks in presentation, infrastructure, and food.

Boston was founded 393 years ago, and with any luck, it will be repaired and completed within the next 393 years. Each town has surface streets that are embarrassingly badly maintained, but Boston has approximately 7,000 intersections with at least five or more spokes; if you close your eyes, you can see the cows who created those paths. Their roads are narrower than a Puritan’s worldview. The “sideswipe” is an actual paint job in southern New England.

But then, what can you expect from a region that considers L.L. Bean its barometer of fashion and whose men wear this wicked cool uniform: work boots, backward Red Sox cap, and dungaree shorts (denim). Granted, most of those Southies take their hats off at church weddings. But only after the processional.

Philly’s a far better food town, but Boston might be the best city for soup on the planet, and it has glorious seafood options ... but it seems criminal to ruin lobster by serving it cold and mayonnaised on a stale roll.

The cities are well-known for their rowdiness, and, predictably, each has a hit sitcom set in a bar, doing a fair job of representing the typical resident. Everybody knows your name at Cheers, where the sedentary squat to whine, but It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where millennial idlers live locked in adolescent limbo. Australians, legendary partyers themselves, seem drawn to Boston, which makes sense, since they share that isolated-penal-colony feel.

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For all of its shortcomings, and despite the Phillies’ recent Red October intensity, there is no comparison to Fenway and whatever Boston is calling its Garden, and the knowledge and focus of their fans is without equal. You see 90-year-old grandmas filling out scorecards at Red Sox games, and even the most casual Celtics fan knows that Al Horford is a perimeter defensive liability compared with Robert Williams. Just imagine how good the fans would be if any of them was sober enough to drive home.

Fortunately, the well-documented goodwill of the Delaware Valley ensures that Philadelphia will welcome its Bostonian foes this weekend with the level of respect they deserve.

Too bad it hasn’t snowed lately.

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