Wicked Good Year

From the fall of 2007 through the spring of 2008, Boston sports fans enjoyed a run of good fortune that was unprecedented in sports history. The Red Sox won their second World Series championship in four years. The Celtics, with their newly assembled big three of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen, won their first NBA championship since 1986. And the Patriots, already hailed as the first sports dynasty of the twenty-first century, roared through an undefeated regular season before being derailed by the New York Giants in a shocking upset in Super Bowl XLII.In Wicked Good Year, acclaimed Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley tells the remarkable story of the dizzying, glorious seven months and twenty days when these three teams established Boston as the capital of the sports world. More than just a recitation of dates and games and stats, this book looks at that remarkable season through the eyes of the players, coaches, and team personnel, and explores how their lives created a fascinating backdrop to the action taking place on the field and the court.It was a season when old-time motivational techniques were reintroduced with Celtics coach Doc Rivers taking his big three on a tour of the parade route that had been traveled by the Red Sox and Patriots-just to show them what it's like to win a championship in Boston. It was a season when veteran Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, no longer happy just to be playing again after recovering from a stroke, wanted to take his game to a higher level. And it was a season when a rookie second baseman named Dustin Pedroia, seen as brash and confident from afar, actually suffered through sleepless nights as he tried to find his way in his first full season with the Red Sox.Wicked Good Year also introduces an eclectic cast of devoted fans, ranging from sidewalk Red Sox autograph collector Andrew J. Urban II to internationally known singer/actor-and Celtics fanatic-Donnie Wahlberg. Buckley's tribute is a must-read not only for the Boston faithful but also for the legions of sports fans wondering exactly how these teams worked together to shed the city's "Loserville" image that had been in place at the dawn of the new century. It is a story not just about teams that ruled but about a city that rocked.