Sports City Equinox-ious (Boston - April 23, 2013)
Welcome to Sports City Equinox-ious. A blog series I'm piloting that explores a day in history that very much sucked for a particular city. But not just for one team. Not even two. Three teams. All in the same night. I know a true equinox means all four teams but they're so rare I'm allowing three. And I might even get around to doing a similar thing for best nights of a city, but since you all seem to love my sad stat blogs I'm starting by giving you animals what you want.
This is a project I've been working on for a minute by amassing data on every game score in the full history of the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB. Truth be told I'm still working on MLB games which basically goes back to the Civil War, but I have all the rest which is plenty enough to get poppin.
But this is no random process. This is measured. Calculated. Literally. In order to determine the statistical degree of how bad a night was for a city, the amount of points a team loses by has to be standardized for all three sports. Or four when we get to a true equinox-ious night. A five point loss in basketball isn't the same as losing by five in hockey. So I turned the difference in points (or runs) scored by each team into Z-scores for all sports. If you're not familiar with Z-scores, they are the last thing you remember hearing in Stats 101 before you officially tuned out and fell asleep. That's why they're called Z-scores.
All you really need to know is I have the quantified master list of every three-sport night for every city in the big four of major sports. And here's the thing. You'll never know when one of these blogs is going to drop. That'll be the fun of it. You'll never know when repressed memories stab you in the eye from your phone on your morning squat. While it might not be your city today, just know you're never really safe. I mean, unless you live in Calgary or some shit. Or if it's the middle of the summer.
Whatever.
But today we begin at the beginning. The very city this blog site started. Boston. Eleven years ago.
April 23, 2013.
6:36pm
We'll start with baseball. Gotta love April when every team still feels they have a chance. Especially when you're a fan of a team like the Red Sox who were 13-6 going against a team similarly matched at 12-8.
Yes, that's right, the Oakland A's were at one point good at baseball. However, the astute observer will notice this game only lasted seven innings leaving one to wonder if a mercy rule was actually called. Well, you could say God himself went ahead and mercy ruled this one via weather leaving the Red Sox with the home double-digit shutout L. It was so abysmal the Red Sox announced that anyone with a ticket stub could go to the game the following day for free. Like a brunch spot offering you a free meal on your next visit after a cockroach runs off your plate as it's set, these sick fucks decided the way to make it right with fans was to make them all come back for more.
The good news for Boston is this was just a bump in the road as they'd end up winning the World Series. But, this was the start of a very dark day for Boston. Both figuratively, and literally.
7:30pm
Tough night for the Bruins in the shortened 2013 season. Like the BoSox, they'd find their way to the championship series as well before falling victim to the legendary Chicago Blackhawks. But, this was a "some things are bigger than sports" kinda night as it turns out this was the first road game for the Bruins after the Boston Marathon Bombing. Philly gave them a nice pre-game tribute with a banner reading "From One Tough Town to Another" before an influx of "As a Flyers fan," tweets crashed Twitter's servers (I'm assuming).
And finally - we go to Madison Square Garden.
8:00pm
The Garnett, Pierce, Rondo, and - ehhh yeah fuck it why not - Darko Miličić Celtics era would end in this 2012-13 playoff round vs the Knicks. This game put them down 0-2 on the series which would soon after turn into a very familiar 0-3 hole. In true Celtics fashion, they decided to win a couple games just to tease their fanbase a little bit before signalling dueces in Game 6.
That's a wrap for Boston on April 23, 2013. The only thing left to do here is give a rating on how equinox-ious this night was. The answer is a red hot 9.47/10. That's right, 9.47. We're pulling out the hundredths column. Why 9.47? Because the total Z-score for all three games was shittier than 94.7% of all cities who had three major teams playing the same night.
And yes. That means there's meat on the bone left for future blogs.
Anyway, don't think for a second I didn't notice Bartolo Colon pitched that 7-inning shutout. No better way to end a blog (any blog) than with some Colon highlights. Absolute alpha of the Unit community.