I'm Baaaaaccccckkkkkk...

Following the path of the greats is never easy, but I'm certainly going to try. I will be attempting a feat only the greatest of the greats attempt, including Michael Jordan and Brett Favre. That's right, I am un-retiring from the blogosphere. Now you might be saying to yourselves, "but Aaron, you never retired in the first place!". That is true. But in order to make a dramatic comeback you have to have an ending before it, and retiring sounds a lot better than me just being lazy. So here it is, my first post as an un-retired blogger. Print it, send it to me with a check for 25 bucks and I will sign it for you if you want.

So what could I possibly talk about that would match the brilliance of my comeback? Quite simply, Boston, the best sports city in the world. It's pretty clear that with the Sox, Celtics, Patriots, Bruins, BC and even the Revolution are WILDLY successful. You can't have that many sports team be successful and not be the best sports city in the world, because in order to be that good you have to beat the other city's teams. When I break it down like that it seems simple, doesn't it.

Lets delve a little further though. There have always been individual dynasties (Lakers, Celtics, Cowboys, Yankees) and there will always be certain teams that are good year in and year out (Red Wings, Steelers, Braves, Yankees) but never has there been a combination of the two quite like what we have. We have the dynasties that we expect to win it all (Patriots, Sox), the always good teams that you can expect to contend (Celtics, Revolution) and even have the teams that are intriguing (Bruins, BC).

So now lets go into why these teams are so good. It's really a combination of two things. On one end is management; these teams front offices are committed to winning, and are willing to admit they need help to do it. Furthermore, they oftentimes think like fans, but know when to think like management. Take the Red Sox. You can tell they are passionate about the team, but they also occasionally make the decision (letting Pedro and Damon go, trading Nomar) that fans would never make. Management is also willing to spend money and take on additional payroll when needed. Now here is where the second reason comes in.

The fans. Boston fans are the best in the country. They have the passion of fans from Philly, but they have the smarts of fans from, well, Boston. There is not a fan base smarter than Boston's. Sure, you get the occasional drunken idiot that is jobless, listens to EEI all day and gets into fights constantly, but for every one of him/her there are 10 intelligent fans that love sports while staying on the right side of the line between sane and crazy. And when you have intelligent fans you have a fan base that is successful in their lives outside of their fandom. They have good jobs, they have happy lives, which means they have money to spend. And it shows. It's a give and take situation. We have some of the highest ticket prices in the country, which means the teams make more money and in turn, spend that money towards the on the field product. And while we can complain about ticket prices (trust me, I do) we set the market for them. There is such a high demand in the market that these teams can set the prices high and know they will still sell out. The day the Sox put all their tickets up for auction is the day we see your average ticket price at 150 dollars. That's just through the Sox, not including the mark ups you would see on Stubhub and other scalping sites.

So there it is. I hope my return from retirement was as good for you as it was for me. I feel invigorated. Until next time everyone...

~Aaron Jackson