Wicked Good Year is a wicked good read. Yeah, I know, but it’s an irresistible line
that happens to be true.
The 21st century had already been a good one for the sports-obsessed Boston area, with the
Red Sox breaking an 86-year run of frustration to win baseball’s World Series in 2004, and the
Patriots reeling in NFL Super Bowl victories for the 2001, 2003 and 2004 seasons. But from the
fall of 2007 through the spring of 2008, Boston enjoyed an unprecedented run of sports success,
as the Red Sox and Celtics won championships and the Patriots came within 35 seconds of capping
an undefeated season with another championship. In college sports, Boston College took the NCAA
Division 1 Hockey title. And even the Bruins were showing signs of rising from the ashes of
decades’ worth of burnt dreams.
Wicked Good Year tells the story of that time. Author Steve Buckley is a Boston
Herald sports reporter and columnist, known for his passion for the stories and the
history behind the games he covers. It’s an approach he uses with great success here, since epic
as that run of success might have been, just reading game reports and summaries of the stats
would get old pretty quickly. Instead, Buckley ties each team’s season to a unique, real life fan’s
perspective and experiences, then fills out the rest of the tale with, well, stories. All kinds
of stories. Stories from the players, former players, the coaches, other fans, other reporters,
and even the driver of one of the amphibious duck boats used for championship victory parades in
Boston. I’m a fan of the teams, but many of the stories were new to me. For example, I knew about
how the Celtics used the term ubuntu as a sort of rallying cry, but had no idea about
the tale behind where Coach Rivers picked it up or how he first used it in training camp to
imprint it on his players. Nor had I heard legendary former player Bob Cousy talk about how it
tied into the Celtics way from his day too.
Buckley talks about the history and offers up the stories in a comfortable, "intelligent
fellow sports fan sharing a couple of beers" style. It feels natural because it is; he's still
as much a fan as a reporter. This, in combination with the stories themselves, brings everything
down to a personal, human level that lets the reader relate to being a part of it all. The result
is easy reading fun for any sports fan. It's even fun to re-read—I went back to check
something and found myself re-reading the whole chapter with an appreciative grin on my face.
Recommended.