Boston Offers Bouquets to Tom Brady and Disdain to the Patriots

“My children were born and raised here,” he wrote, “and you always embraced this California kid as your own.”

The region was already grappling with the loss of Mookie Betts, the Red Sox outfielder who was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers last month. Betts, 27, was not only the best player on the Red Sox, but arguably the most popular as well. Last week, race organizers postponed the Boston Marathon, an annual rite of spring in the city, until September because of mounting concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

Then came the announcement from a cherished athlete whose success in the area is surpassed only by Bill Russell of the Celtics.

“It’s really different and far more significant than Mookie leaving,” said Marc Bertrand, the co-host of a popular Boston radio show on 98.5 The Sports Hub. “Brady leaving is about the emotional attachment for everything that has happened. Mookie leaving was about everything that could happen in the future.”

All week Bertrand, who grew up in Quincy, Mass., just outside Boston, served — along with his co-host, Scott Zolak, a former Patriots quarterback — as a kind of therapeutic sounding board for masses of distraught Patriots and Brady fans.

He estimated that over the last two days, about 75 percent of callers to his show sided with Brady over the Patriots. One of them said it would take two years for him to rediscover his devotion to the team.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/sports/football/tom-brady-boston-patriot-fans.html