Mo Vaughn was, I believe, the last of a particular kind of Boston sports superstar that used to be in abundance during the lackluster ‘90s: the Boston sports superstar who everyone was always bitching and moaning about.
It’s hard to convey to younger fans just how different the pre-Tom Brady Boston sports scene was. Since the dawn of professional sports in the mid-19th century, the 1990s was the only decade in which a Boston-based team did not win a championship. (And, yes, I’m going all the way back to the founding of National League in 1876 here. The early iterations of what would eventually become the Atlanta Braves won eight championships in Boston prior to the Teddy Roosevelt Administration).