A second team in Boston? Why did the Boston Braves move out of Boston in the first place? Has Boston grown significantly since then? I thought they were the “other” team in Boston, and moved due to terrible attendance.
It seems that not too many big markets can support two teams very well.
While baseball fans in my area might like it, there probably isn’t room for two teams here. In Howie Carr’s book Hitman about gangster Johnny Martorano, Martorano calls when he was young his father and a bunch of his friends would go to either Braves Field or Fenway Park to catch a game and bet on
who would hit a HR, the final score, whether the next pitch would be a strike, or whatever. He recalls (paraphrasing here)
that “this was before the Braves moved to Milwaukee. Back then the Sox didn’t draw as many people as they do now,
and the Braves drew _nobody_. That’s why they moved.”
Outside of a short-term novelty (and inevitable bitterness
by Sox owners—how did you think the Orioles owner felt about the poss. of a team in nearby D.C., the Nationals?)
a second team probably wouldn’t succeed. The Sox would dominate it all.
The Sox owners spent $700 million on the team, did some improvements to the ballpark, spend a lot of money on payroll and have done well in the standings, with 2 World Series titles in the past 8 yrs or so. The last thing they would want is...competition! Hence I would not expect John Henry and company to be enthusiastic about the senior circuit moving back here!