But the love affair here has gone way beyond baseball, this has been a glorious embracing of two cultures. A point underlined by the news Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has declared a sister city application with Glasgow.<\/p>\n
Fittingly, she did so in a Scottish pub wearing a Scotland football jersey.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of football fans swarming to a city for a major tournament is nothing new, but it is the manner of the revelry here that has set it apart.<\/p>\n
At the time of writing, there has not been one arrest of a Scotland fan either in Boston or Providence, another nearby stronghold of the Tartan Army.<\/p>\n
The ground work for this Boston bash was laid two years ago in Bavaria. At the last European Championships, Marienplatz felt like it held more Scots within it than Motherwell. <\/p>\n
Again, Scotland fans were lauded for their behaviour, generosity and patter.<\/p>\n
Alas, the football did its best to ruin the party.<\/p>\n
That is perhaps one key difference to this shindig, apart from the obvious step up in excitement from a Euros to their first World Cup in 28 years.<\/p>\n
What mood the Tartan Army would have been in if the opener against Haiti had turned into a disaster we will never know. Although, I would say it would not have made a dent.<\/p>\n
The team on the pitch have done their bit to keep the party in full swing and a point against Morocco on Friday could trigger a tidal wave of celebration flooding back into Boston that night the likes they have never seen.<\/p>\n
The best way to describe it is this has been the trip of a lifetime for people who are still in their 20s. There is a genuine appreciation from Scotland fans that they have waited this long to see their team at a World Cup, that it may be another three decades before it happens again.<\/p>\n
And, even if it did, nothing could rival the week in Boston they’ve just had, regardless of what Miami holds.<\/p>\n
For near enough a week, Scotland had the city to itself. Now it has become a tapestry of nations settling into one of the warmest, most welcoming place on the Charles River they could have hoped to visit. <\/p>\n
Who knows, they may be back here if they are one of the best third-placed teams.<\/p>\n
What will be the Tartan Army’s Boston legacy as the sporrans are soon to get packed away and the online check-ins start for flights to Miami?<\/p>\n
Their generosity? Their good spirit? Their ability to alert some locals to the fact the World Cup is even happening?<\/p>\n
Perhaps all of the above. Just not a haggis supper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But the love affair here has gone way beyond baseball, this has been a glorious embracing of two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-646315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}