Dave Hyde: Our Perfect Year keeps rolling along perfectly

For years — decades, even — nobody wanted to sit next to anyone from Boston at a bar, on a plane or in a grocery line. Nobody wanted to hear about their latest winning team, season, title, celebration, whatever.

Now we’re Boston.

Can you believe it?

Now we’re the sports fan no one wants to sit by.

Have you ever seen a year like this?

This past weekend’s killer quinella was just the latest proof: the Dolphins won the NFL’s fun game of the week in Los Angeles; the Hurricanes had their biggest win in years; Inter Miami won again (without Messi even — no one evidently told the other players!); Delray Beach’s Coco Gauff won the U.S. Open to announce her arrival on the big stage; and the Marlins took two of three in Philadelphia to squeeze the playoff race (So they got nipped 12-0 by Milwaukee on Monday. So what?).

I’ve said it before this year and will say it again: Nothing bad happens this year. The sun shines on us every day — yeah, we do live in the subtropics — but even when it rains, we’re walking between raindrops.

We win even when not playing. Look at “Monday Night Football,” the marquee game. The Buffalo Bills lost, the New York Jets lost quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and so after one measly week, the Dolphins are AFC East champs.

Oh, relax, all you worrywarts. We’re beyond jinxes, curses, hexes or even some creepy Orange Bowl Revenge. It’s all good. There might even be a some karmic payback for all the previous decades of suffering we underwent in watching these teams (the Heat excluded).

But let’s not deal in the paranormal. Let’s just recount the results this year: The University of Miami and Florida Atlantic men’s basketball programs made the Final Four for their first times ever. The Heat and Panthers shocked everyone in making their respective championship series. Palm Beach County’s own Brooks Koepka attended each series lugging his PGA Championship trophy. And it’s kept going.

If we were any hotter, we’d be on the surface of the sun. Usually, on streaks like this, as the roulette wheel of life keeps spinning winners, someone shouts, “Let’s go to Vegas!”

We went to Vegas.

It didn’t go so well. The Panthers met their dead end and got their sternum broke in the final (and the blackjack table treated me just as rudely).

Here’s the larger point: That Panthers loss didn’t touch the sweet storyline. Nor did anyone say when the Heat, UM or Florida Atlantic fell just short of the grand prize: “No ring, no interest.” OK, maybe Pat Riley said that. He’s got so many rings he matches them to his wardrobe.

But if you’re wandering the desert, as we have been with our teams, do you whine if the cup of water doesn’t runneth over?

Give me this year every year. It’s uncharted winning territory. People would say when I ripped another losing team it was, “Just for clicks” or, going back to the Paleozoic Era, “Just to sell papers.” Losing doesn’t sell papers. Winning sells papers (Come to think of it, winning might have saved papers.)

Boston’s sports writers wrote books of their teams over the past quarter-century. South Florida’s sports writers wrote obits. I met the previous seven Dolphins coaches when the elevator was going down on their careers: Dave Wannstedt, Nick Saban, Cam Cameron, Tony Sparano, Joe Philbin, Adam Gase and Brian Flores. Can Mike McDaniel keep winning, just so I dust off some positive adjectives?

To that end, the question is whether one team feeds off another, the way they have suggested, like Panthers going to Heat games (and vice versa) or McDaniel seated at the foot of coach Erik Spoelstra during the Heat run (does Spoelstra hold McDaniel’s laminated play sheet for a game?)

Sports have actually risen from the dead, too. Pro hockey. College basketball. And soccer in South Florida? Did you know anyone who went to Inter Miami games before July 21? (Besides Panthers GM Bill Zito, who had season tickets, showing again how one winner rubs off against another.)

That brought the kicker to our Perfect Year.

We got Messi.

We became a soccer town.

Add it all up and you can look forward to being on a plane, in a bar or a grocery line, especially if a Boston fan is trapped beside you. You can talk Panthers (and how the Boston Bruins’ greatest-team-in-history was sent into retirement).

You can talk Heat (and how they ripped out the Boston Celtics’ soul and broke up their team). You can talk of the Marlins being in a playoff race (and the Red Sox aren’t).

You can even talk up Sunday’s Dolphins game in New England.

Yeah, I know, the don’t-jinx-it crowd doesn’t want to hear that. But this one game doesn’t even matter too much. It’ll all work out for a while yet. You don’t need a crystal ball to know. You just need a Gregorian calendar. There’s more than three months left in 2023. Don’t blame me for anything after that.