Tom Brady, left, and David Ortiz shake hands before a Red Sox game in 2015 when Brady and the Patriots were honored for their victory in Super Bowl XLIX. Elise Amendola/Associated Press

It was a good week for reminiscing.

Over the past seven days we were greeted by the news that David Ortiz had been elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and that Tom Brady was retiring after 22 glorious seasons. The news that Brady might not be retiring soon followed. We’ll wait for Brady and his family to get back from vacation before finalizing the retirement party.

Regardless, it was a good time to take stock in what these two giants have meant to the Boston sports scene. We’ve seen 12 championships in this Golden Era of Boston Sports, with TB12 and Big Papi playing a part in nine of them. They are the architects of the greatest run of success this city has ever known.

Brady ushered in the era with his remarkable drive in the waning moments of Super Bowl XXXVI at the Superdome in Louisiana. It was a stunning victory against the heavily favored Rams, the so-called “Greatest Show on Turf.”

Instead, it was Brady who was building the greatest show in sports. Three championships over the next four years were the cornerstones of a modern-day dynasty, one that would turn a previously football-agnostic region into one of the country’s most rabid pigskin fanbases.

David Ortiz joined the party a few years later, delivering clutch hit after clutch hit as the Red Sox became the first team in history to rally from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series, beating the hated Yankees and going on to end the 86-year Curse of the Bambino with a four-game sweep of the Cardinals.

Either one of those first championships would’ve been enough to savor. But Brady did it time and time again, driving the Patriots to six Super Bowl victories (and three other Super Bowl appearances) and Ortiz helped the Red Sox win two more titles before retiring after the 2016 season.

Both had to battle just to get on the field. Brady, a sixth-round draft choice, got his chance when first-rounder Drew Bledsoe was injured. Ortiz was released by the Minnesota Twins and didn’t get regular playing time until Theo Epstein traded Shea Hillenbrand to clear out a first base/DH logjam.

Boston hasn’t celebrated a championship without at least one of the two legends calling the city his professional home. Will that change anytime soon?

Mac Jones showed flashes of sustainability as Pats QB this year, but also reminded us that the rookie wall is real. There is a considerable amount of work to be done to make Jones a championship-caliber quarterback.

The Red Sox won a championship without Ortiz in 2018, but Mookie Betts isn’t walking back through that door anytime soon. Last October we saw the Sox come within two wins of a return to the World Series, and while they’re certainly a playoff-ready team coming into 2022 it’s hard to point at the one guy who could call the dugout meeting to rally the troops while a series is slipping away from them. They certainly lacked that guy in the final two games of the ALCS with the Astros.

At TD Garden, we hoped Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown would be the 1-2 punch of young superstardom that would usher in another round of glory days for the Celtics. Instead we watch a frustrating team miss 3-pointers in record numbers as they hover around .500.

And the Bruins are aging before our eyes. The Perfection Line has been broken up, Tuukka Rask has a lot of rust to shake off, and the window of opportunity for Patrice Bergeron to hoist the Cup again is shrinking.

All of which is to say they don’t make them like Brady and Ortiz anymore. I’m sure there are better times on the horizon for Boston’s teams … but they have a pair of considerable shadows to emerge from first.

Tom Caron is a studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN and a Lewiston High School graduate.