What a difference a year makes. At this time last year, I was sitting at my desk, near catatonic, reflecting on the latest in a series of crushing Red Sox losses. It's funny how the demise of your favorite sports team makes you sit and reflect upon all that's good in your life. Thankfully, I had a lot of things to be well, thankful for. There was my loving wife of now 6 years, a huge Red Sox fan, almost as disconsolate as I (if not more so). There was our brand new puppy, a mini-dachshund named "Fenway" Frankie that helped take some of the sting away. But all in all, it was a bleary time for me, us, and the rest of Red Sox Nation.
But something changed this year. I don't know, maybe the fact that the guy that used to live in Babe Ruth's old house got hit by a foul ball off the bat of Manny Ramirez. Maybe it was the fact that that same house in Sudbury got bulldozed before the start of the playoffs. Maybe it was all of the Sox fans doing their little idiosyncratic things, like always wearing their "lucky" shirt or "lucky" hat or sitting in their "lucky" chair. Or maybe it was the fact that our center-fielder looked like Jesus.
But regardless of how it happened, something really tremendous happened. The Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. Read that last sentence again. Yes, Boston's most beloved team finally came through when it mattered, and made history in the process.
A few weeks ago, we were all feeling some of that same pain from a year ago. "Damn, those Yankees are going to beat us again, and this time we're not even going to win a game!" And with team doctors telling us all that Curt Schilling might not pitch again this year, didn' t you think this team surely had to be cursed? I mean, who else does that ever happen to?
But Schilling came back, and so did the Sox, giving us all the most memorable ride in Red Sox history in the process. To come back from a 3-0 deficit against your arch rivals, that bully that's been shoving your head in the toilet all those years, was breath-taking to say the least. I like many others, watched every inning of those last 4 games as we all refused to let go of this team we all loved so much. Not only could we not stand to see them lose, we couldn't stand to see them not play any more this year. They meant too much to us.
That's how the personality of this team was this year. You couldn't dislike them. And they never played tight either. As this team went on and won the World Series, I couldn't help but think: they probably would have won the '86 Series as well. I mean, they just never got worried, never got down. They always knew how to take one game at a time. If this group of players had lost Game 6 of the '86 Series in the same manner that it played out in reality, I've got to believe that they would have bounced back and won Game 7. That's just the kind of crew they were. That's just the kind of faith they inspired.
On the eve of the Series-clinching win against the Cardinals, the famous Red Sox message board on SOSH (www.sonsofsamhorn.com) had a thread about for whom people wanted the Sox to win the Series. Last I checked, it's at about 54 pages long. I could barely make it through the first page. There were people who wanted to dedicate the win to people like Johnny Pesky (held the ball too long in '46), Bill Buckner (didn't get a hold of the ball at all in '86), and Mike Torrez (who let Bucky get a hold of one in '78). But more endearing were the fans who wanted the Sox to win it all for their father, who died of cancer the year before and didn't get the opportunity to see it happen in his lifetime, or for their grandfather who rooted loyally for them for many, many years and never saw that effort bear fruit. I immediately thought of my two grandfathers, both Red Sox fans who were the ones who really turned me onto to following baseball and the team. Both of them have been deceased for some time now, not getting to enjoy the Sox finally make it to the top of the mountain. On Saturday, after the parade, I made sure to buy them each a pennant to place on their graves in celebration. My wife Cindy gets credit for the idea, as she herself bought one to put on her grandmother's gravesite.
But that's what citizenship in Red Sox nation is like. Everybody walks, talks, and thinks that way. I'm sure when we go about the business of visiting the gravesites that we will see many before us who have already had the same idea. I couldn't tell you how many co-workers during the time of the playoffs came by to talk about them with me at length during the course of the day, some of them even invoking their deceased relatives who were attempting to wrestle the curse out of Babe Ruth up in heaven. There was the number of work-less hours due to some caucusing to concoct a game plan for how the Sox were going to come back from a 3-0 deficit... if only they could get their pitching lined up right. Or then there was my morning ritual during the playoffs of going to McDonald's to get breakfast (because they seemed to win when I did that, another part of being a crazy Sox fan) and talking for a few seconds with the cashier about the game coming up that night. There was the drunk fellow that we bumped into at the victory parade, so giddy with success that he decided to buy my mother-in-law breakfast because he felt like that was what he could do to contribute to the celebration. Last week, when I was in Florida, thousands of miles away from Boston, I saw many of the people there wearing Sox shirts or hats commemorating the championship and exchanged knowing glances with them as they noticed me in the same gear.
It's one big family. One big crazy, superstitious family. But now we're not dysfunctional anymore. We've finally done it. (And yes, I can say 'we'.) All of the superstitions and rituals and praying finally paid off for once. The curse is finally broken. Babe Ruth can rest in peace, never to meddle in the affairs of our beloved team again. We've lost our inferiority complex and we've lost the terminology "Wait till next year!". This was the year. No more will we have to hear the chants of "1918" or see pictures of the Babe hung up all throughout Yankee stadium. No more documentaries on us being "loveable losers" who can never win in the clutch. Weary, bleary eyes can be replaced with tears of joy. As Bill Simmons from ESPN's Page 2 so adequately puts it, "we can go back to just being a regular team, just like everybody else".
After the World Series was over, one of my co-workers said to me, "I finally opened that bottle of champagne that I started chilling back in 1986".
I asked him how it tasted.
"It was the best glass of champagne I've ever had".
I raise my glass along with him and many, many others, and toast the Boston Red Sox, 2004 World Series Champions.
