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October 26, 2004
HTE RED SOX WILL
HTE RED SOX WILL WIN TONIGHT. I BELIEVE
My beloved Red Sox won Game 3 of the World Series tonight, 4-1, to take a three games to none lead over the S. Louis Cardinals. Pedro Martinez -- whom I freely admit to cursing and doubting in the last month -- turned in the performance of his dreams, shining bright on the big stage in his first World Series start and cementing his legacy in Boston and in history. He may not be the "old Pedro" anymore, but for one night, he turned back the clock and asked us all to join him one last time.
I'm a grown man. Is it ridiculous that my heart is about to burst? Is it frivilous that I am almost as we speak making arrangements to be in Boston Wednesday night, or whenever it needs to be?
As I have said before, part of the magic of baseball is that it can instantly turn grown men into little boys. I have been eight years old for a week now, and if the Sox can hold on and win one more game, I may never get back past nine.
Maintaining a residence in the New York area for the last six years, I have repeated something ad nauseum to the Yankee fans who have delighted in the Sox' many woes: that it takes a special kind of nobility, a special kind of fan to love the Red Sox... knowing that every year they will break your heart, and yet every year offering it up to them anyway. There's been a truth to that, and it determines the mindset of every Sox fan. I have been bleeding with the Sox for seven passionate years now, and I truly believed I might not see the Sox win a Series in my lifetime -- might never see the day that now should come sometime before Sunday.
But now that day is almost here, and I have no words to explain the joy of seeing a day you really expected never to live long enough to see.
You wouldn't understand unless you've lived in Boston or gone to college there. You wouldn't understand how much passion is dedicated to this team by its fans, or how it is impossible to spend more than a month there without that passion seeping through your pores and into your soul. You wouldn't understand unless you have been there, in the pubs and on the streets, in the parks and in the schools, and seen what this team means to its fans. You wouldn't understand unless you have heard men get a catch in their voice talking about how their father passed away this past winter without ever having seen the Red Sox win it all.
Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe had a column Tuesday that tried to explain that sense of generational unity.
That's why this matters so much.
They remind you of your father and mother, maybe your grandfather, too. And they remind you of your sons and daughters and all that you taught them when they were young. Like green eyes and freckles, love of the Red Sox is passed through bloodlines, and the shared passion can bridge the gaps that come with maturity and growth.
In every family there's inevitable distance -- sometimes geographic, sometimes philosophical or emotional. But the Red Sox furnish common ground, which is why they are more than a baseball team and why this is more than a story of a surge to a long-awaited championship.
How many of you have heard from relatives in the last 10 days, maybe a sibling you haven't spoken with in a while? And how many former New Englanders are watching their televisions in Colorado, Arizona, or Florida, remembering growing up with the mellow voice of Curt Gowdy pouring out of the porch radio into the humid night?
How many of you watched the thrilling comeback against the Yankees and thought of a parent or a spouse who has died? How many watched the first two games of the World Series and thought about how much more special this would be if Uncle Joe or Aunt Elizabeth had lived to see it?
Those who have adopted Boston share the family secrets. People around the globe who went to college in our town still carry a love of the Red Sox along with memories of that first beer in the Fenway bleachers. The Citgo sign beyond the left-field wall was the lighthouse that steered them back to their dorms on those first wobbly nights of undergrad freedom. The Sox connected them then and they connect them now.
On the Sons of Sam Horn community message board that Tim and I frequent, there have been dedications to the fathers and grandfathers and mothers who infused the members with their love of the Sox. Some of them are enough to make me tear up. When I think of how many New Englanders were born, raised, and lived their whole lives only to die without ever seeing the moment I could be about to see in the next few days... and how many of those people have come back to life this week in the memories of those they left behind as the moment draws nearer... I get chills. This is not just about a baseball team winning a championship. It's about the heart of an entire region, about those who came before and those around now to see it.
I understand that Sox culture can seem foreign at best and flat out annoying at worst to fans of other teams or people from other parts of the country; how we can seem so over-the-top self-indulgent with this, and how we can seem to actually enjoy wallowing in misery that other fans cast aside after an off-season. Fair enough; I'll respect that point of view. But it's no matter. This means more than baseball to Red Sox Nation. You wouldn't understand unless you've seen it first hand.
So with a nod to a post I saw on SoSH, I'm exhorting and imploring the 2004 Boston Red Sox to win it all tonight.
Win for Teddy Ballgame, the greatest player never to win a World Series, and who deserved far more peace in death than his family allowed him.
Win for Johnny Pesky, who never held the ball, who was for a generation blamed for something he didn't do, and who even so never lost the faith. Win for Dom DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr and the rest of the guys from 1946.
Win for Carl Yastrzemski, the last Triple Crown winner, who carried the 1967 Red Sox to a pennant, and whose only son died from a blood clot only five weeks ago at the age of 44. Nothing will ever replace a man's son, but if you win you can make this load a little lighter for Yaz.
Win to finish the Impossible Dream of 1967; win for Carlton Fisk and Jim Rice and Freddie Lynn and Dwight Evans and the rest of the 70s Red Sox who should have had more than one pennant; win to finally erase one maligned moment from the otherwise incredible career of Bill Buckner.
Win for every Red Sox fan who taught their child or grandchild or niece or nephew to love the Red Sox just as deeply, win or lose. Win for all the parents who never saw this day, and win for the children who tonight are wishing those parents were here to see it with them. Win for the son or daughter I'd like to have someday, so that I can tell them about this day and this week and this season.
Win so that I can be in Boston for one of the greatest nights in my life. Hell, win so that Tim and I can finally start blogging about something else. Win because it will make every last one of you a New England legend.
Cause I love that Dirty Water... Hte Red Sox will win tonight. I believe.
