On the Sox

Derek asked that Tom and I give an account of what it has been like to be a Red Sox fan in Boston during the past few crucial weeks of the play-offs. I won't be able to capture it all here, but maybe with some discussion threads and other points of view, we can do something substantial on the topic.

I will start and end with the greatest moment of joy in my history of being a sports fan, that being the hour or so after the Sox knocked off the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS. I do mean greatest moment of joy, which means that taking that series was better than both Super Bowl wins by the Patriots and even the Celtics winning their 16th NBA title in 1986, the first great moment in my sports-watching life. The reason that this moment tops them all is because of how close I feel to this team.

I often refer to the teams I rout for as "we," which feels contrived and false at times, but never with this Red Sox team, and the same can be said for last year's squad. This season, leading up to tonight's Game 3 against the Cardinals, the Sox have played 174 games. I would estimate that I have watched at least one inning of about 130-140 of those games. Pedro and Schilling starts have been events that you don't miss, things that tell you what day of the week it is if you don't have any other frame of reference. When you know who is pitching on any given night because you know who pitched last night or the night before, you're in pretty deep with a team. You know each player's quirks, you know who is at bat from the other room just by hearing the piece of music they choose to be introduced with before they step to the plate, you know how they will react to cold weather or being pitched inside. At a certain point you start to loose the sense of detachment between the players and yourself as a fan, especially when so many people around you follow just as intently and feel the same way.

So in a way, the Sox are family in this town. And nothing hurts as bad as seeing your family get hurt the way we all were hurt last year thanks be to the Yankees during the ALCS. I will probably never have the words to describe how painful the emotional roller coaster of that series was, especially Game 7. Tom and myself, among others, went to a bar to watch that game, nervous but confident to have Pedro on the mound against Clemens. When Clemens was chased early with the Sox owning a healthy lead, I was hugging the bouncer. A little while later, that same bouncer was curled up in a ball in the corner of the bar, completely inconsolable. I'll skip the details, but to paraphrase, we went from extreme jubilation to absolute despair in less than an hour, and by the time Aaron Boone hit his series winning homer, we were all shells of our former selves, staring blankly and chain smoking, merely biding our time before the inevitable hit. For at least a month after that, no one in town was right. I remember that month as being one long grey period, where nothing really makes you happy, and nothing can make you feel any worse than how you felt so recently. Hell, even the Patriots starting their winning streak barely made a scratch.

By the time this year came around, I think everyone was still numb, and a little hesitant to come back into the fold and hold out hope again. The regular season looked long and like a wasted trip just to get back to where we just got burned. It started out well enough, with some strong performances from Schilling and Foulke, but most notably, going 5-1 out of the box in the first two series against the Yanks. We were sucked back in again. The Yanks were floundering, most notably A-Rod and Jeter, the two most hated men in New England, and the Sox were winning and on top of the AL East. But as they always do, the Yankees started winning, and the Sox entered a period of prolonged mediocrity. When Nomar came back from an injury, we thought that he would provide a needed spark, but it never happened. He wasn't the same, and the team remained it it's funk, leading inexorably towards a crucial series against the Yankees before the all-star break. The Yanks swept the Sox, with all of the dramatic plays cashed in by Jeter to make it even worse. After the break everyone knew the Sox were broken, and Theo Epstein knew why. He traded Nomar and the dark cloud that perpetually followed him for Orlando Cabrera to replace him at short and a couple important role player to deepen the bench. And right after that, the Sox woke up and went on a tear. Without Nomar's quiet intensity and social awkwardness, and thanks to Cabrera's sheer defensive talent and loose clubhouse demeanor, all of the personalities on the Sox started to flourish. The Dominicans (Manny, Ortiz, Pedro) on the team are all natural goofballs, and combined with other free spirits like Cabrera, Kevin Millar, and Johnny Damon, everyone shook off the cobwebs and nerves of their fan base and began enjoying coming to the park everyday, playing together, and letting their talent do the work.

At the beginning of the Sox' run to the wild card (and third best record in all of Major League Baseball, I might add), the Sox gave the Yankees a hint of what was to come. Bronson Arroyo, the precocious fifth starter for the Sox plunked A-Rod on the shoulder in a game in early August. Predictably, A-Rod proved that he is a tough guy of the Roberto Alomar variety (as in not tough at all) by talking shit to Arroyo while walking up the first base line without actually inviting physical confrontation. Jason Varitek, the Sox catcher, got in A-Rod face in defense of Arroyo, and as A-Rod told Varitek to "come on," expecting the whole time that no one would come after him, Tek popped him in the face, starting a small brawl in which the Sox doled out the best shots. The Sox and Yanks have brawled a fair bit over the past two years, mostly instigated by Red Sox pitchers. Some people cast a harsh eye towards that behavior, but I think that it is part of a school yard mentality. If someone has something you want and they keep beating up on you, the only way to get what you want is to come right back at them, any way you can. And in that particular game, winning the fight was not a hollow victory. In last year's ALCS, the Sox and Yanks fought, and Pedro threw Don Zimmer to the ground and essentially threatened every Yankee hitter to a shot in the dome in their next at-bat. But the Sox lost, so any satisfaction gained from the fight turned to bitterness. But in that game at the beginning of August featuring the Varitek-A-Rod fight, the Sox changed some of their history. They came back that night to win, and not only did they win, they came back against the incomparable Mariano Rivera on a Bill Mueller home run in the bottom of the ninth. It was that game that brought every Red Sox fan back as a 100% believer, that put the Yankees on notice that the Sox were coming for them, and that gave the Sox the confidence to know that they could beat the Yankees, strength against strength. An amazing August followed when the Sox lost only twice in the span of something like 21 games. The Sox coasted into the post season beating every major opponent along the way.

Against Anaheim, the Sox made it look easy. So easy that people like myself dropped the notion that winning the World Series is all that matters, regardless of whether you beat the Yanks or not to get there. We got greedy, and we got the Yanks. We figured that Schilling and Pedro in the first two games would mean no worse than 1-1 headed into Game 3. Schilling came out hurt and was shelled in Game 1, his performance belying the tendon injury in his ankle. During that first game we all watched Mike Mussina pitch a perfect game through the sixth, and the Sox fall short in a late comeback attempt. Pedro pitched well in Game 2, but of all people John Lieber shut down the Sox to propel the Yanks to a 3-1 win and a 2-0 lead in the series. It was the Yankees' pitching that was supposed to be suspect, and to dash our hopes Mussina and Lieber had looked unhittable. We had thrown our two aces and had nothing to show for it. The day off and an extra day to stew due to rain had Boston feeling like one large, raw, exposed nerve by Game 3 on Saturday. We had switched our superstitions. I changed hats and stopped wearing a bracelet that I had come to believe was lucky during the Anaheim series. The weather was ominous all day in Boston, gathering clouds with real menace on their edges preceded by powerful winds, but no rain ever fell. As with many night games at Fenway, I opened the windows in my apartment so that I could hear the roars from Fenway. I heard some early roars, but some early groans, too. Neither team could stop the other's hitters, but in the end it was the Yankees who put on the bigger fireworks display, hanging 19 runs on the hapless Sox, and ending all hope.

We were ashamed. We had so much to be confident of going into the series, and here we were on the brink of the most embarrassing loss in sports. A sweep. A blowout. The thought that you never even belonged on the field in the first place. How could a team play so well over the course of 165 games only to crap the bed at the end? How could Johnny Damon all of a sudden become that bad of a hitter? Can any bum put on the pinstripes and look like hall-of-famer? How could we give up 19 runs at home in a must-win game? It was horrible. More than a few of us felt that if we were to lose, it would be best to do it in Game 4, to end the pain, and because we didn't know if we could muster the hope anymore. And if we could, did we want to, if it would only be crushed in a few days?

Game 4 was strange. It lacked the offensive display of Game 3, and felt like a slow grind that led to the Sox being down 4-3 with Rivera on the hill for the Yankees, poised to close down the game, the season, and a lot of Red Sox fans for the winter and probably a lot longer. But like that game in early August, the Sox remained confident against the greatest postseason closer of all time. They gutted out a manufactured run to prolong the game and the season. The bullpen stepped up and silenced the Yankees' sluggers, and with the Sox having the benefit of batting last, you felt that maybe they could pull it out. By 1:15 in the morning, everyone was on the edge of their seats, ignoring the coming work day and just wanting to have a reason to believe again, even if it was only for one night. David Ortiz gave us all a reason with a two run blast around 1:30 in the morning.

The next night, in the final game at Fenway, Game 5 played out much like Game 4. Both teams battled in a tight ball game, and the Sox scored on Rivera again to send the game into extras. The chinks in the Yankees armor was starting to show. Their middle relief, personified by Tom Gordon, couldn't handle the pressure of the situation. By the time Rivera entered the game, there were already runners on the corners and no one out. The tying run was inevitable. Nonetheless, the Sox had figured Rivera out enough to piece together the mini-rallies they needed to stay in the series. Building on the confidence of figuring out their opponent, the Sox again battled the Yankee relievers, and us fans felt that batting in the bottom of each inning would be all of the advantage we would need as the Sox relievers continued to mow down the previously powerful Yankees line-up. All of a sudden, A-Rod, Sheffield, and Matsui didn't seem so threatening, and every at-bat for Manny, Ortiz, and Varitek looked like it could end the game with one shot. In the end it was Ortiz who again delivered, at that point the outcome and the instigator seeming inevitable. Even a hot batter like Ortiz is usually successful only 50% of the time, but after a long battle of foul balls, his bloop single of a game winner seemed as much of a sure thing as the sun rising the next morning. When a player begins to inspire that kind of confidence, when you say to yourself "he can't do it again" while secretly believing that he will, and then he does, well, you have never felt so justified in holding out hope for the impossible. And that's where we were before Game 6.

There is a swirling debate at this point as to how much importance should be placed on Curt Schilling pitching with a torn sheath that protects a ligament in his leg. Some people wonder how hurt he really is, given his four-hit, one-run performance in Game 6. All I know is that based on how bad he looked in Game 1, however he did it, whether it was painkillers, toughness, sutures, God, or just plain luck, his performance was amazing. No one knew what to expect. There was talk of having a relief pitcher ready for his first pitch, in case he couldn't push off the ankle, leaving him helpless to Yankee hitters. We sat on the edge of our seats, looking at the velocity of his first pitch (93 mph - good), and how he pitched directly at guys. He was okay, but for how long? Long enough. The Sox figured out Lieber early this time, and a few runs proved to be all that was necessary. The umps initially blew two huge calls, the type of calls that had stifled the Red Sox in seasons past. But a funny thing happened while we all felt our neuroses jumping off the scale, the umps talked it over and made the right calls, both in the Sox favor. A-Rod was exposed as a cheater (subjective) and a liar (confirmed) to boot. Game 7 loomed.

Game 7. Just the words were enough to spook most Sox fans and remind us of that feeling from last October. Weren't we just here? Wasn't that bouncer just crying in the corner? Were we really going to set ourselves up for this again? Yes. It felt different. The Yankees were the ones who looked scared. They were relying on the Curse, on Babe Ruth's ghost, on Yogi Berra quotes to try to calm themselves down. In past years, they relied on their talent, on their players, on their sheer will to win and confidence in themselves. That was gone. They were scared of Ortiz, they were scared of the Sox bullpen, and most of all, they were scared that Kevin Brown was their starter and that the heart of their line-up was in a massive slump. We all hoped for a few runs early, and when Johnny Damon delivered, breaking out of his own slump with two homers, including a grand slam, we knew it was on. The Yankees knew it, too, only providing some token resistance by knocking Pedro around for a couple runs late in the game. It was now finished. The end of the game became one big victory lap for Sox fans as the game was too far out of reach to even worry about another historic collapse. Final out, the Yankees are dead.

I guess this whole thing is meant for me to explain how that moment feels. I still don't really know. I wanted to cry, but I was too emotionally spent. It was more of a warm numbness, with increasing waves of ecstasy building over the next hour or so. We bolted out the door to head to Fenway to be with our people. The streets were packed edge to edge with people, chanting for the Sox. When I first saw all of the people on Landsdowne Street, that is when it really hit me. I have loved and supported this team so much, and have invested so much of my hope in them, and they had met me at the top of those emotions and aspirations. That realization brought on the sheer amazement of the feeling, and I wondered if that was how every other fan had felt about their team at a moment like this. At that moment, all of the angst and doubts that plague every Red Sox fan seeped out of me. It was at that point that I decided not to gloat to my friends who root for the Yankees. Things like Bill Buckner, Chuck Knoblauch's phantom tag in '99, and Grady Little's decision to leave Pedro in the game in the 7th inning of Game 7 in 2003, they all lost most of their horrible meaning. And yes, without a World Series title, that feeling may lessen, but at that moment it was very clear. I haven't been nervous at all during the World Series so far, as opposed to having constant stomach problems and difficulty concentrating at work on game days during the playoffs the past two years. Some hack sports writers like to trot out the theory that Red Sox fans won't know what to do without the suffering, that we actually like it. These people are clearly not Red Sox fans, although some of them claim to be. Real fans will be glad to celebrate a title, to let it all go, to lose the bitter edge in the "Yankees Suck" chant and move on. It feels better that way. These are the salad days for us, and we have been waiting for them for a long time.