I was born in Boston, Massachusetts. I was raised no more than a 15 minute drive from Fenway Park. I was raised Red Sox fan. What does this mean? Suffering. Pain. Loss. Bad luck. I was at Queen’s for five years, and I dealt with plenty of Leafs fans. Here’s the thing: you guys have a championship since World War I, and you haven’t been losing to the same guys for the last seventy-five years. It’s one thing to won in the last sixty years; it’s another thing to have been losing to the same team the entire time.
Being a Red Sox fan means being a fan twelve months a year. When the Patriots were in the process of winning 10 in a row last winter, the Red Sox still had the front page of the sports section around here. The Red Sox are essentially a religion in this part of the world. Not winning a World Series for eighty-six years will do that to you (mind you, they haven’t won it this year either). What it won’t do is cause you to give up hope. I have literally spent my life adoring this team. I have forced girlfriends to watch games, only to find them caring about who this “Nomar” is and why he seems to have an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I have called people at 2 AM to ask scores when I’ve been out of town. I have spent countless hours on Internet message boards like SonsOfSamHorn.com trying to get a handle on what it’s like in Red Sox Nation. I have seen Bucky Dent (who hit a fly ball for the Yankees over the Monster in Fenway Park in 1978 in the last game of the year to beat the Red Sox) and Aaron Boone (another Yankee, who hit a home run in the 11th inning of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS) torture friends and family. I have changed my clothes in the middle of a game because my team was not winning. I have gotten phone calls from friends’ parents asking about “how many different pitches does Keith Foulke throw?” We are a strange breed, Red Sox fans. We have a history of losing, but we’re not losers. We have the third best winning percentage of any franchise in baseball in the ESPN era (since 1979). We’ve been to the playoffs in 1986, 1988, 1990, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2003, and of course, 2004. It’s also just close, but not enough.
Last year, in October of 2003, I was constantly on edge. My grades dropped. My job became secondary. I stopped shaving (you know, playoff beard). I became noticeably irritable when someone didn’t understand what OPS (On-Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage) was. I bought a bottle of champagne, praying, hoping. When Aaron Boone’s home run off Tim Wakefield hit the outfield bleachers, I lost it. I punched a wall. For days, friends (both non-fans and Yankee fans alike) were coming up to me saying things like “…are you okay?”, in a tone that implied that someone close to me had died. I was depressed. The whole city of Boston was depressed. Another year, another truly heartbreaking loss for the Red Sox and their fans.
Last November, the Red Sox went out and made a deal for pitcher Curt Schilling. Curt made his decision to be traded based partially on talking to Red Sox fans on the internet. By mid-December, when everyone else was studying for exams in Stauffer Library, I was keeping an eye on SonsOfSamHorn regarding the possibility of Alex Rodriguez, the best all-around player the game, going to the Red Sox in a trade. I spent hours not studying for my exams and instead refreshing my internet browser to see if we would get the covered shortstop. After the deal fell through, he ended up going to the Yankees. It was another victory for the Yankees over the Red Sox; a coup that basically showed why the Yankees always win, and the Red Sox always lose. We were the losers again, and of course, once again to the Yankees. After a long season, with the Red Sox making the playoffs and beating the Anaheim Angels 3-0 in the ALDS, we were faced once again with our continual enemy, the New York Yankees. Some people say the Red Sox and the Yankees have a rivalry; but when one team has won 26 championships in the last 86 years and the other has won 0, how much of a rivalry is that? It’s about as much as a rivalry between a hammer and a nail.
This brings us to Sunday. The Red Sox, despite being favored by Las Vegas, were down 0-3 in the the ALCS versus the Yankees, and had just suffered the worst loss in playoff history, a 19 to 8 beating at home, in Fenway Park. Only 2 teams in the history of professional sports had come back from an 0-3 deficit, the 1942 Maple Leafs and the 1975 Islanders; in other words, no baseball team had done so, and only 5 teams had even made past being swept. On Sunday, David Ortiz hit a two-run homer to win the game, making the series 1-3. I was so enthralled with how they had done, I ended up getting a ticket for Game 5, which was also my birthday. In the longest game in postseason history, David Ortiz (or, Big Papi) had another hit to give the Red Sox a win, making the series it 2-3. After the heroics of Curt Schilling and his sutured ankle, the Red Sox had won Game 6, making the series 3-3. The Red Sox had done something no team in baseball history had done – they had survived being down 0-3 and made it to 3-3, forcing a Game 7.
Game 7 was to be played on Wednesday, October 20th. I made it to the Baseball Tavern, a bar about one block from Fenway Park. After what felt like hours of torture, the Red Sox beat the Yankees 10-3. This was, and will be, one of the top five moments of my life – when Ruben Sierra grounded to Pokey Reese to end the ballgame, I hugged probably two-hundred strangers and high-fived another two-thousand. I cried a bit. My twin sister and I just hugged and screamed. The guy I grew up across the street from (and whose father took me to my first Sox game) and I jumped up and down screaming at the top of our lungs. This wasn’t just a win – this was an exorcism. This was the greatest comeback in sports history (let’s face it, those hockey teams didn’t have a national media press on their backs for their game 7’s). This was the greatest choke job in sports history, but not by the Red Sox; no, this time it was by the New York Yankees, the “winningest franchise in sports history” – normally it was the Red Sox who choked, this time it was our bitter rivals. As the bar poured out onto Boylston St and the thousands of Sox fans converged on the area, I just sat there, taking pictures and shaking my head. I had seen my team make the most improbable comeback in sports history. This had transcended the game though – I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. But do you know what the funny part about all this is? There is still a World Series to be played, yet I still feel like the Red Sox are a winner, no matter what. Go Sox.