Around The Horn

Baseball is something very important to me. I have lived and died and finally ascended to nirvana with the Red Sox, and was looking forward to their new season as Champions with great anticipation (and some dread, but that’s another story), until a few weeks ago, when something happened.

My Dad, who turned 83 on the same day as the Victory Parade, has been in just miserable health all winter. No energy, joint pain, sleepless nights, trouble breathing. He went to a new doctor, the old one being far too fond of just prescribing nasty pills, and we discovered that my poor Dad was suffering with a really shockingly bad case of congestive heart failure. He was immediately admitted to the best nearby hospital and underwent open heart surgery to install a new aortic valve this past Thursday.

So what does this have to do with baseball?

Well, for one thing, it dropped baseball back to its proper place, that of mere entertainment, not a matter of “life or death.” But at the same time…

Baseball, and the anticipation of baseball, got Dad through many days this spring training season when he would otherwise have just laid in bed all day. He really got into the meaningless and hard-to-follow games, where the starters were replaced after the 5th inning, and it was during these games when he seemed energized and either happy (when the Sox were winnning) or disgusted (when they were losing), and we got into some really animated conversations on how we thought the team would fare this year.

April 3rd was Opening Night, and Dad just about counted the hours until game time. He got his dish of snacks ready, and fresh popcorn, and poured a drink, and for the fist six innings he was energetic, cheering and groaning (unfortunately, the latter more than the former) until his shallow pool of energy ran out and he snoozed through the last few innings. When we woke him after the game was over, he scowled. “Did the damn Yankees win?” he asked.

On Monday the 4th, he met the cardiologist and was admitted to the hospital, and underwent some tests the next day. He told me not to bother coming to visit that day, as in the first place, he wouldn’t be available to visit much, being hauled around between the catheterization lab and other examinations, and secondly, there was game that day and he wanted me to watch it for him and tell him what was happening. He was very disappointed to hear of the Sox’s second straight loss to New York, but soon moved on to the issue of his failing heart valve.

Wednesday he was also hauled around from pillar to post in preparation for Thursday’s surgery, so once again asked me to keep tabs on the Sox for him, which I did, very distractedly. I spoke with him in the evening, after Mariano Rivera had blown the save and the Sox had won handily, and he was delighted to hear the news. Then he asked me to bring Mom up to the hospital while he was undergoing surgery then next day.

We arrived at his bedside the next morning, and when I told him about Rivera’s troubles and A-Rod’s juggling act at 3rd base, how he laughed, and rubbed his hands together. “Well good!” he said, delighted. He scowled and shook his head when I told him how the NY fans had booed their brilliant closer off the field, and even as we waited in the “induction room”, with anesthesiologists running around and lots of technicians and nurses and doctors dashing to and fro, and IV lines attached, and the prospect of a horrifically frightening surgery ahead… Dad still asked if there was a game, and would I please record all the games for him to watch when he got home.

While Mom and I waited in the surgery waiting room (a room full of bad vibes if there ever was one), I thought of how Dad and I had watched the playoffs and the World Series together, and all the other games of previous years — the dull wins and shrugging losses, the come-from-behind wins in extra innings that had us both laughing and cheering, and the blown saves, and the terrible crushing defeats that left us feeling miserable for days. How he had laughed and cheered when Big Papi had brought home the wins in Games 4 and 5, the unkind things he had to say about The Slap in Game 6, and the big grin on his grizzled face when the Sox blew the doors off the Yanks in Game 7. Then the World Series, and how Dad had hugged me when the Sox had finally, finally won it all…

I was thinking of these things as I waited in that dark, tense room, and thought of the dreadful “what if’s” that everyone thinks when they sit there, surrounded by other terrified people, facing terrible situations.

The news that came to my family was all good. Dad came through the surgery with flying colors, and today, 2 days later, is sitting up, walking, having good meals… and watching baseball. He scowled at the TV today and asked aloud just why Wells was still in there, and why they let Lowe go in the first place.

Baseball is important. Not even faintly as important as my Dad, of course, but it’s there. It’s part of his daily routine, and is something he cares about. He knows the world does not revolve around the Red Sox; he knows it’s just a game. But it is not insignificant to him, and to us as a family.

Baseball is not life. It is not “do or die.” We know that now more than ever. But there is a deeper connection to The Game that we all feel, one of the many common threads running through our family, binding us together. It is like a landmark we can look to, even in a dire and scary situation like Dad’s illness. Dad looked to it himself even as he was staring surgery in the face, and is looking forward to seeing the rest of this season, and lots more after it. It has meaning for him, and for all of us, and so I know that baseball is not trivial, or insignificant, or “only a game.”

Here’s to my Dad, and to the team and The Game which he loves.

Scarcely had the confetti settled in Boston last October when the schedule for 2005 was released, and we Sox fans learned that our World Champions were to open their season against the Yankees. Self-satisfied grins spread across millions of faces (mine included) as we thought about how it would look and feel to see the banner raised proclaiming the Sox to be the Champions in the presence of our dearest enemies. The Banner would flutter in the stiff, cold April breeze, and the players — those who have not been dismissed to other teams around the country and around the globe — would jog out onto the field amidst a deafening roar of fan-gratitude, and would each receive his ring.

Now we find that this might not happen at all.

Of course the Sox will commemorate the World Series win at the home opener. The banner will be raised, and the team will be honored. But rumors have started to swirl to the effect that the ring presentation might be deferred to a later date, and might not necessarily be presented at a baseball game.

Dr. Charles Steinberg, Executive V.P. in charge of Public Affairs for the Red Sox, has mused that the rings might be presented in a more private setting — perhaps an event at the Fleet Center (home of the Bruins and Celtics), or maybe even at a hotel ballroom, as “a fundraiser.” I assume the public could attend this sort of thing by making a certain donation to a worthy charity — probably the Jimmy Fund, or the Red Sox Foundation.

These speculative sentences has hardly been finished before a towering storm out outrage erupted from the citizens of the Red Sox Nation. By the 11th of April, we will have waited four and a half months, on top of more than eight decades, to see this ceremony performed before our eyes. Now to be told that, not only might we not see the rings presented before the reluctant spectators in the visitors’ dugout, we might have to pay extra to see it happen. Extra, on top of the generations of frustrated hopes and seasons that ended in anger and tears. Extra, on top of the increasingly unaffordable tickets to Fenway, on top of the travel and lodging expenses we out-of-towners must pony up. Are we to be told that merely being paying fans wasn’t enough, and that in order to be shown a glimpse of a gem-studded bauble being presented to a grinning millionaire, we’d have to lay down more money, which these days, few of us can spare?

Of course, this brings up the question: Why is it so important to us to see this happen on Opening Day? Why is it so important to us at all? The rings are, after all, just gem-studded baubles, the recipients just grinning millionaires, paid outrageous sums to play a game. Why is it deemed an insult to suggest that we might turn some of this enthusiasm to good use by donating to charity in order to see the ring presentation?

The first thing to get out of the way is the matter of charity. Sox fans do not have to be goaded or lured into giving to charity. The WEEI Radiothon, held each summer to raise money for the Jimmy Fund has raised millions of dollars in the last few years. The Red Sox Foundation is the recipient of more fan generosity. Fans donate to charities backed by individual players. So why, I have to ask, is it necessary from the Red Sox high muckymucks to squeeze even more charity out of the fans by using the ring presentation as bait? Such an idea devalues the rings and the accomplishment they represent. It devalues the fans’ loyalty. It even devalues the charities that stand to benefit, as if no one would support them without seeing the rings as a reward.

There are other reasons we fans have a right to see that ceremony. For one thing, though we must pay, one way or another, to see the games, they are public events. In Boston, and among all who adhere to the Red Sox, the team might as well be in the public domain. Though most of us do not own even a penny’s worth of stock in the team, the Red Sox are the emotional property of every fan. It is not an exaggeration to say that generations have lived and died with the team’s fortunes. I know people who are still anguished about Slaughter’s Mad Dash, and about the crushing end of the 1949 season. People still mourn the shocking and untimely death of Harry Agganis. So many people think of Tony Conigliaro and wonder what might have been. And if the Sox had only had the wisdom to hang onto Fisk and Lynn…

Through all of this – through wars and bad trades, injuries, flukey plays (Piniella’s lucky stab, Dent’s drifting pop-up, Stanley’s wild pitch, Wake’s flat knuckler to Boone), we have not even for a fraction of a second doubted our loyalty to the team. We could no more give up on them than give up on our own dreams, whatever they may be. So many people, sifting through the wreckage of a lost season, have squared their shoulders and said, “NEXT year. NEXT year they’ll do better.”

Next Year has finally come, and we have already paid, in money and in loyalty, more than enough to be granted permission to see that ring presentation.

Do we need to see the rings presented in the presence of the Yankees? Many would answer this with a resounding YES! How many times have we had to endure the mockery of the “Nineteen-eighteen!” chant? How many times have we been called losers, chumps, fools for believing in the team that gave us only heartbreak, while the Yankees went on to compile twenty-six World Series wins? How many times have we had Babe Ruth shoved in our faces? How many times has that team slapped victory out of our hands, and then let us know about it again and again and AGAIN?

I don’t consider myself to be a spiteful person, but I was really looking forward to the Opening Day ceremony. The schedule made up probably two years ago has, with splendid irony, put that team on our field on our Opening Day as World Champions, and we should not turn up our noses at such a generous gift from the baseball gods. Had the tables been turned last fall – had, say, Dave Roberts not safely stolen second, or had Rivera nabbed the ball Mueller hit and turned it into a double play – or if he had simply induced three easy infield pop-ups to end the game and the Sox’s dreams – do we for a moment believe that the Yankees would not rub it in, when the Sox open the season in the Bronx on April 3rd?

OF COURSE they’d rub it in. They’ve been rubbing it in for over eighty years. Not that we should emulate them in this respect, but just this once – just this once! – let them be forced by etiquette to stand and applaud for my team.

If an Opening Day presentation is somehow impossible – if the rings aren’t ready that day (though the manufacturer has publicly assured the team that the rings will be ready whenever they are needed, and if Opening Day is the day, the rings – all 500 of them – will be there), then the presentation must still take place at a packed Fenway. It has to be done in front of the bleacher bums, the families in the grandstand seats, season-ticket holders in the box seats and corporate swells in the .406 Club. If it can’t be done in front of the Yankees, then it doesn’t matter who the visiting team is. Minnesota, Oakland, Kansas City, the Pirates – it doesn’t matter. The fans are the ones that matter.

How many times have we heard the players assert that the fans deserved the win, as a reward for years of undying support? If the fans deserved the win as much as the players, then don’t we deserve the rings as well? I don’t mean that we need material reward (though lower ticket prices would be nice); all we want is to see our baseball heroes receive the symbol of their amazing accomplishment, and we need to see it in the place where it happened – Fenway Park, the shrine of our faith. We need to see it, to feel it again, to cheer it again, to remember how it felt on the Night of the Blood-Red Moon, when Foulke fielded that little one-hopper, and so carefully tossed the ball to Mientkiewicz, and eighty-six years of drought vanished in a flood of happiness. We would look at our seatmates in the park or at home, and tell each other, for the first time or the hundredth time, where we were when they won, and what we felt, and what we did, and with whom we shared it.

That’s what the rings are about. They aren’t about what the Yankees didn’t do. They aren’t about the charity we give anyway. They are about perseverance against crushing odds. They are about loyalty that may be shaken but never broken. They are about forgiveness, and faith, and the love between a team and its fans.

POSTSCRIPT: February 24th

I don’t know if the Sox brass were kind of startled (and a little alarmed) by the eruption of outrage, or what, but today they have anounced that the rings will indeed be presented at the Home Opener. A gust of wind blowing in all directions from New England was widely believed to be a massive collective sigh of relief.

Annie

I feel like I’m crossing a desert. I have to cross a dark, cold desert to get to the oasis called Spring Training. In that oasis are palm trees with clusters of baseballs hanging from them like dates.

There are little streams and pools here and there in The Desert, long before the oasis is in sight. Winter meetings, free agent signings, Hall of Fame voting. These will keep you going, giving you just enough strength to reach the next pool, until finally you reach the oasis, its green fields surrounded by palms that rustle in the warm February breeze. Random springs of news slake the fans’ thirst for a little while. News, even about a team you don’t follow, or a player you dislike, bring you back in touch with The Game – but it’s just a mirage, ephemeral and insubstantial. What you want most of all in the world is a game, a fresh game. Even a sloppy, high-scoring, badly-pitched game between minor-league teams would do, when all you can find to watch is basketball and hockey. A game to watch or hear, a game to keep score, for the simple pleasure of writing “6-3” or “F-8” or even “E-4.”

The Desert is crossed slowly, one day at a time, one crawling step at a time. Winter Meetings sustain us for a few days; arbitration and tendering deadlines give us strength enough to crawl onward. Around us, snow piles up and is plowed away; ice accumulates and then melts; the sun reaches its lowest point in the sky, the shortest day and longest night, and then ever so slowly the days lengthen. At the end of December we pin a new calendar to the wall and mark off another day – forty-five days till Spring Training.

By the time the free-agent signing deadline has come in January, we can see the shimmering, faint outline of the oasis on the horizon. But the intervening weeks are long, and cold, and dark, and desolate. We spend time in contemplation, wondering, while shivering through the night, what went wrong last year, and whether the changes since made will fix it. We think of who has left us – either with relief that they’re gone, or with sadness at their departure. We wonder if the newcomers will be any good. That’s all we can do: contemplate, wonder, wish and hope.

So the tinsel and balsam needles are vacuumed out of the living room carpet; glass balls and beaded garlands are wrapped in tissue and packed away; New Year’s confetti is swept out of the corners, and we sigh and consider January, the longest, coldest, darkest month of the year. It’s a month of nine-hour days, of below-zero mornings, of frosted windows, jumper cables, dry gas, oil bills… Is it any wonder we look for any scrap of news to take our minds off the salt-stained roads, walled in with sand-blackened snowbanks? Is it any wonder we long for the sight of warm green fields, striped with evening shadows, growing brighter under the lights as the soft summer evening deepens? The thirst for baseball grows more intense in these monotonous winter days.

The trees of the oasis are nearly close enough to touch, its waters close enough to smell on an otherwise ordinary gray Tuesday in New England. With fanfare, a truck pulls out of the Back Bay, headed for I-95 South, loaded with the tools of baseball, and the hopes of baseball-starved fans. This is the equipment truck, and its departure is the surest sign that the Desert is almost conquered.

A few days later, on a crystal clear February morning in Vermont, it’s -26°F by my back door. Deep, sheltered valleys up north reach -36°F, -39°F, -46°F. Thick ice and frost cloud the windows; backyard birds are puffed into pompoms as they gather at the feeders. It’s cold in the house, even as the furnace roars expensively in the cellar. Trees snap and split in the intense cold. Water pipes freeze. Cars die. It’s the coldest day yet, and it seems as if winter has come to stay.

But turn on the TV – feast your eyes. There are young men sitting in circles on soft, sunlit grass, and laughing as they stretch. There are men hitting baseballs, catching, throwing, fielding, running. In shorts and t-shirts. Green trees rustle in the breeze behind the outfield walls. Flowers bloom in multicolored cascades behind the general manager and the former free agent, now joined for better or worse by a mutually pleasing contract extension, as they give a press conference in front of the clubhouse.

It’s Spring Training. Winter is over! The Desert has once again been crossed.

I drink in the scenes from Florida and Arizona, and feel the desolation of The Desert fading away. It’s still cold here, with more than a month to go until the vernal equinox, and more than a month after that before the leaves emerge. But the sights and sounds of baseball warm the true fan’s soul, and make the last few weeks of winter go down a lot more easily.

Spring Training and its little pleasures and dramas fill a spot in our hearts left empty since October. What rookie phenom comes out of almost nowhere and pitches his way into the rotation? What veteran utility player, back for the league minimum and playing for pride, does so well that he’s tabbed as the starting third-baseman? What interim manager has the “interim” (or perhaps the “manager”) removed from his title? Who catches his spikes during infield drills and has to have his knee sewn back together? Most of the events are sweetly routine; Favorite pitchers pitch well, and favorite hitters hit. Rookies prospects show promise but need more polish. The Red Sox and Twins vie for the Mayor’s Cup. Jerry Remy cracks jokes about the traffic lights in Fort Myers.

For the first few days, just the sight of the ballplayers going about their routine practices is enough, but soon, with my immediate thirst quenched, I begin to want richer fare. I want a game.

Finally – a Saturday afternoon, on the first weekend in March. Sunlight is streaming in the south windows, icicles dripping a steady stream from the eaves. The snowbanks are deep, but their faces wear a glassy sheen that crumbles away at a touch. Bare spots appear in the driveway, and cars splash through the meltwater that runs in broad, rippled ribbons across the road. The air smells rich and earthy, filled with the scents of wet tree bark and mud.

I drop the blinds against the worst of the glare, pour a drink, assemble a snack – popcorn, peanuts, cheese and pepperoni, a hot dog – and turn on the TV.

A baseball game – the first televised game in nearly five months! It doesn’t matter that it’s not at Fenway, that instead of the Citgo sign and the Prudential Building, there’s a stand of palm trees beyond the outfield wall. I try to keep score; most of the starting lineup is familiar, and so is the starting pitcher, but he’s gone by the third inning, and few position players last past the fifth. The scoresheet becomes a mess as players are replaced and switch positions. I never heard of the guy they put in at second base in the 6th and move to third in the 8th…

But it’s baseball.

The sun goes down at five-forty-five, and it’s cold. Orion stands tilted over the western mountains, and the snow gets hard and crusty as the temperature falls below freezing…

It doesn’t matter that it’s cold tonight, that snow is forecast for tomorrow, that Mud Season still awaits. None of that matters. I’ve crossed out of The Desert and into the green grass of a well-watered valley. I saw a baseball game! Winter is over.

Annie

It’s January 8th. It’s been snowing hard all day here in Vermont, and the daylight began to fade in mid-afternoon behind the snow-thickened atmosphere. A good day for baseball, I thought. How better to chase the glooms of a cold winter day than with the Boys of Summer, in crisp, white uniforms, playing on a sunny emerald field?

I found the tape I had in mind: May 3, 2003. Pedro starting for the Red Sox v. Rick Reed for the Twins, at Fenway. I’d been at Fenway that very day to witness the game in person, but had not seen the taped broadcast. I remembered that it had been a beautiful day, sunny and relatively mild. Pedro had pitched a complete game – one run on four hits and twelve strikeouts. I remembered how we had stood and chanted his name: “Pedro! Pedro! Pedro!” and had screamed our throats raw with each successive strikeout, as he walked with calm confidence – head high, shoulders back – to the dugout at the end of each inning. Nomar had had a couple of hits, including one in a wild seven-run sixth inning.

So I put on this tape to chase the winter blues. But as it went on, the sadder and sadder I became.

Leave it to a Red Sox fan to get depressed while watching a game My Boys won on a sunny spring day. Only a Red Sox fan could be fully aware that her team has just won the World Series, and still be depressed.

It’s not the World Series win that has me down. How could it be? It’s what I’ve wanted so badly for just about my entire life. I’m not sad for what we’ve won. I’m sad for what we’ve lost.

Let me put it another way. I’ve always been a baseball fan, a Red Sox fan, but when I was a kid, we almost never saw games on TV. This was years before the advent of satellite dishes and we lived beyond the reach of cable. We almost never got the games on the radio, here where the mountains play havoc with AM signals. I was a baseball fan, but of the casual variety.

The strike of ’94 (which began the day before my birthday) turned me off. Though the Sox won the division in ’95, they were wiped out early in the playoffs. Then, in 1997, something happened.

Nomar.

The young skinny guy with the funny name burst upon the stage at Fenway and galvanized imaginations of Sox fans everywhere. He could hit, field, run and throw, hit for power and steal bases. He tore up the league and won Rookie of the Year.

Pedro arrived in time for the next season. Pedro, the little slip of a man who could snap his slender body like a whip and throw lightning.

Nomar and Pedro breathed life into my flagging interest in baseball. Here, finally, were two guys who could do it all. Here was hope again – two real, tangible, engaging reasons for Sox fans to hope. Both were signed for a long spell; surely with these guys at the core of the team, good things would happen.

These names, these faces, became as regular and familiar as the seasons. Turn on the TV in February, and there were Pedro and Nomar and Tek and Lowe, the hot Florida sun on them as the sweated through PFP and infield drills, and split-squad games in Fort Myers and Jupiter and Dunedin and Tampa.

They were so familiar: Nomar’s lean face lit by his endearing inverted smile; the shape of Pedro’s long fingers as they demonstrated his change-up grip. Nomar, making in impossible off-balance throw from deep short to just nip the runner at first. Pedro’s face contorted as he put all his lean strength into a pitch. Nomar’s tug-tug-tap-tap as he watched the pitcher look in for the sign, his quick swing, and toss of the bat to the right as he dug for first, running out—what? A home run? A grounder to second? A gapper to left-center? He ran out every play. I can just see him now, leaning as he took the turn around second, sliding into third, safe on a triple to the Triangle.

Pedro, his face stern and humorless as he looks in to take the sign from Tek, then his body whips the ball forward, and the batter, mistaking the change-up for a fastball, swings almost before the ball gets there. Amidst a shower of cheers, Pedro walks with proud dignity to the dugout and points to the sky in silent, eloquent thanks.

They were not stern and serious all the time; both could be seen talking and laughing in the dugout, particularly Pedro, who delighted in antics to entertain his teammates, dancing and fooling around. Once he was being such a pest that his teammates tied him to a post in the dugout and even taped his mouth shut.

They were both so familiar, and had meant so much to their teammates, and the fans, and the city. Now both are gone.

Regardless of the circumstances of their departure, and regardless on which side of those particular debates the fans came down, those two men at one time were everything to Sox fans. It was reassuring to see #5 step in, and tug-tug-tap-tap with runners on base, innings running short, and a game to win, the Fenway Faithful roaring “Nomaaaaah!” There was magic in those wrists and that quick eye, magic enough to see the pitch, and hit the ball just so, to send it where the fielders weren’t standing. It was reassuring to see #45 on the mound with a slim lead to protect, knowing there was guile in his mind and magic in that arm and those long fingers, magic enough to make the ball spin just so and miss the bat.

So Nomar showed a disturbing predilection for getting hurt. But did he ever play as if he were bored, as if the game meant little to him? Did he ever fail to try? Did he ever show disrespect for the Game, his teammates, the fans? He made errors, but often his mistakes were the result of trying too hard, of not playing it safe. Can we fault him for that?

So Pedro was arrogant and outspoken. So are movie stars and politicians and CEOs and middle executives. Once in a while he let his emotions run away with his common sense. So he was human. In recent years his pitching was a little erratic, his record not as stellar, but given a little run support, much of the criticism leveled at him would never have been spoken (or perhaps even conceived).

Neither one was perfect, and by the time Pedro left not even the staunchest fan could deny that he was no longer the pitcher he had been in ’99 and ’00. Everyone could see that Nomar’s range, in his final games with Boston, was limited by his nagging foot injury, but his bat was as quick as ever; in just over 30 games with the Sox, his batting average was .321 – very respectable.

Now both play for other teams, in another league. They’ll face each other as adversaries now; maybe Nomar will get a hit off Pedro; Maybe Pedro will strike out Nomar on three pitches. But whatever they do on a field now, it’s of no consequence to the Red Sox. The Boston front office has done its work with a marked lack of sentimentality, which, I suppose, is as all businesses operate.

Being a fan, however, is all about sentiment. It’s about staking your heart on the actions and fortunes of a group of men playing a game. I, for one, can’t root for a team and not root for the players, not welcome them into my heart. I’ve rooted for the Red Sox for a long time, and seen players come and go, familiar faces replaced by newcomers who become dear to me, and those faces and names replaced in time. I knew that Pedro and Nomar would eventually be replaced by new guys, younger guys – but I had hoped, in my sentimentality, that they would stay in Fenway home whites until they retired from the game, circling the warning track like Yaz, departing but at the same time staying.

One of the last things Nomar said before catching a plane to Chicago that traumatic evening in July was, “They can take the shirt off my back, but they can’t take away my memories.”

Likewise for this fan. These were the two players who brought me back to baseball, who ignited my interest and made me into a more impassioned and informed fan than I had ever been. They can trade Nomar and let Pedro walk, and take down their images in the ballpark, and move their formerly treasured numbered jerseys to the bargain bin in the souvenir shops, but they can’t erase the images from my mind, or devalue what these players meant to me. Baseball came back to life for me through them, and that can’t be traded away.

Annie

October 27th, 2004

It’s setting in. I hadn’t really felt it until now, but this morning… the Sox are one game away from winning the WORLD SERIES. I know this isn’t news… but it seems like a dream, doesn’t it? And we’ll wake up, and it’ll be the same as usual, a cold raw gray morning, and we’ll be looking at next year’s schedule, and wondering who will stay and who will go. It’s so… I can’t even think of a word. Surreal, almost. How can something this good happen?

So now I feel the nerves, and the strange little tickling in my stomach as I realize how close they – WE – are. We’re going to see something that hasn’t been seen since there were Civil War vets in the stands, since before antibiotics, before radio, before women could vote. We’ve all heard the 1918 chant a hundred thousand times, and we know the litany: Babe, Bucky, Buckner, Boone… Pesky holds the ball, The Impossible Dream that really was impossible, the collapse of ‘78, the heartbreak of ‘86 (isn’t it about time people stopped blaming Billy Buckner? Had he made the play we still could have lost; anyway, we had a 3-0 lead in Game 7 and blew that, so let’s just close the book on Buckner, okay?), butting heads with the resurgent, gold-plated Yankee Dynasty… Wakefield– our quiet, noble Wakefield reduced to sobs in the visitors’ clubhouse… We’ve had it drilled into us, and yet we remained loyal. And finally, after generations, we’re going to see it.

THE LAST WIN

In 1918, a group of fans ventured by train to Boston from Vermont. Mart Kingsbury, born in 1840, a veteran of Co. E, 5th Vt. Volunteers, who had been in the thick of battle at the fall of Petersburg about a week before Lincoln was assassinated, was among the cheerful party. There were no rooms to be had; the Vermonters camped out in a distant cousin’s tearoom (I still have one of the lace aprons they brought home), and saw the games at the then-young Fenway. Mart’s niece Effie complained about the gobs of tobacco that stuck to her shoes in the wooden stands. It was cold, and some fans started small fires in the stands to keep warm, and when it threatened to get out of hand, Mart’s younger relatives hustled him out of the park, out of danger. Mart, a cantankerous old man, whacked them with his cane, cussing them out because fire or no fire, he wanted to see the game, to see the Sox beat the Cubs for the championship. Mart was my great-great uncle. He didn’t live to see another championship in Boston.

A VETERAN’S LAMENT

In 1946, the war had ended. A neighbor by the name of Walt had recently returned from his duties in the Navy, where he had seen many horrific battles, and suffered traumatic wounds. That summer, baseball healed a lot of wounds in New England. It seemed certain that the Red Sox would recapture the glory missing in the 28 years since the last time they Won It All. Then… Enos Slaughter – the Mad Dash. Pesky Holds the Ball. And suddenly the autumn crispness was gone from the air, and all Sox fans were left staring a long, cold, wet, mocking winter in the face again.

Walt went down to my mother’s house the next morning, and sat on the porch step, staring at the ground. My grandmother saw him there and went out to see if he was all right.

“Morning, Walt.”

He nodded, silent.

“Can I get you some breakfast? A cup of coffee?”

He nodded, and Gramma brought him a cup.

“Do you want sugar in that, or some milk?”

He sighed and looked up. “Got any cyanide?”

Then he talked about the game, with a hollow heartbroken tone, and told my grandmother than even after all he went through and saw and suffered in the war, nothing had hurt him as badly as seeing the Sox lose.

LAST YEAR

In 2003, after the Sox had handily and joyfully captured the Wild Card spot, the fans were riding high. Cowboy Up, unashamed hugs, the Rally Karaoke Guy, Manny and Ortiz, Pedro, the revitalized bullpen, record-setting offense… didn’t it seem like a lock? Then within two days we were sleep-deprived zombies here in the Eastern time zone, our confidence shocked and shattered from under us, down two games to none in a best-of-five series. It seemed the best we could hope for was to avoid the ignominy of being swept. Then came the loopy Game 3, with Oakland making baserunning and defensive mistakes galore, capped by Trot’s pinch-hit homer to dead-center. We were not going to we swept. Then Game 4, in the slanting afternoon sunlight of Fenway, Tim Hudson starting for Oakland against John Burkett. A gimme for Oakland…but wait. Tim Hudson was hurt, and left the game before he even broke a sweat. John Burkett was solid and steady, but the Oakland took the lead into the 8th and brought in their closer, Keith Foulke, who had close to four dozen saves under his belt. But the Sox broke through, and David Ortiz, rapidly ascending Boston baseball’s Mount Olympus, smacked a double that just missed landing in the Oakland bullpen, and two runs came in, and Boston won. At least we would not be eliminated at home.

Game 5 – Pedro v. Zito. Both were good to begin, but Zito, on short rest for the first time in his career, started to flag in the middle innings, and allowed some runners to reach before Jason Varitek hit a monumental 3-run homer. A little while later Manny added a homer of his own, thoughtlessly admiring it while Zito stood shocked and dismayed on the mound. I doubt that Manny intended any malice in this tactless display, but it didn’t look good, not to anyone.

Then, at the end of the 7th, The Collision. Jermaine Dye popped a floater into short center. Johnny Damon sprinted in at full speed, tracking the ball, calling for it. Damian Jackson cut back from second, eyes on the ball, calling for it. Neither heard the other, such was the noise in the stadium. Half a second later both were lying on the grass, their caps and the ball landing between them. Nomar grabbed the ball, threw to Mueller who had covered second to catch Dye for the 3rd out of the inning, and then bent over his fallen teammates. Jackson stirred, but Johnny lay utterly still. From the distance he looked dead. The training staff huddled around him, the stadium watched in hushed tension, and an ambulance – an ugly thing on a ball field – backed across the outfield as Johnny was fitted with a C-collar, his head strapped between blocks to keep his neck still, his body strapped to a board… then he lifted a hand in a weak wave and thumbs-up before being rushed off. “At least his neck’s not broken,” we said to each other, wiping tears from our cheeks. The game seemed petty and pointless for a little while.

Then Pedro started to run out of gas in the 8th, and allowed a couple runs to narrow the Sox’s lead to a single, skinny, fragile run. It was then that I knew they HAD to win this game — they had to win it for Johnny.

In the 9th, Scott Williamson, who had been unhittable in his previous outings, showed his mortality by walking the first two men he faced. The tying run was on second with nobody out. Derek Lowe, former starter-turned-set-up-guy-turned-closer-turned-starter-turned-closer-and-starter, who had taken the loss in Game 1, and had pitched well in Game 3 with a no-decision, now came in from the ‘pen. The first man he faced dropped down a bunt – a shocking thing for an Oakland player. One out, two in scoring position. Lowe caught the next man looking at strike three. One out away from the ALCS…Lowe walked another man. Bases loaded. Sox fans felt physically sick. Here it was again — the Collapse we were conditioned to expect, the heartbreaking loss in a wild, traumatic game.

But it didn’t end that way. Lowe threw the best pitch of his career, a slider that headed toward Terrence Long’s thigh before taking a minute turn and casting a shadow over the inside edge of the plate before whacking into Varitek’s mitt. Long arched back, avoiding the pitch that had suddenly veered – strike three called. The Sox had won.

The ALCS – worthy of a book by itself. Game 1, with Wake baffling the Yankees, Mussina hittable and Todd Walker clanking a homer off the foul pole. Game 2, with Pettitte overcoming a shaky first couple of innings, and the Yanks winning to even the series. Game 3, at Fenway, punctuated by the Brawl, Zimmer scrambling to claw at Pedro, Pedro pushing him away, Manny blowing his fuse, Garcia trying to spike Walker after a knockdown pitch, Clemens keeping his composure… not a happy day for anyone. Game 4, after a washout on Sunday, Wells stifling the Sox. The Sox pull one out behind unhittable Wakefield, who ties the Yanks in knots with that knucklball. But the Yanks lead 3-2 in the series, heading back to NY.

On October 15 a cold front blew through Vermont with steady winds of 25 mph, gusting to 50 or more. Part of a venerable maple tree blew across the power lines outside the house, knocking out the power at about 6:30 pm. The TV was out. The radio wouldn’t come in. We had no way of knowing, until the next morning’s paper arrived, that the Sox had pulled off a great, inspiring win, beating up on the beleaguered NY bullpen.

Game 7. I went and bought a good little battery-powered radio and an armload of candles, and as gametime approached and darkness settled in, I set up a forest of candles on the kitchen table, put new batteries in the new radio, and tuned in WNTK.

I cheered with grateful relief when Pedro struck out Soriano in the 7th. 115 pitches, literally a pitched battle. The announcer said Pedro pointed to the sky and hugged his teammates. The spotless bullpen would nail it down. We were going to the World Series.

Well, no.

When the lead was gone, and Timlin had belatedly taken the mound, I was up on the hill, in the dark. The wind had long-since died, drifts of damp, dead leaves heaped here and there in the grass. I dropped to the cold ground and stared at the impassive gray sky and the ragged black horizon, and begged. “Why? Why? Why has it always got to be this way?”

As I turned up the sound after the mid-11th-inning commercials, I heard Castigione say something about “…came over from Cincinnati…” and I thought “Williamson’s in. We should be okay.” Then, in a voice heavy with dismay and resignation: “Swing and a
drive, deep to left… and the New York Yankees have won the American League Pen—”

I slapped the radio into silence. Tore my scoresheets into shreds. Nearly cleared the candles from the table with a sweep of my arm, then realized I’d get burned and maybe set the house on fire, and things were bad enough already without that happening. I blew out the candles, splattering wax all over the table and radio in the process, and stormed off the bed, too tired to sleep, too mad to cry. The tears came the next day, when I read about Wakefield breaking down in the clubhouse and apologizing to his teammates, and how Tek and Timlin had consoled him, in tears themselves. It shouldn’t have happened that way. Not to My Boys. Not in that stadium, in front of those people.

STARTING OVER

2004 wasn’t a lot of fun. It started off with controversy, gossip, management and players looking askance at one another over the off-season trade shenanigans. Sure, Schilling and Foulke had come into the fold, and Pokey and Bellhorn, and Ellis Burks, but there was, as always in Red Sox Nation, as much as or more to grumble about than celebrate. Then Trot got hurt. Then Nomar got hurt. April went well, but in May, June and July the team sputtered like a balky motor, lurching forward unsteadily, making no progress in the standings. Interleague was, as usual, pretty much a disaster. Nomar returned but was still lame and limited, and the press rejoiced in his purported sullenness. Trot returned briefly, then was hurt again. There were bright moments – the early victories over NY, Pokey’s beautiful 2HR game, Ortiz hitting everything and hitting it far, Nomar’s joyously-cheered return in mid-June. But the clouds were thickening as the season advanced, and after the humiliating sweep in NY (in which the Sox actually played pretty well in two of the games, but came up short), it seemed pretty bleak. July 24 was an interesting day; the Sox came from behind every inning in that game it seemed, after Varitek had spoken for the entire Red Sox Nation in feeding Arrogant-Rod a leather sandwich (Boy, did that feel good!), and Billy Mueller, the self-effacing, soft-spoken quiet gamer, socked a 2-run homer off the untouchable Mariano Rivera (after Nomar had brought the game within reach with a lead-off double and run), and we felt good about being Sox fans again. Then a week later the tempest broke as Nomar, having been told that he wasn’t going to be traded, was traded to the Cubs, and we got… who? NO PITCHERS? For Nomar? Shouldn’t we at least have gotten a half-way decent middle reliever? The two weeks after that were terrible. The Sox still sputtered, the new guys not hitting their hat size, let alone their weight; Cubs fans rejoiced; Nomar and Sox management exchanged barbs from afar, and the Boston media, for the most part, danced jigs, blaming Nomar for everything, from the Yanks’ lead in the division to Lowe’s ERA, to nail fungus and sunspots. Fans speculated and, as usual, groused and predicted nothing but doom.

Then… something happened. The Sox suddenly won three times as many games in August as they lost, took a 10-game win streak into September, swept the Angels and took over the Wild Card. The unfathomable 10.5 game gap in the AL East standings shriveled to 2.5 games, as the Yankees suffered some truly embarrassing losses. The bounces and calls started to go our way.

The Sox won the Wild Card and had a relatively subdued champagne party in the visiting clubhouse at The Trop. The Angels ran over the staggering A’s and won the West, and we went into Anaheim on a high. Schilling pitched well – not brilliantly, but well enough, and the Sox rolled. Pedro pitched his best game in weeks for game 2. Arroyo was good in #3, but Vladi Guerrero shocked us back to earth as we all suspected he eventually would, to give us a taste of humility before Ortiz put the series away in his inimitable fashion, and we were going to the ALCS to face…

Oh no. Not again.

WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH NEW YORK

Schilling, the savior of the season, was POUNDED in Game 1 at the Stadium. We found out later that there was a tendon running loose in his ankle like a mouse in a grain barrel. The only option was surgery – season-ending surgery. Then Pedro pitched well again – better than he had versus Anaheim, but the Sox were hopeless against Lieber. Game 3 – the ultimate humiliation, an embarrassing 19-8 loss in the Fens, with players in visiting grays cheering each other as the cold stands emptied long before the end of the game.

Then – Game 4. Lowe summoned from his exile in the pen, because Wake had volunteered to take a bullet for the team in Game 3, thus losing his start the next day. Lowe pitched well but NY took a lead into the 9th and handed it over to Rivera, he with only 1 blown save in his postseason career. Then…

A walk. Millar worked a leadoff walk. A pinch-runner, Roberts, brought to Boston for this specific purpose, high-fived Millar as they passed by the dugout, and took a lead off first. He bluffed, danced, dove back, just avoiding a couple pick-off throws. Then on the first pitch to Mueller… you know the sound the road-runner makes just before Wile E. Coyote, with a bib around his neck and a knife and fork ready, can grab him?

Posada’s throw was a millisecond late and on the shortstop-side of the bag. Roberts was at second, safe by a hair. Nobody out. Fenway roaring and rocking. Billy Mueller at the plate. A swing, a crack, a single scorched up the middle, seeming to knock Rivera’s feet clean from under him, and he lay on his stomach on the mound, watching the ball bounce into center field, slowing down in the grass as Roberts picked up speed and slid across home and popped up in a jubilant, fist-pumping pirouette – game tied at four. The Sox stave off death for one more inning, at least.

That may be known as one of the most pivotal plays of the Sox’s entire season. A stolen base by a man whom everybody in the world knew was going to run. And no one could stop him.

For three more innings the teams push against each other, pitching in and out of jams, making the desperate plays when they had to. Then in the 12th, with Manny at first on a single, David Ortiz, who has said “I never get nervous,” steps in, tucks his bat under his arm, spits in his palm and smacks his hands together. Then – a monstrous swing, contact, and all of Fenway rises to their feet to push the ball through the cold night and over the wall into the bullpen, and by god, we will NOT we swept!

Pretty much a repeat the next night, except the suspense is prolonged, through fourteen agonizing innings, as the gems of the NY bullpen are used and replaced and fade in the distance, and Big Papi stages a duel with Loaiza, with Johnny on second base, and after fouling off pitch after pitch after pitch Ortiz catches the tenth one close enough to the sweet spot to keep it fair, and Johnny is running, and the ball clears Jeter and Cairo and drops in front of Bernie, and Johnny flies across the plate into Mientkiewicz’s waiting arms, and we will not lose this series at home. And the Red Sox Nation, bleary and happy, staggers off to bed in the wee hours of the morning yet again.

Game 6, in the Bronx, and one of the most unfathomable sights in modern sports. Schilling, whom we had been told was not going to pitch, then who might pitch again, but might not… there he was. We didn’t know then what had been done to his ankle; all we saw was the gritting of his teeth and the fire in his eye and the blood on his sock. His injured ankle was BLEEDING. And there he stood on the mound, in the eye of the hurricane known as the Rivalry.

We didn’t know until after the game that his loose tendon had been stitched securely but out of its natural place. We didn’t know he had undergone this suturing before the anesthetic had set in. (Think about THAT, if you can bear to.) We didn’t know then that the sutured skin started to tear and bleed as he warmed up in the bullpen. We didn’t know that he was going pitch-to-pitch after the fourth inning, never mind inning-to-inning or even batter-to-batter, and that any moment he could have waved the white flag. All we saw was seven innings, no walks, four hits, one run, and a win. What a win. A legend born before our amazed eyes.

And the Yanks? What do we remember most about them in this game? A slap, a girlish slap, by the Quarter-Billion-Dollar Man, an infantile slap to force an error and underhandedly drive in a run. But he didn’t get away with it. To the detriment of his team, and his reputation, he got caught, and the fans cheered the umpires’ considered decision with bottles and balls and trash.

Game 7. Again it goes to Game 7. Could it be any other way? But this Game 7 was so different. Lowe, pitching on three days’ rest, went six strong, the best pitching he had done in a year or more. Johnny, a no-show in the ALCS so far, embarrassed the high-priced NY pitchers with 2 home runs and 6 RBIs – on only 2 pitches. A romp, as NY fans covered their eyes and left early. Still, Sox fans waited… six, seven, eight runs are easy to come by for the Yanks. No one gets off the mat like the Boss’s Boys.

But not this night.

This time it was the Yanks letting their grip on the season slip away, becoming an unwilling part of history, the only team in baseball history to even allow their opponents to force a 6th game, let alone a 7th, let alone a series win after bulling their way to a 3-0 lead in a 7-game series. While the Red Sox danced and hugged on the infield, and Wakefield stood in joyous contemplation on the mound where he had met ruin a year ago, the Yankees quietly carried their gear to their clubhouse, and changed, and went home. Not to be heard from on a field for five long months.

A HAPPY HOMECOMING

The Sox came home, too. Home to cold, windy, beautiful Fenway, their celebration tempered by the knowledge that one of their fans wouldn’t see them in the series, killed by accident in the frenzied throng celebrating the Pennant victory on Lansdowne Street. It seems that with every joy comes a sorrow.

So how many of us really expected this in the sticky, dreary days of early August, with the fan base riven by divergent opinions about The Trade, with the newcomers, especially Cabrera, under a microscope to see if they were worth their price, with the team recently having lost a couple to Minnesota, Tampa and Detroit? How many honestly expected to see Fenway packed to the rafters in late October, with the Yankees a mere laughter-provoking memory, the Angels an afterthought? As the icy wind whipped in from center field and the fans bundled in parkas and scarves and waved signs, and Steven Tyler wailed the National Anthem, and the Green Mountain Boys roared by overhead, and the lights in the Prudential Building spelling out “GO SOX!”… how many of us thought back to the sweep in New York, to Trot hobbling around the bases, to Lowe giving up hit after hit that the infielders just couldn’t catch, left out to pitch with blood from an open cut smearing his uniform, to Pedro’s first-inning home runs, to Millar’s slump, to Johnny’s badly bruised knee?

Game 1 of the World Series was almost laughably bad on both sides. The Cardinals’ starter Williams had nothing the Sox couldn’t hit, and the Cards hit almost nothing the Sox could cleanly field. Wakefield’s knuckler abandoned him as the wind rose and the temperature dropped, and Manny came far too close to tearing up both knees on a clumsy, ugly error. Mark Bellhorn, the bench player forced to full-time duty with the injuries to Nomar and then Pokey, and had suddenly awakened from a slumber in the ALCS Game 6 with a line-drive opposite-field 3-run HR in New York, and having clanged a homer off the right-field foul pole in Game 7 in Yankee Stadium, lifted one to whang off Pesky’s Pole and drive in the winning runs in WS Game 1, and Boston rocked to sleep.

Game 2 was as cold and windy as Game 1 and a little wetter, and all eyes once again were on Schilling, who had again had his tendon tacked down and pitched on pure adrenaline. Six innings, one run — unearned. Amazing. This one was a little closer but the Sox committed another 4 errors, only one of which led to a run. The Sox scored all six of their runs with 2 out – a 2-run triple from Tek, a 2-run double from Bellhorn, and a 2-run single by Cabrera. The Cards mustered 2 runs, and the Sox took a 2-0 Series lead to warmer, wetter St. Louis.

Game 3 would have entertained Harry Houdini. Pedro pitched into trouble in the first and 3rd innings, and his defense – the two weakest defensive players on the Sox (coincidentally to two best offensive powers) – got him out of it, with an assist from some Cardinal mistakes. Manny caught a bases-loaded, one-out fly ball in LF – a sac fly? Nope. He pegged a strike to Varitek who swept a tag onto Larry Walker trying to score from third to end the inning. Later Jeff Suppan reached on a swinging bunt and was at third a few minutes later after Renteria had doubled over Trot’s head – Trot slipping and landing WHUMP on his injured back in the cold puddles on the warning track. The Sox played the infield back, conceding the run on a grounder, and Larry Walker obliged, tapping a slow bouncer to second. But Suppan, for some reason, didn’t run. He took a few steps, headed back to third, started for home, and belatedly realized his mistake and scrambled back for the bag, but Ortiz, labeled by all as a defensive liability, made a perfect throw to Mueller, who tagged the dismayed Suppan – double play. In the dugout, Tony LaRussa pulled his hat down over his eyes. Instead of a game tied at 1, with Renteria on third, one out and Pujols coming up, it was 2 out, runner at second. Pujols grounded to third, and the inning was over.

Then Pedro (“perhaps making his last start in a Boston uniform”, a line so much repeated I thought it had become part of his name) then settled in and retired 14 in a row. The Sox cobbled together more 2-out hits and the score was 4-0 for Petey. He was replaced by Timlin, who pitched a perfect 8th, and then Foulke, who allowed only his 6th hit and 1st run of the postseason when Walker homered to center. And the Sox won, 4-1.

And now they stand at the verge, on the brink, in the doorway, at the dawn of a new day… all the clichés the sportswriters come up with can’t possibly tell the tale.

OCTOBER 28TH
CAN YOU BAHLEEVE IT?

How can I describe this? How can I put into words what only pictures and emotions can really convey?

As I drove home from work a little after 6pm Wednesday night, the moon rose before me, a great golden coin balanced on the rolling, mountainous horizon. It was a picture-book moon, with all its features clear, hiding now and then in a coy manner as I drove the winding road up into the Green Mountains – ducking behind a mountain covered with pines, peering through a screen of bare hardwoods, reflecting off the silky black water of the Winhall River, and finally backlighting the little round mountain under which I live. It was as if the moon knew something special was going to happen, and was tugging at my hand, like an eager child (come on, hurry up! We’re going to be late!) until I reached home and prepared to watch.

Scoresheets ready? Of course. Enough leads in the Red Sox clicky-pencil? Yup. I had a cup of tea in the Red Sox mug I bought for an outrageous price in the Souvenir Store in August of ‘03. I kept an eye on the moon as it lost its warm golden glow and ascended as a bright drop of silver into the velvet sky. I wore my Sox sweatshirt, and the same red wool socks I had just put on when Dave Roberts stole second at the last possible second if the ALCS. I popped a fresh tape into the VCR and watched the pregame show, hearing but at the same time not really hearing the confident predictions and not really seeing the announcers with their dazed half-disbelieving smiles. They reminded us that we’d been close before, tantalizingly close. It’s been compared to the myth of Sisyphus, forever pushing the stone almost to the top of the mountain, only to have it get away and roll back to the bottom. I think of the story of the Sox in the Series as more like the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Orpheus and his wife loved each other dearly, with true devotion – but Eurydice fell ill and died, and was taken below by Hades. Orpheus, heartbroken, risked all to venture into the underworld and plead with the dark, dour god for the return of his dear wife to the world of light. Hades agreed, but on one condition: Orpheus would walk ahead of Eurydice, and on no account was he to turn to look at her until they had both reached the upper world again. They followed these instructions, and Orpheus’s heart was light as he emerged into the sunshine. He knew his wife was one step behind him, and he turned to offer his hand up the last step—

And she was gone.

This time, Orpheus won. We’d already sent Hades packing, when we danced on the infield at Yankee Stadium, when Tim Wakefield, who had wept bitter tears just a year before in the same place, stood on the mound and reveled in the moment, hearing the cheers of a few thousand Sox fans whooping it up in enemy territory, with nary a pinstripe in sight.

The Cardinals had looked remarkably toothless so far, not at all the team that had steamrolled the National League Central and locked up a division title before the summer solstice. They had a stacked lineup, led by Albert Pujols, destined to be one of the game’s best players for another ten or twelve years at least. Their pitching had been good, very respectable, their closer one of the best. With speed and power, nearly spotless defense, and solid pitching, they were the team to beat. Even the staunchest Sox fans were saying Sox in six, Sox in seven, never seriously believing we’d sweep.

Yet, here we were. Up three games to none. We were sure to win…

But hold on. None of that. We’ve been one game away from a WS title before, on several occasions. The Yankees were up three games to none just over a week ago and look what happened to them. No, there was none of that stuff. No more getting to the top step and turning to see Eurydice vanish back into hell.

The moon rose higher. Some country singer yodeled the Anthem, and jets roared overhead in the dark. Jason Marquis took the mound amidst a roar from the Cardinals’ crowd. About 90 seconds later Johnny Damon took a quick slashing swing and the ball vanished on a line into the bullpen and the Sox led with the only run they’d actually need that night.

By the 4th inning the moon was almost gone, the earth’s shadow biting away all but a silver crescent, and the Sox were ahead 3-0 on Trot’s bases-loaded double to right-center. By the fifth the moon was a glowing red ball in the sky, and the previously hidden stars powdered the black dome of the sky, and Lowe was pitching his best, and the Cards looked helpless and (a look we all know too well in Sox Nation) hopeless.

The outs ticked by. My Dad (who would turn 83 on the 30th) snoozed in his chair, tired from digging potatoes and putting up storm windows. My sister Barbara called in the 8th, excited but still worried; “Three runs isn’t enough!” she said. “They have to score some more!”

The Sox threatened but failed to score in the 9th. Foulke would get a save opportunity – the biggest save opportunity of his life. I shook Dad’s arm. “Dad, you have to wake up. You can’t sleep through the bottom of the ninth. You’ve been waiting your whole life to see this.”

As the commercials flickered past, I thought about that, as Dad sat up and leaned forward in his chair, valiantly trying to keep his eyes open. Dad was born in 1921, with Babe Ruth already a Yankee, and the Sox already fading. He’d lived through hardscrabble poverty on a windswept Vermont farm; lived through the depression, and lived through his harrowing years in the army in WWII. He’d met Mom at a neighborhood baseball game (it’s in the blood), married fifty-five years ago, raised five children on a small wage and what we could grow in the garden. I thought of all that had come and gone in his life, and no Red Sox rings among them. Ever a fan of the underdog, he rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Red Sox. Sometimes, on a summer evening, Dad would stop in the middle of his work in the garden, and scowl into the middle distance, and mutter “Damn those Yankees anyway.”

The commercials ended, and Foulke stood on the mound, facing Pujols, who quickly sent a wormburner over the mound and into center field. The Red Sox Nation trembled, knowing that the tying run was now in the on-deck circle in the person of Jim Edmonds. We remembered scary moments, and felt our hearts begin to thump harder. Foulke had walked two of the Yankees in Game 6 of that series to put the tying run on base. Sweat broke out on palms and foreheads of Sox fans the world over. Pujols can run, and if they put on a hit-and-run he can easily make it first and third, nobody out, Edmonds stepping in… or score on a double…

Scott Rolen, a fearsome hitter all year until this series, hit the ball hard but not too hard, and Kapler came in a couple of steps and caught it chest-high for the first out, and Rolen, dejected, scuffed back to the dugout, and Pujols jogged back to first base. Sox Nation let out a yell, then settled back. Two outs to go, but still a slim lead.

Jim Edmonds struck out swinging, and Sox Nation trembled like a volcano ready to blow.

But we were one out away before, remember?

I glanced across the room to see that Dad was still awake – he was leaned forward, intent on the TV.

Foulke’s first pitch to Renteria missed a little, and Pujols walked in to second base on defensive indifference. The adrenaline-wave of Sox Nation crashed like surf, rolled back, and built again as Foulke came to the set.

The 1-0. Renteria was a little on top of it, and chopped it back sharply to the mound, where the bounce seemed to catch Foulke more than the other way around, lifting him off his feet. Replays show a look of surprise on his face as he fielded the ball. Then he turned and took a couple soft steps toward first, waiting till Mientkiewicz got to the bag, then softly, carefully tossed the ball as if it were a newly-laid egg. Mientky reached for it, caught it gently, as if it might break, and then leaped, straight-legged into the air, his fist and glove raised aloft, and Foulke turned and shouted “We won!” as Varitek bounced across the infield (it’s quite a sight to see a man of Tek’s physique bouncing and skipping like a little kid) and leaped into Foulke’s arms (another astonishing sight, seeing someone hold a man of Tek’s physique aloft and carry him, even for a couple of yards), and Mientky jumped about four and a half feet off the ground onto the growing pile of ballplayers, and Manny charged in, leaping and laughing, his finger raised to the sky, and Pedro sprang out of the dugout, and Schilling roared out onto the field with a pronounced limp, and Johnny and Kapler ran in side by side, the hairy one and the bald one, their uniform numbers a shining red “19-18,” and Tek, freed from the grasp of his teammates, fell to his hands and knees in the grass and appeared to be weeping, and everyone hugged and kissed and hugged some more.

I was on my knees by this time, beside Dad’s chair, hugging him, and laughing, and yelling “We WON! We WON! Oh my god we won! We did it! We won!” And Dad was laughing too, and gave me a hug, and then the phone rang. It was one of my sisters, and we were both yelling so much I couldn’t tell which one it was for a few seconds. It was Mary, calling from the Northeast Kingdom, laughing and yelling and making so much noise that it made her dog bark. I was in tears now, and haven’t heard a word coming from the TV since the last out was made.

They showed the champagne showers in the clubhouse, and then the trophy was presented by the lugubrious Commissioner to Mr. Henry, and someone interviewed Johnny on the field, and then they gave Manny the MVP award – not in that order, but I can’t remember, as I was still yelling and on the phone with Mary – and Pedro made off with the Trophy, and they showed the scene outside Fenway Park, as thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people poured into the street in the happiest dance in that town since 1776.

I dashed down the hall to make a quick post on my baseball message board, and then tried to call Barbara, but her line was busy. She called after a few minutes, deliriously happy but SO TIRED. She hadn’t been able to whoop and holler, as she lives in a thin-walled condo, so I went out and hollered for her. It was just midnight, and I stepped out into the cold air outdoors to look at the moon, regaining its true pure silver as the eclipse faded, and I realized it was now the 28th of October, and my brother’s birthday. So I yelled congratulations, and Happy Birthday greetings to him via the moon, and I know it’s the best birthday present he ever could wish for.

As the initial excitement faded a little, and I no longer felt the need to yell, I thought of all those people who yearned for this and didn’t get to see it, and I know they’re watching too. They probably have strong opinions about the DH rule and free-agents and salaries and the wild card, and nonsense like that, but on this night, none of that extraneous stuff matters. They’re happy. The Sox have won. They came back from the dead against the Yankees. They swept the Cardinals under a blood-red moon. They overcame so much to be here, to bring us all here.

WE ARE NOT BORN TO SUFFER

Some say that the Red Sox Nation identified itself by the failure of the team, enjoying the yearly disappointment in a Puritanical, masochistic way, and that a win would somehow cause the fans and the team to lose that indefinable something that drew us all together. It was said that somehow we wanted the team to lose, and lose again, to justify our gloominess, and winning the World Series would ruin everything.

I don’t think so…

About three million people turned out to watch the Red Sox in their victory parade on Saturday, October 30th. Some came from as far away as California, Florida and the far reaches of Canada. I read of a father and son who drove in from Nebraska, and another devotee who flew in all the way from Thailand, spending thousands of dollars and nearly a full day in the air for a chance to glimpse the triumphant baseball heroes as they rolled by in their duck-boats. People camped out on street corners in a raw October rain to have a good view. Parents rousted their kids at 3am in order to get there in time. People lined bridges, hung from windows, crowded rooftops and climbed trees to get a view of the street, and took to the gray Charles River in kayaks, canoes and paddleboats to see them when the parade turned into a flotilla.

These are not people who hungered for another loss to clutch to themselves a la Juliet’s dagger. These were happy people.

We eat and drink Red Sox. We live and breathe the box scores. We have stuck with them because we have always believed them capable of great things, and have loved them even through all the cold, long winters. We cheer when the do well. We groan and yell and swear when they don’t, because we know they can do better.

We have seen a lot of disappointment over the years, and some of our past gloom comes from knowing the history, and bracing ourselves – not getting too far ahead of ourselves, not getting our hopes too high, because we know how much it hurt to fall.

We don’t have to worry about that anymore. Sisyphus got the rock to the top of the hill. Orpheus and Eurydice are together. The Sox have won.

Annie