Around The Horn

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