The Sheila Variations

Christine Lavin: "Ballad of a Ballgame"

Well, we're in full on baseball season now, which means that all is right with the world. Come January or February I start to feel a bit ... "off" ... and sometimes it takes a while for me to locate what is wrong. It always hits me: No baseball. Walking by bars in New York City, it just doesn't seem RIGHT if the big-screen TVs aren't showing baseball.

Someone on Facebook today mentioned Janis Ian, which then made me think of this wonderful song by Christine Lavin, based on a true story from her life, when she played softball in Central Park. The song starts with the lyrics:

"Do you remember that song by Janis Ian?
The one about not getting chosen for the basketball team?"

I found a clip of Lavin playing her "Ballad of a Ballgame" live, and just had to share it. It's not a short song, so just settle in. It's funny, touching, and - I was more than thrilled to find that in this live clip she dedicates the song to the Boston Red Sox. Atta girl.

I've been lucky enough to see Lavin perform a number of times, and "Ballad of a Ballgame" is one of my favorites of her monologue-songs.

Red Sox. Finally.

Longest off-season ever.

Here I am, holding our cat Widdy, in our backyard. Wearing a Red Sox T shirt. This stuff is engrained in the DNA. I don't like spring, in general, or summer. I prefer the fall and the winter. But one good thing about the spring is baseball is back. There are always compensations.

3000 hits, 400 home runs

A beautifully written essay by my brother. Being a Red Sox fan is wrapped up in being a member of my family - the two cannot be unwoven. Brendan captures what this really means. I have heard this story a million times (Uncle Jimmy was my godfather, and we all still miss him very much) and it never ever gets old. It's a baseball story, yes, a story of Carl Yastrzemski, but mostly it's the story of Us. Our family.

A hell of a view

From the 880 AM CBS Radio broadcasting skybox. I loved my "media pass". Thanks to all in the box, for how welcoming they were. It was great to see "backstage" - and man, what a view!

Keeping score.

Cousin Kerry kicks it old-school.

One guy sitting in front of us became curious about what she was doing and asked to see it. He looked through the pages, nodding approvingly.

A still-life

Jimmy deep in enemy territory.

In praise of Pudge

CARLTON FISK IS MY IDEAL
by Bernadette Mayer

He wears a beautiful necklace
next to the beautiful skin of his neck
unlike the Worthington butcher
Bradford T. Fisk (butchers always
have a crush on me), who cannot even order veal
except in whole legs of it.
Oh the legs of a catcher!
Catchers squat in a posture
that is of course inward denying orgasm
but Carlton Fisk, I could
model a whole attitude to spring
on him. And he is a leaper!
Like Walt Frazier or, better,
like the only white leaper,
I forget his name, in the ABA’s
All-Star game half-time slam-dunk contest
this year. I think about Carlton Fisk in his
modest home in New Hampshire
all the time, I love the sound of his name
denying orgasm. Carlton & I
look out the window at spring’s first
northeaster. He carries a big hero
across the porch of his home to me.
(He has no year-round Xmas tree
like Clifford Ray who handles the ball
like a banana). We eat & watch the storm
batter the buds balking on the trees
& cover the green of the grass
that my sister thinks is new grass.
It’s last year’s grass still!
And still there is no spring training
as I write this, March 16, 1976,
the year of the blizzard that sealed our love
up in a great mound of orgasmic earth.
The pitcher’s mound is a lighting mound.
Pudge will see fastballs in the wind,
his mescaline arm extends to the field.
He wears a necklace.
He catches the ball in his teeth!
Balls fall with a neat thunk
in the upholstery of the leather glove he puts on
to caress me, as told to, in the off-season.
All of a sudden he leaps from the couch,
a real ball has come thru the window
& is heading for the penguins on his sweater,
one of whom has lost his balloon
which is floating up into the sky!

Two big-necked guys.

Big Papi and cousin Mike (otherwise known as Sheila's effing guardian angel right now). I love how Ortiz is obviously on the verge of hysterics. He's like a little kid right there.

From the Boston Globe article "From Fenway to the fairway". Oh, and humorously - Jeff Donovan is mentioned in the article as well. You know, the ubiquitous Jeff.

The quiet of a shutout

Josh Beckett pitched a shutout game last night against the Atlanta Braves, and it felt like the fastest most uneventful baseball game I have ever attended. Ellsbury, my favorite hottie of the moment, made a kickass catch, sliding into the green monster - and that was really the play of the game, although we did get to see a thrilling double play at the end (with Beckett catching the ball on the bounce from the plate) - but other than that, not a hell of a lot happened. We got to see Youkilis throw a little hissy fit about some ump's call (surprise surprise), he stood and stared off into space, exuding annoyance and passive-aggressive huffing and puffing, and it was hysterical. We got to watch Josh Beckett do his little OCD step-step through the white lines on the first base line - so delicate!! What'll happen, Josh, if you don't do your little ritual? Will the world fall off its axis? I love that he does that, and that he does it in as macho a manner as possible. "Look. I'm a tough sonofabitch but I must tiptoe delicately with both my feet in between the white lines, or I will totally lose my concentration and fuck you for making fun of it. I deliver, don't I?"

No huge hits - a couple doubles - no homers, nothing exciting really.

Because of a massive car pileup on 95 we missed almost two innings. We didn't miss much. The game was over by, what, 9:30?

That's what happens when you have good pitching. Nothing happens. It's actually quite amazing.

Quiet, yes, but along the way you start to realize: "Hm. This is a pretty awesome game." BECAUSE it is quiet.

Derek Lowe, back on the mound at Fenway for the first time since 2004, was in fine form - and it was strangely emotional to 'see' him again. I've missed that big lanky emotional rosy-cheeked headcase with the huge swinging-to-the-side leg. He pitched a good game, and kept it just as quiet as Beckett did - it was a battle of the pitchers, most definitely. He had been interviewed the day before about what it would be like to be back at Fenway, and what did he expect from the fans. His answer was along the lines of, "I am sure they will be polite, welcome me back and all that - but after that, they'll treat me like any other pitcher on any opposing team. That's to be expected."

Not quite, D. Lowe.

When he left the mound for the last time in the bottom of the 7th, Fenway Park stood, as one, and gave him an ovation. It was pretty amazing. An opposing team's pitcher. Well, well, we remember.

The best part of all was the stoic little tip of the hat he did to the crowd.

It was classy.

We love D. Lowe!

At one point we thought we saw Papelbon warming up in the bullpen. Hmmm. All quiet on the Fenway front. Then we thought it was Okajima. But by the 9th, there was no more action in the bullpen. Nobody warming up. Beckett still on the mound, still dominant, pitch count still very low.

He finished the game. It was his first complete game of the season.

Guess that little tip-toe dance you do along the first baseline pays off, huh tough guy?

We were home by 11 p.m. What the hell.

A shutout is a quiet kind of a game. There isn't much action and there isn't much that is actually visible. Important to keep in mind, though, that "l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

Baseball is, as always, an apt metaphor for almost anything.

Being shutout is a quiet experience indeed. But the reverb is deafening.

"I'll do anything you want."

RIP Dom DiMaggio, 1917 - 2009

Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky, going to throw out the first pitch, Game Two, World Series, 2004

Dominic DiMaggio, beloved by Red Sox fans, younger brother of Joe DiMaggio, passed away yesterday at the age of 92. A little pipsqueak in glasses, good friend of Ted Williams (the pictures of the two of them together look like a vaudeville comedy team, with the tall beanpole Williams towering over his teeny friend), it was maybe hard for DiMaggio to carve out a spot for himself ... with such an older brother and such a best friend! But once you start listening to what his contemporaries had to say about him, and once you look at his stats, you see: Uhm, no. Boy did well all on his own thankyouverymuch. A 34 consecutive-game hitting streak - the longest in the history of the ballclub. That was in 1949, the record remains unbroken today. In 1997, Nomar went on a 30-game hitting streak, but so far - 30 does not = 34. DiMaggio still holds it. Kind of awesome that his older brother Joe holds the all-time record in this particular stat, with a 56-game streak in 1941. Nice dovetail there.

In tribute to DiMaggio, here's a bit from David Halberstam's Teammates, The: A Portrait of a Friendship, a book about Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr.

Rest in peace.

Dominic had always succeeded by overcoming adversity. Nothing ever came easily for him. If Bobby Doerr had been the natural, playing with instinctive grace and fluidity, then Dom was the one of the four teammates who had struggled against the greatest odds. The scouts, the men who judged these things with their cold, analytical eyes, and who spent their daytime hours tracking high school and American Legion ball, spotting the talents of boys and trying to project them into the men they would one day become, loved a Bobby Doerr, and more often than not they barely saw a Dom DiMaggio in the beginning, or, perhaps more accurately, they stopped for a moment because of the name, saw the size, and then kept looking. He just did not look like a ballplayer. Somehow he always looked much younger than he was ...

But he had talent, passion, and purpose, and these qualities would more than make up for those things that most scouts did not see at first. He would become in time what John Pesky called "the almost perfect ballplayer: so smart and so talented. McCarthy loved him because he never made a mistake. He always did everything right. I will never understand why he is not in Cooperstown."

More from Teammates, The: A Portrait of a Friendship, about DiMaggio's start:

He also got lucky in that Lefty O'Doul was, Dominic later decided, the best hitting coach he had ever seen. Lefty had already worked with Joe, getting him to pull the ball more, because he knew that in any number of big league parks, including Yankee Stadium, the left-centerfield fences fell away sharply. In Yankee Stadium it was known as Death Valley, and you coul dlose home runs there all too easily.

It did not take long for O'Doul, a man with a lifetime .349 batting average in the majors, to turn Dominic around as a hitter. Because he was so small Dominic had thought he needed to put all his weight into the ball when he swung. Thus, without realizing it, he tended to lunge at the ball. O'Doul quickly taught him that that was the wrong way to go, and probably saved his major league career in the process. By lunging, O'Doul explained, he was actually subtracting his weight from his swing, and thereby reducing its power. Many other managers would have looked at Dominic and settled for what he could do for them on defense in the outfield; they would not have cared whether or not he could hit and what that meant to his career. But O'Doul saw the passion and the hunger and was willing to invest his time in him.

What O'Doul taught him was that a hitter's power came from his legs, his hips, and his butt. What Dom was to do was wait on the pitch, keeping his body still, and then at the last split second start his swing, taking a very small step into it. O'Doul was very patient with him, and he would later tell others that Dominic was the ideal pupil, perhaps the easiest player to coach he had ever dealt with. "I'll do anything you want," the rookie told him, and whatever O'Doul suggested, Dominic worked on. What also helped was some early film of brother Joe, who by then was with the Yankees, his career soaring. He had come to a Seals workout and took batting practice with them, and a friend used an early movie camera to take some footage of him. And there it was on film, just as Lefty had said it should be: Joe poised at bat, head and body not moving at all until the final split second, when he began his swing; then every part of his body, in perfect coordination, seemed to lever the bat into the ball. Gradually Dominic began to adjust, to hold back and wait. It took about three weeks for him to get it. One of the hard parts was to keep his butt still, but Lefty was very good - he would stand near Dominic in the batting cage, and when Dominic moved his butt early, Lefty would jab at it with a fungo bat.

Dominic got it down one day early in the season in Coalinga, a small town in central California where the Seals were playing an exhibition game. It was a little town with a little ballfield, short fences, and everyone on the Seals was hitting the ball over the fence in practice. Lefty had asked Dominic to take batting practice with the regulars that day because he wanted to work with him a bit more. And suddenly Dominic too started hitting the ball over the fence. That of itself was not that impressive - everyone else was. But Dominic knew that he was hitting the ball much harder, that for the first time he was fusing all his strength into his swing, just as Lefty had ordered. He went over to O'Doul after practice and told him, "Lefty, I've got it now. I've finally got it."

Yup, Dom. You've got it.

You will be missed.

Time to re-visit Nancy, the harassed mentally unbalanced wife of a Red Sox shortstop

Just in time for the startup of baseball season. I did want to do a part 2 to this series, to check in with Nancy's hellatious progress through the streets of Boston. Stay tuned.

Oh, and I took these pictures of myself with my computer before I figured out how to basically turn the photo around so the "B" in the Red Sox hat isn't backwards. So let's just pretend that we are staring at a woman through the looking glass, so out of control and mentally unstable, that even the "B" turns around.

For now:

Nancy is married to a Red Sox shortstop. A dude who is now at the top of his game. At the top of the game, in general. He has become a celebrity. He's good-looking. One of the untouchables. One of the Gods.

Nancy was completely unprepared for what would happen when they moved to Boston. Or - she thought she was prepared, but nobody can prepare you for such a paparazzi onslaught. She's also a drunk. She thinks she just "drinks socially", at least that's what she always says, but it is impossible to "drink socially" when you live in Boston and you are the wife of a famous Red Sox shortstop. She is caught out, here, there, everywhere, drunk, sloshy, by herself, getting in and out of cabs. Her behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Her husband does press conferences, asking the press to back off, because obviously "my wife is shy". This does not stop the bloodhounds. They smell her weakness. They stalk her everywhere. She does time in a rehab. When she comes out, after a couple of months, a barrage of photographers wait for her at the gate.

She is a PR nightmare for the Red Sox front desk. She tells reporters to "screw themselves". She says things at press conferences like, "I can't stand baseball. I prefer football. I hate baseball players even more than I hate baseball itself." She doesn't bond with the other Red Sox wives. She called one of them a "nitwit" at a charity function.

She's slowly being driven insane by the flashbulbs of the cameras.

Here are some photos detailing the disintegration of her personality.

Nancy, coming out of O'Reilly's Cask and Flagon at 1:30 in the morning.

Nancy, stumbling out of Maxwell's Pub at half past midnight.

Nancy, staggering out of Lucky's Tavern, at 1:30 in the afternoon.

Someone from the Providence Journal took this photograph of Nancy at Fenway Park on July 31 - at the moment that her husband hit a grand slam. This was her response.

Later that night, she was caught by the Boston Globe, drinking by herself at Fitzgeralds.

Needless to say, when she heard the cameras clicking, she was not happy.

On August 2nd, her husband hit another grand slam. She slept through it, in the stands.

Then someone woke her up and told her about her husband's grand slam. This was her response.

The next day, she was besieged on the streets of Boston wherever she went.

Naturally, she did not handle it well.

Not at all well.

It's a long day for Nancy.

She's screaming something along the lines of: "I don't give a crap about grand slams! If it was a touchdown, maybe I'd give a shit."

And things go downhill from there. Quickly.

On August 4th, Nancy offers a meek apology to the press. She is wasted. She slurs the word "sorry". That afternoon, her husband hits a home run. Nancy is in the stands. This is her response.

I don't think Nancy is cut out to be the wife of a major league star. She just doesn't understand the rules of the game.

Relief

Walked into a bar last night to meet a friend, and saw baseball on all the giant TV screens.

I sometimes feel like I don't quite fully exist during the off-season, because it seems like something is missing. I can't put my finger on it. What is it ... what is missing ...

Oh, that's right. Baseball on giant television screens in every bar you pass.

I don't feel totally myself until it all starts up again.

And by myself, I mean this girl, with this particular shirt.

Nothing has changed. Which is also, strangely, a relief, in this world of flux and upheaval.

So let's play ball.

You also know you're at an O'Malley event when ...

... a couple of people at the baby shower (myself included) bought baby products emblazoned with the Red Sox logo.

Bill Simmons would be very happy

Dad reading Simmons' book.

From the cell phone camera: "With Papelbon, we'll be unSTOPpable!"

This summer we were in New Hampshire and we had a Dunkin Donuts we went to every day and there was a lifesize cutout of Jonathan Papelbon standing there. There were many many photos taken of all of us with Jonathan Papelbon. The poor locals, sitting and trying to have their coffee ... "Oh God, here come those girls again and they're going to pretend they're on some red carpet with Papelbon while I am trying to have a quiet donut and coffee ..."

Here is Melody cozying up to Pap.

Sleepaway camp

My cousin Kerry watched Hope while I was in Rhode Island for the last 5 days. I think Kerry sent me more photos of Hope during that time than I have actually taken of Hope myself.

I am also happy to see that Kerry set to work indoctrinating Hope into the traditions and customs of the O'Malley clan right away.

Hope is now a true convert.

I believe she is bowing towards Fenway Park.

Time well spent at the O'Malley Sleepaway Camp.

Oh, say can you see ...

Actually, you can't at this moment, because it hasn't happened yet - but it will tonight!

My wonderful cousin Kerry will be singing the National Anthem this evening at Fenway Park before the Red Sox-Angels game. She's an old-hand at this by now ... Here she is singing the anthem before a Celtics game ...

But still: it's kind of thrilling. Kerry is one of the most fanatic Red Sox fans I know, so what a thrill to sing in such a setting!!

And Jean and Pat will be there!

OH FOR A TELEPORTING MACHINE.

Go, Kerry and Go Sox!!

JLTA

Somehow, we cannot trace our steps, we made up a story that Julio Lugo has set up a tango school in the Dominican Republic, called The Julio Lugo Tango Academy. But you can just call it "JLTA". I have no idea how this joke came up but at some point we all were just crying with laughter about it. Saying to Julio, hesitantly, "You know, Julio, it's really great that you're so committed to tango ... it's really awesome to have outside interests ... but ... uhm ... don't you think you should concentrate on your game??"

But no. He cannot stop tango-ing. Tango is his life.

"I must pass on my love of tango to the younger generation."
"Yeah, but, Julio ... you've been making a lot of errors ... maybe you should put the tango on the back burner for a bit?"
"Tango is my life."
"Uhmmmm, okay, Julio, whatever you say."

We love our stupid jokes. We get so much mileage out of them.

Similar to the "Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh" 4-part harmony we would sing anytime Doug Mirabelli would come up to bat a couple summers ago. We still sing "Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh" ... because it is still funny to us. And yes, we all are still convinced that it was our singing that caused him to get a home run that sweltering night years ago. I mean, if you heard 4 siblings singing "Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh" in staggered harmonic lines of melody - wouldn't YOU hit a home run (even if it was just to make us stop??)?

Sox memorabilia

I got real choked up reading this post.

My first memories of Fenway also involve that generation of team-mates - Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk, Yaz ... and his post just brought my whole childhood back. Baseball's all wrapped up with family. You can't help that.

Hi there, TON-fisk!

2007 Year in Pictures

Fenway Park, Boston.

2007 Year in Pictures

Go, Sox!

2007 Rookie of the Year!!

Dustin Pedroia! So psyched! He's "Little Buddy" to the O'Malley family - and of course the joke about him being 11 years old surrounded by big tall strapping adults is not originated by us. You know. The joke is kind of universal. I also love how his teammates joked about his short-ness from the beginning (photo below jump). But all of that aside: Little Buddy has very quickly become beloved by the fans in Boston (check out Beth's retrospect of quotes about him) - and finding out that he was playing for 2 months with a broken bone in his left hand just intensifies the love for him. Also - it's ridiculous, we joke (with love) about him eating Twizzlers and playing with his X-box in the locker room as all the other big burly players drink whiskey and smoke cigars ... meanwhile, he's toughing it out and kicking some ass and winning Rookie of the Year. It's awesome!!

Congrats, Little Buddy!!

Photos from boston.com

To quote Garrett Morris:

"Base-ah-ballz a-been veddy veddy good to me."

And very good to me, too!

Congrats, 2007 Red Sox. So exciting, and so well-deserved. (Beth's got the stats) It's been a helluva ride.

Uhm ... Youk? I get the sense you may be feeling a little ambivalent about the win. And I want to encourage you to come out of your shell, let your joy show a bit more openly. Thanks.

Beckett Boot Camp

How much do I want that to be a reality show?? (Read Beth's awesome post.) Beckett Boot Camp. Genius.

My parents were at the game last night! Very exciting. I lay in bed, with my stupid ear infection, drugged up on my penicillin horse pills ... and listened to the game on the radio.

I think one of my favorite quotes in the last couple of days was from Julio Lugo, in regards to Pedroia (or, in O'Malley parlance: "Little Buddy"): "That little midget is the man."

hahahahahahaha

Anyway, that little midget IS the man.

I also want to have an entire DVD of Josh Beckett's press conferences. High comedy.

No coherence here. My ear infection is kickin' my ass. Drugs are good.

Snapshots

-- did all my car organization stuff yesterday. Well, not all. I still need to get an E-Z pass and a resident permit which I will do on Monday when the town clerk office opens.

-- came home and puttered about. I'm still sick (yes, I know - it's this cough that will not go away. Calling the doctor on Monday, this is ridiculous - I've been sick since New Mexico) - so I was feeling kind of tired even though I still had a lot to do. I'm not a napper, but at around 2 pm I thought - let me just lie down for a minute. I woke up at 7 pm. I mean, come ON. A lost day. I've just not been well. Nothing is touching this cough - no matter what I take.

-- turned on the radio, getting ready for Game 6. But first I listened to Prairie Home Companion - just lay in bed, listening - I love Prairie Home Companion. It's so soothing.

-- Then the game. It would have been nice to SEE the game, but I still love listening to baseball games on the radio. It's strictly old-school. Cheering and clapping by myself in my apartment. Onto game 7.

Diary Friday

Okay. Get ready for some sappy Americana, teenage-girl-diary style! Sheila, circa age 13 or something, going with her family to see Carl Yazstremski's second to last game with the Red Sox. It is a propos today, of all days. Just cause. Afraid to say more. Let's just put one foot in front of the other, people. And remember where we came from.

October 1 YAZ DAY
We got home so so so late last night. It was SO FUN. I love baseball. I always have. And Fenway Park! All of Boston. The people in Boston are so nice. So friendly. Very down to earth. Boston really comes alive on home games.

And now - Yaz Fever is in!

As we came down the little narrow street towards Fenway Park - it was packed with screaming people waving Yaz banners. And as we were driving up, we passed this schoolbus full of kids, they all had on Yaz hats - and were really rowdy. We started waving at them - I whipped off Jean's Yaz hat [Sheila: did you ask your sister if you could steal her hat?], and they all started applauding and cheering with us. The whole bus waved banners at us, and the whole street went nuts!!

Inside Fenway Park, it was a mad house. And coming out into the stands, with the lights, and the sizzling excitement, and the teams right there warming up ... Our seats were really good. Right along the third baseline.

We looked for Yaz but couldn't find him. I felt like I was waiting for the curtain to open on a big show or something. [What a penetratingly original analogy]

At 7:30, they announced the line-up. Yaz was fifth. We all went wild when they called his name. The crowd was screaming and screaming and screaming - we just would not stop. It was great.

I love Boston. I love the Red Sox. I love the people in Boston.

The game started. Cleveland was up first.

I wish we could have seen Yaz play first, but he was the designated hitter. When they announced Dennis Eckersley, Brendan went, "Oh, don't boo!" Everyone did, anyway.

And Jim Rice was right out there. I LOVE JIM RICE. It was so amazing to see all these stars and players I have idolized since I was 8 years old! They were all right there!!

When the Red Sox were up, you could just feel the anticipation. Just waiting for Yaz. He was up 5th. But everyone went hysterical whenever anyone made a hit. I got so worked up!

Then - oh God - when Yaz was on deck - all these camera flashes went off - everywhere across the Park - blinding! All I could do was just stare at Yaz warming up. He is such a hero to me. I swear that nobody was watching the actual game. They were just watching him.

Then - when he was up - and he started for the plate - I can't explain it.

Or - yes, I can. [Hahahahaha I knew you could]

All of Fenway Park immediately stood up and cheered and cheered and cheered - I was leaping, waving my arms, SCREAMING. This went on for about five minutes. Or longer. Really! No one got tired, no one could stop.

Yaz just stood there with his bat - and stood there - as the whole Park went NUTS - and after a while, he turned to us, and tipped his hat.

Oh my God, it was so beautiful the way he did it.

We all went bonkers!

Me and Brendan were screaming and waving, Jean was crying - then Yaz tipped his hat again - It was positively wonderful.

I almost cried. I wonder if Yaz almost cried.

Finally - FINALLY - we all sat down, still all revved up. Then - he took his stance - and on the first pitch - you could hear this CRACK - the crack of the bat - and everyone JUMPED UP again - yelling, screaming, going positively crazy - I almost had a coronary. It was a single, but we got to see Yaz hit. We got to see Yaz hit. This will be the last time we ever get to see Yaz hit.

I have always loved Yaz. He seems like a really nice guy - or something. Like he has kept his feet on the ground. And the way he tipped his hat to all of us - to all of Boston - I still feel like crying, when I think of it.

The other amazing thing about the night was when we all stood up for "The Star-Spangled Banner".

It is very hard NOT to feel patriotic - with the flag waving in the wind against the dark sky, and everyone around you, hands on their hearts, singing LOUD.

America really is beautiful.

Baseball games make me realize that all over again.

Life is good

... as long as Fenway Park is in it.

I am amazed at how poignant it was for me to be in that park again. One of my earliest memories is from a Red Sox game at Fenway!

And last night's game!!!

It was a rainy morning. And as you will see below - when we hit Boston, at around 2:30 ... the sky was ominous and black. An hour later, everything was clear, crisp, blue and sunny. PERFECT baseball weather.

Pictures below. Don't feel like writing now. Great game. Highlights later when I'm not so tired.

Is the photo below from the same day??? Hard to believe that this photo was taken a mere 25 minutes after that top photo.

Hi, John Henry! How are ya??

Josh: make sure you get BOTH feet between the white lines AT THE SAME MOMENT ... otherwise: all will be lost!!

(I love watching him do that. It's so OCD)

Bullpen

Youk being tended to. Cousin Mike texted me that Youk was okay - From where we were sitting, it looked like he might have broken a finger or something - and they don't give you "updates" during the game.

Full set of photos from the game - and the whole day in Boston - here

Trot

This great post pretty much sums up my feelings about Trot Nixon.

One more below the jump ...

It was just a matter of time.

Red Sox iiiiiin spaaaaaaaace ....

Sunday

Red Sox vs. Orioles. It was 5 - 0. 8th inning. Okay, whatever. I'll take a quick walk and take some pictures. I came back into the house 20 minutes later - just in time to see the Red Sox freakin' WIN.

It was great, too - because the second the game was over the phone rang (which is classic - that's the way it always goes in this family. Game over, phone rings ... you have no idea WHO it is, but you know it is a member of the extended clan ... who needs to either exult or bitch ...) It was my brother and my cousin Mike. So that was great.

So weird, though, that I left, strolling around in the late afternoon sunshine ... pretty certain that they would lose - I mean, of course they would ... and I walked back into the house ... to hear my parents hissing at me, "Come in here! You're not going to believe it!" I rushed down the hall, just in time to see Millar (bless him, on multiple levels) throw to first ... fumble bumble ... and then to see Ortiz and Youk jumping up and down just like they were in Little League celebrating a championship win.

From 5 - 0 ... to 6 - 5? What the hell??

Here are the photos I took as my team worked its 9th inning magic.

Side lawn.

Forsythia.

Corner of the lawn.

Shadows on the grass.

Violets in the shade.

Green and gold.

Prehistoric bush.

Neighbor's beautiful lawn.

Back lawn.

Opening day

Living vicariously. Incredible photographs, Beth.

Here is my contribution.

It was Easter Sunday. We had family over. A wee apple-cheeked baby was there. Chaos reigned in the living room. Toys were brought out from the attic. Beauty of being with family. I looked around at one point ... and saw THIS on the table.

Harassed Mentally Unbalanced Wife of a Red Sox Shortstop

Nancy is married to a Red Sox shortstop. A dude who is now at the top of his game. At the top of the game, in general. He has become a celebrity. He's good-looking. He becomes one of the untouchables. One of the Gods.

Nancy was completely unprepared for what would happen when they moved to Boston. Or - she thought she was prepared, but nobody can prepare you for such a paparazzi onslaught. She's also a drunk. She thinks she just "drinks socially" but it is impossible to "drink socially" when you live in Boston and you are the wife of a famous Red Sox shortstop. She is caught out, here, there, everywhere, drunk, sloshy, getting in and out of cabs. Her behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Her husband does press conferences, asking the press to back off, because obviously "my wife is shy". This does not stop the bloodhounds. They smell her weakness. They stalk her everywhere. She does time in a rehab. When she comes out, after a couple of months, a barrage of photographers wait for her at the gate.

She is a PR nightmare for the Red Sox front desk. She tells reporters to "screw themselves". She says things at press conferences like, "I f***ing can't stand baseball. I prefer football." She doesn't bond with the other Red Sox wives.

She's a mess. She wears sunglasses. She doesn't know how to be gracious. She can't bear the attention.

She's slowly being driven insane by the flashbulbs of the cameras.

Here are some photos detailing the disintegration of her personality.

Nancy, coming out of O'Reilly's Cask and Flagon at 1:30 in the morning.

Nancy, stumbling out of Maxwell's Pub at half past midnight.

Nancy, staggering out of Lucky's Tavern, at 1:30 in the afternoon.

Someone from the Providence Journal took this photograph of Nancy at Fenway Park on July 31 - at the moment that her husband hit a grand slam. This was her response.

Later that night, she was caught by the Boston Globe, drinking by herself at Fitzgeralds.

Needless to say, when she heard the cameras clicking, she was not happy.

On August 2nd, her husband hit another grand slam. She slept through it, in the stands.

Then someone woke her up and told her about her husband's grand slam. This was her response.

The next day, she was besieged on the streets of Boston wherever she went.

Naturally, she did not handle it well.

Not at all well.

It's a long day for Nancy.

She's screaming something along the lines of: "Grand slam Shlamslam! I don't give a crap!"

And things go downhill from there. Quickly.

On August 4th, Nancy offers a meek apology to the press. She is wasted. She slurs the word "sorry". That afternoon, her husband hits a home run. Nancy is in the stands. This is her response.

I don't think Nancy is cut out to be the wife of a major league star. She just doesn't understand the rules of the game.

Insanity is ...

... when you and your brother and your 2 sisters truly believe that singing "Keep it goin', Dougie Fresh" over and over and over in goofy 4 part harmony actually caused Mirabelli to hit that 3-run homer last week.

We were so bored with that particular game - it was 200 degrees that day, every player was drenched in sweat, they all looked vaguely ill and floppy, they made errors, they flopped around - even the hits seemed heat-exhausted. It was contagious. We were kinda bored. So bored that when Dougie Fresh (Jean's nickname for him) came up to bat, we could barely get interested in it. We figured he would hit a tired little hit like everybody else, and stagger to first through the muggy heat like everybody else ... same ol' same ol'. Jean began to lazily and indifferently sing "Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh" - then someone else joined in - and another - and another ... (Well, to be fair. Melody did NOT sing. She kept her sanity.) We finished our first chorus and stopped singing. Dougie was still at bat. We all knew we were insane. We couldn't really look at each other. Melody, flipping through her magazine, said, "I am so going to tell everybody about this." At the exact same moment I was saying, "We must never speak of this again." Two seconds went by of silence, and then we all started singing again.

We would stagger the lines.

Jean would start: "Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh" - holding the note ...
Then I would join in ...
Then Siobhan ...
Then Bren ...

Staggering the pitches as well - each one of us climbing up the scale. We sounded SO FECKIN' RETARDED.

And then boom. Major major play by Dougie Fresh. We went insane. For a good 20 minutes.

And "Keep it goin', Dougie Fresh" has now entered the Family Lexicon. Don't even think that we all will not be singing "Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh" for the rest of the summer. And summers beyond.

How 'bout Big Papi stealing a base?? hahahahahahaha THAT WAS SO AWESOME. I especially loved the shots of Manny and Youk in the dugout, laughing hysterically, and cheering, and shouting, "Save the base!" Genius. I could not get enough of that footage.

It was a really Red Sox heavy week. A couple years when we all went on vacation it was in the middle of the All Star break (yaaaaaaaaaawn - nobody gives a shit) - so it was good to have some real games.

In order to truly express our insanity.

Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh ......................................................

all together now ....

Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh
Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh
Keep it goin' Dougie Fresh
Keep it goin' Dougie Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh

WHAP! Outta the park.

Oh, and also when we all were holding the note together - we would then all, as one, go up half a key. Like the Buffalo Bills do in The Music Man.

Seriously. We sounded like halfwits. But hey. Dougie Fresh could feel our lackadaisacal belief in him (uhm: wasn't that ball four??? I think everybody thought that was ball four) ... and it gave him strength to go on!

The Mid-air pause

Rudolf Nureyev, known (among other things) for his spectacularly high jumps, was once asked: "How do you make your leaps so incredible? What is it, exactly, that you do?" Nureyev thought a bit, and then replied, "Well - I leap into the air - and when I reach the highest point - I just pause for a moment."

We have all seen dancers who seem able to pause in mid-air. Up they go - and then something happens that doesn't seem to happen to us normal people when we jump up in the air. These magical beings seem to float - laterally - through the air. Gravity is defeated.

And last night Coco Crisp appeared to pause in mid-air during his have-to-see-it-to-believe-it catch late in the game:

Crisp said it himself - he paused:

"I got a pretty good jump. I didn't know if I could catch it, so I went straight at it. I took a leap of faith. I was going full-speed so I was able to hang in the air just long enough to make the catch."

He hung in the air just long enough to make the catch ...

Athletes, man. They amaze me.

Seriously. I just love this shit.

And now - I will link to the article about it in my home state paper of record - the good ol' Pro Jo.

Oops, let me add this:

What do you want to bet that RIGHT NOW in backyards throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island - or wherever Red Sox fans abide, little kids are re-enacting Coco Crisp's catch? They are all now taking turns "being Coco" ... and flying through the air. Attempting to pause.

Dear cousin Kerry:

I didn't blog what I said I was gonna blog about! Sorry! Life intervened!

But in lieu of my own words on the event: you couldn't do any worse than to read this gorgeous post. Beth's was the first site I visited today. :) I NEEDED to hear what she had to say. Truly heartwarming and awesome moment.

David: are you going tonight?

hahaha I am communicating with my friends and family directly through my blog.

A big week

1. Doin' the commencement speech at your alma mater

2. And a couple days later ...

Throwin' out the first pitch at Fenway? Sox/Yankees game?

EX-SQUEEZE ME???

HOLY CRAP!!!!

Thanks, Siobhan, for the photo. AHHHHHHHHHHHH

This just in

My cousin Kerry will be singing the National Anthem at a Red Sox game in feckin' Fenway Park on July 13th. I just ... have ... no ... words .... The culmination of a lifetime of being a Red Sox fan and also a singer. She's a Red Sox fan at an almost autistic level. This is so dern exciting. Go, Kerry!!!

Nostalgia

One of my favorite quotes is from Nancy Lemann's book The Fiery Pantheon:

She had a nostalgia for a life she had never lived.

May sound strange, but if you've ever had that feeling you'll know that she expressed it perfectly.

Here's a great post on Surviving Grady - about the 1966 and 1967 Red Sox yearbooks with some classic photos, and even funnier commentary.

I've always felt this game got a little less interesting after the jetpack ban of '74.

hahahaha

I have a nostalgia for that time as well ... even though I didn't even exist yet. Or ... barely existed. I was right on the cusp of existence there.

Cynics, skeptics, and cackling triumphant jagoffs:

Stay away from the comments section to this post.

This is not a bipartisan blog - not in any way - at least not on THIS subject.

It's a painful subject, and I can barely discuss it yet without this feeling of disbelief and .... BETRAYAL ... coming over me. I know that my loyalty to the 2004 lineup is ... emotional. Sentimental. I am attached. Plain and simple. I'm not alone in this, and I know it's not rational, but there you have it. I am attached. But then I remember how attached I was to the 1975 Red Sox. Like - those guys were just IT, for me. I don't care where Fred Lynn played after that. He's always a Red Sock to me. Fisk? Red Sock. Dewey? Red Sock. To me, at the time, there was no other team possible than that 1975 team. MERELY BECAUSE OF HOW MUCH I LOVED THEM. Okay? Do you see the psychosis here? My own feelings of attachment are somehow projected out ONTO A BASEBALL TEAM. I feel the same way about the 2004 team, and I've already had a hard time letting some of them go. Don't even TALK to me about Mueller. I just love that man. That was a real tough one. (Here's a great little montage. Sniff!)

But the bearded one?

He is dead to me now.

He is dead to me now.

Nothing can take away my affection for the 2004 Red Sox. Nothing. Johnny Damon will always be a part of that accomplishment. I am not going to erase him from my pictures of the team - like Stalin used to do every couple of years with pictures of his inner circle. "Oops - we hate him now - we have to erase him from the picture - HE NEVER EXISTED." No. Johnny Damon will always be a part of what was done that year.

However.

My mother is a wonderful painter. She doesn't ONLY paint Red Sox players - but her paintings of "those guys" - the 2004 guys - have become staples in the O'Malley family as birthday presents, Christmas presents, what have you. She has already told us what we're all getting for Christmas this year - she has been working hard on a series of paintings - one for each of us. My painting, I believe, will be of Jason Varitek. So I'm safe. But my brother's was going to be the bearded one. And the betrayal is too deep, the sense of hatred is too deep - my mom immediately began scrambling to finish another painting of another player for Bren in time for Christmas. If it were anyone else - Derek Lowe, Mueller, Dave feckin' Roberts!! - the painting could probably still be given out. But not the bearded one. You'd want to rip it off your wall every time you looked at it.

So. I feel a sense of kinship with other Red Sox fans right now (uhm - right now? How 'bout always?) I felt a certain comfort in reading this.

And so it goes, and so it goes. Life will move on. Being emotionally attached to the 2004 team - the team who did THAT, who gave me THAT, is not, perhaps rational - but nobody ever said Red Sox fans were rational. I remember that 1975 team. I remember being a kid and not wanting the season to end. I remember not feeling ready to let ANY of them go. But I did. I let them go. I was only 10 years old. Now I am older. But it's still the SAME OLD SHITE. This is what it means, to me, to be a baseball fan. There's glory and there's heartbreak. I can't do it if I'm not all emotionally involved.

Therefore my statement stands:

He is DEAD to me now.

NEXT. MOVING ON.

Johnny Damon who?

Here's a great post by the great Beth. With all of the feelings of betrayal I have - I found her persective quite illuminating. Thanks, Beth. Great post. Any post about Johnny Damon that references Schrodinger's Cat is okay by me!

Podsednik. Papelbon.

Surviving Grady makes an interesting point.

And it's even worse when you consider the little-known "Tim Spooneybarger" rule of baseball, which dictates that the team with the player with the coolest name typically wins the World Series [hey, there's a reason we kept Leskanic around last October]. Chicago's got the richly dubbed Scott Podsednik. We're countering with the uniquely christened Jon Papelbon. Podsednik. Papelbon. Podsednik. Papelbon. Podsednik. Papelbon. I dunno, I've said both names aloud for the past three hours, and I think Chicago's got the edge.

I left work. The score was 5 - 0 and it was the first inning. The first fecking inning. I moseyed my way to my gym. I changed. I warmed up. I got on the treadmill. The TVs were all tuned to the game. It was now 12 - 2.

WHAT? I felt like I had been out of TV communication for 20 minutes ... and now it's 12 - 2???

I ran on the treadmill and swore at the television. Out loud.

"God DAMN it, guys, come on ..." Run, run, run .... "Oh, for God's SAKE!" Run, run, run ...

Let's chalk this one up as a disaster and move ON!

Podsednik, Papelbon, Podsednik, Papelbon, Podsednik, Papelbon ....

And this one is for my siblings: DAUBAAACH. Brian DAUUBAAAAACH. Daubach, Daubach, Daubach ... oh, how the announcers loved that name.

A convergence

My mom just had a series of paintings in an art show. I just got the photos of her specific 'wall' and thought I would post a couple of them.

Not only do the photos look great, yay, Mum!! - but on today - of all days - the photos just fill my heart with excitement and awe!! Are we actually here again??? Argh!

All will become clear when you click below.

Congratulations, Mum - wish I could have made the show!

Am I ready?

Am I ready for end-of-September baseball? It's almost like gearing up for some battle or something. I know my time is limited. I know the game schedule. I must make it work. I must accept that there will be a lack of sleep. I can't fight it. Ready? Ready? Well, it doesn't matter if one is ready or not. The time is here.

Great post at Surviving Grady.

Here we go!!

Take your hopes in hand

I've been meaning to link to this post for a couple of days.

Dan's post on the Red Sox. I think it's spectacular. Got a little choked up when I first read it.

To love something - whether that thing is a baseball team or an individual or whatever- is to sow the seeds of your own downfall. If you love you're going to hurt - somehow, somewhere, sometime.

And when you get hurt you can rage or scream or feel sorry for yourself. Or, you can do as beth suggests - face the music dressed in our best, and prepared to go down as gentlemen. Why not face adversity with some dignity? Why not cheer for the Sox until the bitter end, embrace our passion until the last out? After all nobody forces you to care. Nobody puts a gun to your head and says "ok... on my command... love!" It's a choice we all make, and you can avoid the consequences, the heartbreak, quite easily. Wall yourself off from other people. Follow golf. If you choose to love something, then take your hopes in hand, do it unreservedly and accept that sometimes the object of your affection may fall short. Not make the play-offs. Not win another championship. You know what I mean.

Go read the whole thing.

Happy birthday ...

... # 9.

Take the Ted Williams trivia quiz!

Ted Williams: one of the greatest hitters the game has ever seen.

From The Teammates by David Halberstam:

[Bobby] Doerr remembered his first glimpse of Ted. It was June 1936, and the original Hollywood Stars had just moved to San Diego and been reborn as the Padres, after Bill Lane, the owner, balked at a 100 percent rent increase for Wrigley Field, the ballpark the Stars and the Los Angeles Angels shared. Some San Diego businessmen induced Lane to move the team south to what then was a city of only 200,000 people. It was right before a game, just as the regulars were taking batting practice, when Williams, who had been playing for a local school, Herbert Hoover High, was brought in for a tryout. "I was standing right near the batting cage," Doerr remembered, "on the first-base side -- I don't know why I was there, but I remember the scene distinctly. And here is this kid, and he is really skinny. You wanted to laugh -- no one that thin could possibly hit. 'Let the kid hit,' Shellenback is saying, because he's been told that by the owner, Bill Lane, who wants to look at Ted. The veterans are all grumbling -- you know, we all wanted our batting practice swings. No one thinks he can be a ballplayer, he's much too thin, and we've got a game in an hour or two, and he's not even going to play with us. So we're impatient and there's a lot of resentment, a lot of muttering. And then he started to swing. And we all remembered that swing. You paid attention to the swing. He hit six or seven balls very hard, and all the veterans are starting to watch, and it's getting very quiet, and I remember one veteran player saying, 'That kid is going to be signed before the week is out.'"

Dominic DiMaggio remembered a similar scene. "It was my first year in the league. It was early in the season. I was playing for the San Francisco Seals, and we were playing San Diego. I wasn't starting yet. Brooks Holder was our centerfielder, very fast, but he couldn't catch the ball, so there was going to be a place for me. Lefty O'Doul was our manager. The other guys, the San Diego players, are taking batting practice, and eventually Ted comes up to take his swings. And suddenly Lefty, who was a great hitter, and a great hitting instructor, jumps up from our dugout and goes to the other side of the field, near their dugout. That's very unusual -- you just didn't do that in those days. And he waits there, and finally Ted finishes his swings, and Lefty calls him over, and they talk for a little bit. Maybe twenty or thirty seconds. And then Lefty comes back to our dugout. And we're all sitting around, and someone asks him, 'Skip, what was that all about?' And Lefty says, 'That kid is one hell of a hitter. And all I told him was, "Don't let anyone ever tamper with your batting stroke. Just don't let anyone ever touch you."'"

And finally:

Here is John Updike's famous piece , published in the New Yorker in 1960 - inspired by Ted Williams' home run in his last at bat. (I could really really do without every single writer from then on quoting the first sentence of Updike's piece, or referencing it, or bringing it up ... it's overused now ... Boston fans, you'll know what I'm talking about). But still: a great tribute to a baseball icon.

I try not to think about what happened to Williams after death. It's so ghoulish. So awful.

I prefer to remember him the way he looks in that picture up above.

Or in this one:

To me, that is just sheer beauty. Clean and open. Perfection. Grace.

"That kid [was] one hell of a hitter", indeed.

Stalin Shmalin

The REAL question in my mind right now is: what is going to happen with Manny Ramirez?

I thought Francona's press conference last night was a masterpiece of saying NOTHING. I think you want that in a manager. You protect your players. I loved Varitek, too, surrounded by reporters, saying in response to some question about Manny (but the reporter had only said "teammate"): "I'm not sure what teammate you're referring to. David Wells, my teammate pitched a great game."

But obviously SOMEthing's going on. I could never be a sports reporter. I'm too in awe. If I asked Tek a question about Manny, and he responded like THAT, I would never come back with: "Yeah, but what about Manny ...." I would say: "Oh, yeah, man, Wells did great!!" That's why they don't pay me the big bucks.

Last night:

-- We were all at Molly's Pub in West Yarmouth. Watching the game. For the most part, it was one-two-three innings. We thought: "Damn, we're gonna be home by 9." Jean declared, "This is the most boring baseball game ever." Then came the wacko Keystone Cops play which we had to see 5 times to really understand what was going on ... Then we had to discuss it to ourselves, drawing small diagrams on our napkins: "Okay ... so the catcher missed the ball ... " And the play finally ended with Johnny Damon getting clocked in the head on his way home (and he barely flinched!) Awesome. I don't think even the players knew what the hell was going on in the middle of that play.

-- Bases loaded. Jean says, sarcastically, "Grrrreat. We load the bases for John Olerud." And of course ... 2 seconds later, all hell broke loose. It was great - we were in a bar filled with Sox freaks, most with Irish accents ... and we couldn't get enough of the replay. Every time the entire bar saw the replay, we cheered all over again, as though it was the first time we saw it. Olerud!! A cross between Jimmy Stewart and Frank Perdue.

-- Laughing HYSTERICALLY about the random shot after Olerud's grand slam, of the fan in the stands manically waving an ENORMOUS American flag. Like the kind of flag that should be on a pole outside a post office. We were crying with laughter. Like: "buddy ... uhm ... this isn't the Olympics ... this is an American sport ... and ... er ..." It was just so cute, and he was waving it FEVERISHLY.

-- At one point last night, my brother said, in a moment of shock and awe, the word "Jeepers." He said it COMPLETELY seriously, and it was the only logical response to the moment. "Jeepers!" But we couldn't stop laughing afterwards - I said, "Who the hell says 'Jeepers' anymore??" Then - as Siobhan and I were leaving the bar, there was a group of smokers standing outside - and as we passed, one of the women in the group said about something, in an exasperated voice: "Jeepers Creepers!" hahahahahaha

Mickey Mantle

"When he ran, he made everyone else look like they were standing still."

-- Ralph Houk on Mickey Mantle

(I'm watching the fabulous HBO special on Mantle right now. I AM IN HEAVEN.)

Billy Crystal: "If you were going to build a baseball player from scratch, all you'd have to do would be say: Him. Give me him."

One of his teammates from the 50s: "You knew you could never be as good as him. But let me tell you: you broke your fanny trying. Trying to live up to him, and be as good as him. He brought the team together."

Talking about how built his body was, one of his teammates said: "He didn't need steroids. As a matter of fact, we didn't even know how to spell it back then."

"Why do they love me so much? I just play fucking baseball." - Mickey Mantle

A sportswriter said: "I learned how to do long division so I could keep up with his batting average."

"There was always a sadness about him. A wistfulness about him." - Bob Costas

"I often wondered how a man who knew he was going to die could stand here on this field and say he felt like the luckiest man on earth. But now I think I know how Lou Gehrig felt." -- Mickey Mantle's retirement speech

Richard Lewis : "I'm just glad his name wasn't Cy Schwartzstein."

The impossible dream

Red Sox fans (and baseball fans in general) get ready for a ginormous book excerpt. I cannot help myself. Along with my Vatican II research, I just picked up my dad's copy of The '67 Red Sox and the Impossible Dream by Bill Reynolds, columnist for the good ol' Pro Jo. My dad's copy is signed by Bill Reynolds. It caught my eye while I was home, and I started it last night, and read it nonstop on my train ride home. It's fantastic. Heartbreaking. The NAMES. Now '67 is before my time ... but still: the names are Boston legends. Tony Conigliaro.

OUCH!! i still wince when I see photos of him being carried off the field with that awful eye. I wasn't even BORN and I wince. (To be perfectly accurate, I did, in fact, exist at that moment ... but I was swimming around in amniotic fluid, so I wasn't really a baseball fan yet.) Reggie Smith. Rico Petrocelli. The names carry magic, history, nostalgia ... God. Yaz. Yaz!! My dad took all of us to see his second to last game at Fenway. Here's my diary entry of that night.

Jim Lonborg. Here's one of my favorite sports-moments photos ever (even though, of course, the jubilance was followed quickly by grief and loss). This photo was in one of my baseball trivia books I had as a kid, and I remember reveling over it:

Sorry, must interject a girlie moment: Lonborg was absolutely gorgeous. Look at him!!

And Bill Reynolds' prologue hooks you in immediately. I read a couple pages, while I was lazing around on Saturday, and realized: Okay. I must now read this entire thing.

So here comes some excerpts from that prologue:

From Lost Summer by Bill Reynolds:

I remember it as a cold, gray April afternoon.

I was sitting at my desk in a red-brick college dormitory in Providence, Rhode Island, doing homework, the radio tuned to the Red Sox against the Yankees, one of the first games of the season. It was 1967. I was a junior at Brown University. Pitching for the Yankees was the great Whitey Ford, now at the tail end of his career. Pitching for the Red Sox was some rookie left-hander named Billy Rohr. He was 21 years old, and it was his first major league start. I'd never heard of him.

Not surprising, really. I wasn't a fan anymore. Baseball was something that I'd come to associate with the past, just one of the things that had gotten stowed away in some childhood footlocker...

Baseball had been my first love, so every once in a while I'd listen to a game on the radio -- the equivalent of taking a ride past an old girlfriend's house, a brief nostalgic visit to something that had once been important. One of the highlights of my childhood summers had been occasional trips to Fenway Park, the tiny oasis of green amid the urban bustle of Boston, a place that was a cathedral for generations of New England kids. My first memory of Fenway was from some lost year in the early 50s. It must have been one of Ted Williams' first games after he returned from the Korean War, because when he came to the plate, the big crowd around me standing and cheering lustily, my father said, "Remember this. This is a great moment." I must have been about seven or eight, certainly old enough to believe that one could yearn for nothing more noble than to play for the Red Sox and have people cheer as you came to the plate ...

Throughout my adolescence there'd been annual pilgrimages to Fenway as the names changed from Jensen and Piersall to Runnels and Radatz. TS Eliot once wrote that we measure our lives in coffee spoons. But ole TS Eliot never could get around on the fastball. If you grew up in New England you measured your life in trips to Fenway Park. You got older; Fenway stayed the same, as timeless as sand castles at the beach. That had been back when I was still a fan, still glued to the daily box scores in the newspaper that served as links to the emerald green world of childhood.

By the time I was 19 there were other interests, seemingly more important things than a childhood game. Baseball was just something I used to love. My only real connection to it was a curious kinship I felt with Tony Conigliaro, one of the Red Sox's young stars, and that was by accident. I'd been in school at Worcester, Massachusetts, at the time and it wasn't a real good period for me. My longtime girlfriend was in the process of dumping me, and that realization had become an ache in my heart. I'd hitchhiked the 40 miles into Boston and was spending the afternoon sitting around a student apartment, drinking beer and feeling sorry for myself. On the radio was the ballgame. In his first at bat at Fenway Park Tony Conigliaro hit a home run. He too was 19.

I was suddenly struck by how different our lives were. Here we were the same age, yet he was hitting a home run in Fenway Park in his first at bat, and I was sitting in a seedy apartment just a few blocks away feeling sorry for myself. On that spring afternoon in 1964, in my particular view of the universe, Tony Conigliaro was everything I was not.

So all during college I checked the box scores to see how he was doing. In a sense he'd become a link to my youth. In some strange way his success became my success. Maybe it was because he was living out every New England kid's fantasy. Maybe it was something more elusive, undefinable, the little-understood reasons why we root for some athletes while others touch our hearts. But if he was doing well, then things seemed a little more right. As if in my mind our fates had become linked that day three years earlier when we'd both come to Boston on the same day, he to begin to his major league career with the Red Sox, me to get dumped by a girl who had been the center of my little universe. No one ever said being a fan makes any sense.

Besides, rooting for the Red Sox was like rooting for my broken heart. If you'd grown up in New England in the 50s and 60s you never knew what a pennant race was. A pennant race was always something taking place in some other town, usually New York. Certainly not in Boston, where the Red Sox appeared to have failure and frustration all but seated on the bench with them. But listening to that game on the radio seemed to resurrect all my old baseball memories, some lost childhood passion. In the beginning it had felt like just another early season game, nothing special, just another game in an endless string ...

The Yankees are the most famous franchise in all of sports, but this is not a good Yankke team. The year before they'd finished last for the first time in 54 years, and for the first time in 13 years there's no talk of them fighting for the pennant. Roger Maris is gone to the St. Louis Cardinals. Bobby Richardson has retired. Mickey Mantle is aging and ailing, and there are rumors this might be his last season. Ford is near the end of his illustrious career. The great Elston Howard has become a part-time player. The Yankees seem a parody of themselves, as if the monuments of the great Yankee immortals that stare in from center field have turned their heads in shame.

There are only 14,000 people rattling around in huge Yankee Stadium...

Ken Coleman, whose voice, like Curt Gowdy's before him, has become synonymous with the Red Sox, is calling the game. As the innings go by, it is apparent this is not just another early-season game. Through five innings Rohr has not allowed a hit, a rare thing for any Red Sox pitcher these days, never mind a rookie making his first start in the major leagues. He'd appeared understandably nervous at the start, but has settled down and retired the first 10 batters he faced.

But the score is only 1-0, courtesy of a leadoff home run by Reggie Smith.

In the bottom of the sixth, with Rohr still breezing along, the Yankees' Bill Robinson rips a hard ground ball that comes off Rohr's shin. The ball ricochets toward third baseman Joe Foy, who throws Robinson out. Rohr limps around the mound, in obvious pain. Manager Dick Williams, also in his first year, and trainer Bobby LeRoux come out to see him. Williams is thinking of taking Rohr out. But Rohr walks around the mound for a while, testing his leg, and a few minutes later says he's okay.

There is some concern that Rohr is going to be affected by the bruise, and Williams tells catcher Russ Gibson, another rookie, to let him know immediately if he thinks Rohr has lost anything. He hasn't. In fact, Gibson thinks he's getting stronger. He gets through the seventh without giving up a hit, as the drama starts to build. Rohr's bid for a no-hitter has gotten serious. Rohr gets a cushion in the top of the eights when Joe Foy hits a two-run homer to give the Sox a 3-0 lead. He gets through the bottom of the eighth. An early-season game in the cold of Yankee Stadium has become as good as baseball gets.

After the Red Sox go down in their half of the ninth inning all the people in the stadium stand and cheer as Rohr walks out to the mound, just three outs away from baseball fame. If ever there is someone who seems like an unlikely candidate for baseball immortality, it is Billy Rohr, this skinny stringbean of a left-hander.

He'd grown up in Southern California, began playing Little League when he was eight years old. He weighed only 145 pounds in high school, but he was 26-3 over his career, and when he graduated there were about a dozen major league clubs that had an interest. The Red Sox were not one of them. He eventually signed with the Pirates for a reported $25,000 bonus, and was sent to rookie ball in Kingsport, Pennsylvania, where the Pirates were trying to hide him and three other young players in hopes of ultimately leaving them off a list of protected players. They even played games in the mornings, never at night. Rohr knew something strange was going on, but wasn't sure what it was. The strategy failed. Mace Brown, a Red Sox scout, was tipped off, and the Red Sox drafted Rohr in the fall of 63. Just two years later, midway through the season, he was jumped to the Red Sox Triple A club in Toronto, bypassing Double A. It was a difficult adjustment, and the first thing he learned was that the better the league the less hitters chase bad pitches, an important lesson for any young pitcher. In 1966, still in Toronto, he pitched 10 complete games for Dick Williams and earned himself a spring training invitation.

But of course as I sit in my dorm room at Brown I know nothing of this. Nor do I know that last night Rohr had been so nervous he'd asked follow Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg to room with him, so that the two of them could go over the Yankee hitters, and that Lonborg will say later that Rohr had spent the night sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning. All I know is that he's three outs away from pitching a no-hitter in his first major leauge start, something no one in baseball history has ever done, and that I haven't been so absorbed in a baseball game in years.

Due to baseball etiquette, no one has mentioned the no-hitter to Rohr as he spent time in the dugout. No one has to. Coleman gets around it on the radio by saying there have been eight hits in the game and the Red Sox have all of them.

As the crowd stands and cheers Rohr's walk to the mound in the bottom of the ninth the young pitcher does not acknowledge the applause. He looks grim, determined. The suspense builds, the essence of baseball reduced to this one moment. This is baseball at its best, consequences riding on every pitch. He looks around at his teammates, and turns to pitch to Tom Tresh. The count runs to three and two.

"Billy Rohr on the threshold of fame, with a tremendous pitching performance today," Coleman says on the radio. "Rohr winds and here it is, a fly ball to deep left. Yastrzemski is going back ... way back ... way back."

Carl Yastrzemski, in his grey road uniform with "Boston" on the front in navy blue letters, and number eight on his back, starts running back as fast as he can. He can't see the ball, but instinctively knows where it figures to land. Behind him is the scoreboard. Behind it is the left-hand grandstand, with only a smattering of people sitting in it. On a dead-run Yastrzemski dives, his body in full extension, left arm straining, his momentum carrying him away from home plate. He manages to catch the ball just before he hits the ground, landing on his left knee and doing a full somersault. His cap is off, lying near him on the grass. He quickly gets up, momentarily holding his glove with the ball safely tucked inside it over his head, as Coleman screams over the radio, "One of the greatest catches you'll ever see by Yastrzemski in left field. Everyone in Yankee Stadium is on their feet roaring as Yastrzemski went back and made a tremendous catch."

There is one out.

Yaz has done it, I think. He has saved it.

Joe Pepitone is the next batter. He hits a routine fly ball that Tony Conigliaro handles easily in right filed.

Two outs.

One more, I tell myself. Just one more.

The batter is Elston Howard. Ironically, later in the season he will be with the Red Sox. But no one knows that on this afternoon. On this gray day he has become the one thing that stands between a rookie pitcher and a sliver of immortality. Before he steps into the batter's box Williams comes out to visit Rohr. The manager doesn't really have anything to say, just feels he should say something, anything, to calm his young pitcher. Howard digs in, a wide stance. He is a right-handed hitter and he rhythmically waves his bat toward Rohr. The count runs full. Billy Rohr is one strike away. Everyone in Yankee Stadium knows they are watching history. Sitting in a dorm room, rooting for the first time in years, I know I am listening to it. Can he really do it? Is it really possible? Gibson calls for a curveball.

"Russ Gibson gives the sign," Coleman says dramatically, the tension in his voice. "The left-hander delivers ... a line drive into right field for a base hit. Tony Conigliaro takes it on the first hop. He had no chance."

Rohr's curveball has hung a fraction of a second too long, not breaking down and in to Howard as he'd envisioned it would. He looks over at Howard standing at first base and doesn't feel angry, just disappointed. He has come so close.

I turn the radio off, feeling somehow cheated, feeling that this is just one more example of an imperfect world.

When the game ends Rohr is greeted by several FBI agents. They tell him that Jackie Kennedy wants to come into the Red Sox clubhouse to meet him. He goes up the ramp twoard the clubhouse and all he sees are reporters and TV lights. For a moment he wonders if he's about to be arrested or interviewed. Two days later he appears on the Ed Sullivan show, baseball's newest hero. The mayor of Boston sends him a telegram thanking him for giving all Red Sox fans everywhere an unforgettable day, and saying how he hopes Rohr's victory over the Yankees will be the first of hundreds of others in his career.

It isn't.

By the end of the year Rohr will be long gone from the Red Sox; the highlight of his career will be this afternoon in Yankee Stadium. But, in a sense, this early-season game, played before a sparse crowd in Yankee Stadium on this cold, raw April afternoon, comes to resemble that season that will forever be known as the "Impossible Dream", the season that becomes, as someone once put it, the time everyone forgot about the human race and worried about the pennant race: It is a complete surprise; it's an incredible, memorable performance by a player who isn't supposed to be able to deliver it; and, in the end, it just misses being perfect.

"Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on"

From The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam:

When [Ted] was generous there was no one more generous, and when he was petulant there was no one more petulant, and sometimes he was both within a few seconds. Once in the mid-1950s, Pedro Ramos, then a young pitcher with Washington, struck Ted out, which was a very big moment for Ramos. He rolled the ball into the dugout to save, and later, after the game, the Cuban right-hander ventured into the Boston dugout with the ball and asked Ted to sign it. Mel Parnell was watching and had expected an immediate explosion, Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on, and he was not disappointed. Soon there was a rising bellow of blasphemy from Williams, and then he had looked over and seen Ramos, a kid of 20 or 21, terribly close to tears now. Suddenly Ted had softened and said, "Oh, all right, give me the goddamn ball," and had signed it. Then about two weeks later he had come up against Ramos again and hit a tremendous home run, and as he rounded first he had slowed down just a bit and yelled to Ramos, "I'll sign that son of a bitch too if you can ever find it."

"One good pitch"

From The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam:

In his playing days, he would be there every day in the clubhouse, holding forth -- the Ted Williams Lescture Series -- at least a speech per day, orating and arguing at the same time. Mel Parnell, the great Boston lefty, told me you failed to listen to him at your own risk, because for all the stuff you did not need to hear, there was always so much to learn, often about hitters on the other team, because he was so smart, and he missed nothing that happened on a ball field.

"I can," John Pesky said 60 years after he heard the basic lecture for the first time, "still hear him telling us, because he said it again and again, 'You'll only get one good pitch to hit. One good pitch. That's all. Don't count on more. So you better know the strike zone. And when you get that one good pitch you better hit it and hit it hard. Remember, just one good pitch.'"

"no one that thin could possibly hit."

From The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam:

[Bobby] Doerr remembered his first glimpse of Ted. It was June 1936, and the original Hollywood Stars had just moved to San Diego and been reborn as the Padres, after Bill Lane, the owner, balked at a 100 percent rent increase for Wrigley Field, the ballpark the Stars and the Los Angeles Angels shared. Some San Diego businessmen induced Lane to move the team south to what then was a city of only 200,000 people. It was right before a game, just as the regulars were taking batting practice, when Williams, who had been playing for a local school, Herbert Hoover High, was brought in for a tryout.

"I was standing right near the batting cage," Doerr remembered, "on the first-base side -- I don't know why I was there, but I remember the scene distinctly. And here is this kid, and he is really skinny. You wanted to laugh -- no one that thin could possibly hit. 'Let the kid hit,' Shellenback is saying, because he's been told that by the owner, Bill Lane, who wants to look at Ted. The veterans are all grumbling -- you know, we all wanted our batting practice swings. No one thinks he can be a ballplayer, he's much too thin, and we've got a game in an hour or two, and he's not even going to play with us. So we're impatient and there's a lot of resentment, a lot of muttering. And then he started to swing. And we all remembered that swing. You paid attention to the swing. He hit six or seven balls very hard, and all the veterans are starting to watch, and it's getting very quiet, and I remember one veteran player saying, 'That kid is going to be signed before the week is out.'"

Dominic DiMaggio remembered a similar scene. "It was my first year in the league. It was early in the season. I was playing for the San Francisco Seals, and we were playing San Diego. I wasn't starting yet. Brooks Holder was our centerfielder, very fast, but he couldn't catch the ball, so there was going to be a place for me. Lefty O'Doul was our manager. The other guys, the San Diego players, are taking batting practice, and eventually Ted comes up to take his swings. And suddenly Lefty, who was a great hitter, and a great hitting instructor, jumps up from our dugout and goes to the other side of the field, near their dugout. That's very unusual -- you just didn't do that in those days. And he waits there, and finally Ted finishes his swings, and Lefty calls him over, and they talk for a little bit. Maybe twenty or thirty seconds. And then Lefty comes back to our dugout. And we're all sitting around, and someone asks him, 'Skip, what was that all about?' And Lefty says, 'That kid is one hell of a hitter. And all I told him was, "Don't let anyone ever tamper with your batting stroke. Just don't let anyone ever touch you."'"

Happy birthday to ...

Manny Ramirez!

I think my favorite thing about Manny is his demeanor at the plate. He looks as casual as if he were lounging in his Lazy-boy watching TV. Like ... he just stands there. Whatever. No big deal. I'm a major-league ballplayer, I'm a hitting powerhouse ... and whatever. No big deal, man, it's just what I do. It looks like his thought process is: "Wow. Blue sky. I like the smell of hotdogs. I'm hungry. I've got an itch on my ass. Oh wait a sec ... here comes the pitch ..."

hahaha

Happy birthday, Manny!

Trot Nixon's catch ...

in the second game yesterday was un-feckin'-believable. It happened so quickly - it looked like a miracle - did he actually just catch that ball? But no - it was no miracle. Just an amazing play by Trot. Amazing. Thank God they replayed it about a million times.

You guys are really lucky

You know why? Because apparently, I am "a human Google".

Here's the story. I took the Metro North today to my friend Jen's parent's house. They invited me to their Passover seder (yes, a week early) ... I have been invited for, oh, 8 years now? This is the first year I have been able to go. So I got up at the fiery crack of 8 a.m., made my way to Grand Central, and got onto the train.

I sat there, looking out the window at the gleaming Hudson to my right, the cliffs of Jersey, and yes, because I'm a geek, I thought of all of the things that happened up and down that river and along that cliff during the Revolutionary War.

10 minutes into the ride north, I heard the guy in the seat in front of me say into his cell phone:

"No, man, listen, I heard that there's a Red Sox bar in Manhattan." Pause, pause. "I have no idea where it is, bro - but I heard that there is one. Look it up or something ... I know there is one ..." Pause, pause, pause. "All right, man ... I'll talk to you later. All right. Bye."

He hangs up.

And I could not resist.

I leaned over the seat in front of me and said, "Hi ... sorry ... couldn't help but overhearing ..."

And he looked at me with... that look. I can't explain it. It was polite, but reserved. Maybe a little fearful. Like: why is this random person talking to me? The guy was just a classic Boston guy. Can't explain that either, but you just knew he was from Boston. And NOT just because he was wearing a Red Sox hat. He had that blunt open face ... the kind of face you rarely see in Manhattan.

So I saw his hesitation and plunged on, getting to the point: "There is a Red Sox bar in Manhattan, and it's called The Riviera."

In that moment, all of his hesitation dissolved, and we suddenly became best friends. His whole face changed.

"Are you from Boston?"

"No, Rhode Island ... but, you know. Same thing."

"I'm from Belmont."

"Oh! Okay!"

Then came this huge laughing smile on his face ... "So wait ... what's the name of the bar?"

"The Riviera. It's awesome. 50 TVs, they've got NESN ... it's THE place to go to see Red Sox games in New York."

"Where is it?" He already had his phone out.

"It's right across from the Christopher Street stop, on the 1, 9. It's on 7th avenue south."

He dialed.

I heard the following conversation (this is pretty much word for word):

"Yo. Bro. The name of the Red Sox bar in New York is The Riviera." Pause. "Yeah - I was sitting here, and a very helpful woman just gave me the name of the bar." Pause. "It's on ..." He had forgotten, he glanced back at me.

I said, "It's on 7th Avenue South - across from the Christopher Street subway station."

He repeated into the phone: "It's on 7th Avenue South - across from the Christopher Street subway station." Then: long pause, as his friend spoke. Then: "Dude, you want the exact address? What?? Bro, I'm sittin' here next to a human Google, and you want the exact address? I say to you: 'There's a Red Sox bar in New York' - then this woman appears and tells me not only the name of the bar, but the subway stop and the street it's on - and you want an exact address? You're nuts, dude. Look it up."

I felt proud. I had helped this lost soul find a Red Sox home, and ... I got called "a human Google".

I'm not ready ...

... but apparently the 2005 baseball season will begin whether I am ready for it or not.

I have re-joined my "club" (it's so specific - it's a Hoboken Red Sox fan club) ... Ehm, I don't even live in Hoboken, but close enough. Club members belong to various online chat groups, we get invites through email, we are told where to go for what game ... and then we all convene at various bars throughout Hoboken and Manhattan, we watch the games. I don't even know these people outside of this. At all. It's hilarious. I love it. When we won last year, some random guy in the club - I don't even know his name - only I had been seeing him off and on for the entire summer - Anyway, in the midst of the utter chaos, he staggered over to me - sweaty and emotional, and we hugged, jumping and screaming ... and he actually screamed: "I LOVE YOU!" hahaha

It's THAT kind of club. We have one goal. And one goal only. He loved me because I was part of that club. Hysterical. He had come completely undone.

Then again, so had I, because I screamed: "I LOVE YOU TOO" back.

Seriously, though: Is it starting up again? Where did the time go?

I'm not ready.

Emotionally.

But then I see this. And I think ... ahhhhhh, is it here yet?? Are we there yet?

Boston 212

Thank you, Dan for sending me the following link. For all I know, this "Red Sox" bar in the middle of Pinstripe-Hell has been around forever - but I'm only aware of Riviera.

28th and Madison. Boston (212).

I will have to keep this in mind when I desperately need to be around my own kind.

Baseball cards ... OUCH!

Reading this post - and looking at the pictures - makes my heart HURT. I look at those baseball cards, and I remember being this girl (notice the shirt):

Speaking of famous people

... who cannot deal with fame ... how 'bout Randy Johnson, huh?? Heh heh heh ...

Amusingly enough, this was the story that woke me up this morning at 5:30 a.m. with my alarm. Two New York radio-jocks arguing, into the darkness of my room, about Randy Johnson. It was hysterical. My first conscious moment of the day ...

One of the radio-jocks was saying, angrily, "He was just walkin' down the sidewalk ... he wasn't in a Yankees uniform ... he was dressed like a civilian -"

The other one interrupted. "He was wearing a sweat suit, okay? He is 8 feet tall, and he is wearing a sweat suit ... on the streets of New York City, okay???"

I love the torment of sports radio shows. It cracks me up. I'd probably like it better if I were living in Boston, but hey ... this is the price I pay.

Dammit. Is it baseball season yet ...

(via Bill McCabe)

A Red Sox Christmas ...

Christmas, 2004. Hanging out with the family, immediate and extended. And what do we discuss? What do we re-live? What is on everyone's minds? Christmas cheer? Reveling in family parties? Presents? Gifts? Santa?

Absolutely not.

It's all about the 2004 World Series. Naturally.

I haven't seen all of my cousins since that momentous life-changing occurrence - and so we all had to re-hash it all out. Some of my first memories involve Fenway Park, and being there with all of my cousins (er ... of course there are about 40 of us. You know. Catholics.) So it was all about:

"Hi, how are you!" Hugs, kisses. "Merry Christmas!" Brief pause. Then - "HOW BOUT THE SOX???" Screams in the kitchen, etc. Stories needed to be told. We've all got one.

"So where were you?" Etc.

Funny - we would all talk for about 2 seconds, calmly, about the specifics of the Series - and then it would hit us all over again, and we would start jumping up and down, high-fiving, whatever.

We still CANNOT BELIEVE IT.

The NESN video "Faith Rewarded", of course, was involved. Siobhan gave copies of it to my brother, my dad, and on Christmas night, we all sat around, full from my mom's amazing turkey and stuffing dinner, and watched the entire season unfold again. It was FABULOUS. It was as though we were seeing it all for the first time. We all erupted into cheers at the same moments, we howled like gladiators when Varitek shoved his mitt in A-Rod's face, we roared with laughter at Mentkievitch's thoughts on being traded (whatever, don't spell-check me on that name) - He described walking into the locker room on the day he was traded to the Sox, and seeing Nomar packing up his bags. Mentkievitch said, in an interview, "I was like ... Please tell me I didn't just get traded for Nomar Garciaparra. I mean ... I think I'm a pretty good player ... but ... I'm not that good." heh heh heh We marveled at Pokey Reese. We cheered Curt Schilling. We marveled, once again, at the bloody sock ... and were in awe of the look on his face. It was obvious he was in agony ... but there was armor over the agony. He needed to get the feckin' job DONE. We laughed at Manny Rivera's goofball 3 Stooges behavior in the outfield - tripping on NOTHING. And then the famous under-handed Foulke throw to first ... We still can't get used to it, we still can't believe it ... We clapped, cheered, whooped, hollered ... NO TIME HAS PASSED. The shock-waves of our triumph have not settled down. It still has reverb.

We saw the Sullivan cousins and the O'Malley cousins (and aunts, and uncles, and significant others, etc.) on Sunday ... and it was pretty much all Sox all the time.

Pedro's Departure

Dan's post about Pedro is great. Kind of says it all. Especially that last little anecdote there. Any serious baseball fan will understand Dan's experience.

Liberty

Okay, I'm just going to try to regain a vocabulary here. But I am in a mood where words are inadequate.

I went to Liberty Cafe, in Hoboken (otherwise known as "Sheila's home away from home for the last week and a half"). David and Maria were joining me. I scored bar stools for all of us. We had a perfect spot. Perfect. David was in full Red Sox regalia, head to toe.

I'm sorry - I have forgotten how to write.

The same crowd was there ... the crowd I have gotten to know by sight over the last couple of years.

Above our head was a massive skylight. Through that, we watched the moon turn red, and then disappear.

I mean - you just can't script something like that: A blood-red moon, a lunar eclipse, seen through a skylight of a bar where there are huddled 100 insane Red Sox fans watching the historic moment of a World Series sweep??... You just couldn't script it.

I have screamed myself hoarse. I am hung over. I can't calm my brain down. Maria and I were handed free glasses of champagne when we won.

It was utter mayhem. We were out of our minds. I still get a bit choked up thinking about it. David - screaming - screaming - text messaging - screaming - Maria with her hand over her mouth - and then suddenly LOSING it.

I wish I had taken notes during the game. I'll just babble some thoughts.

-- D-Lowe: As much as I have always had affection for you, I have to admit I doubted you quite a bit this season. You seemed a bit mental, too emotional ... I would watch the bright pink spots come out on your cheeks, watch you blow out your breath in a huff, and think: Uh-oh. He's cracking. He's a headcase, his psyche is delicate ... Uhm - Derek, I owe you a big fat apology.

-- When Lowe came back to the dugout after his amazing feat ... there was this shot ... of Pedro Martinez hugging him. Did anyone else see that? The hug went on and on and on, Derek actually stopped the hug ... in that way that you do sometimes ("Okay. Nice hug, but now it should be ending now...") - but Pedro, with this huge grin on his face, didn't let go. Would not let go. We all saw that moment - David, Maria, and I. I said, "Wow. That is extraordinary. Look at how this group of men have bonded. They are a TEAM." I mean, I have known that this was true, but it was the Pedro-hug-that-wouldn't-end moment that made it real for me.

-- Uhm ... the constant shots of Red Sox fans in bars in New York and LA? Lame. Freakin' lame.

-- I absolutely loved the lunatic shot at the press conference afterwards, when they're trying to talk to Bud Selig or someone ... and a drenched Pedro wanders into the camera shot, with this huge grin on his face, holding the trophy ... and then wanders out again. I loved that.

-- I still kind of can't get past the mayhem that erupted after Foulke's underhanded throw to Mientkiewicz at first ... I keep going back to it. Re-living it. I can't help it - it continues to unfurl in my mind's eye like a beautiful movie on replay. It was spectacular. I mean ... I guess I never really believed that I would ever have that moment, that it would ever be ME going nuts in October ... People were out of their minds. There was one guy across the bar from us who looked like a traveling preacher from The Apostle or something. He was a young kid with a buzz cut, but he just stood there - for about 10 minutes - arms up in the air ... head thrown back ... occasionally shaking his head ... occasionally putting one hand over his eyes ... but standing frozen ... like he was about to preach fire and brimstone. Like he was having a revelation from above or something. He was completely overcome.

-- Here is what I noticed, during the mayhem (I only notice this in looking back on it): The crowd at the bar was erupting in waves, the waves breaking, receding, pulling back, and then pounding the shore again. Nobody was doing the same thing at the same time ... there were multiple waves, all having their own arcs and peaks ... so at any given moment when you looked around the bar you could see:

1. People jumping up and down like maniacs
2. People huddled over their cell phones
3. People sitting quietly with their hands over their mouths, or up on the sides of their cheeks, staring up at the TV, quietly. In awe. Disbelief.

And we ALL went through each ONE of these phases ... but at different times. Waves breaking, pulling back, sucking at the shore, gathering strength, and then crashing in again ...

I was jumping up and down like a maniac. Hugging strangers. Jumping, screaming, jumping. Then I would grab David's phone and call someone, quickly. Huddling into the phone against the mayhem, screaming a couple of words at the person on the other line. Hanging up. And then it would hit me on a whole deeper level, and I would have to sit down, quietly, with my hand over my mouth, staring up at the TV.

As I'm jumping up and down, Maria sits in stunned silence, staring at the TV, while David screams into his cell phone. Then David hangs up, sits down in stunned silence, and suddenly Maria is the one on the phone, while I'm still jumping up and down. Then David starts jumping up and down, and Maria is on the phone, and I'm staring up at the TV quietly ...

This kind of trade-off of different emotional states happened with the entire crowd - over and over and over - for about 35 minutes.

-- I can't even look at Curt Schilling without wanting to ... cry? Yes. But also molest him. (Lovingly, of course.) I just want to do something for that guy. He came to this team with a single focus. He adapted to the team, yes, he accepted what it meant ... he was embraced by Boston, he was ubiquitous in the chat rooms and call-in shows ... he embraced Boston - but at the same time, he did not accept all the stupid curse baggage that came with it. This guy ... this guy ... I don't mean to lay the ENTIRE victory at his feet - but he certainly deserves the lion's share.

That's the great thing, though - and I heard this comment on the radio this morning too - there were any number of guys on the Red Sox who could have been MVP. I thought it would be Ortiz, but there were many others, too. This was a team. A group. The sum is greater than all the parts. Or something like that.

I still don't know how to speak about this.

-- David turned to me at one point, during the mayhem afterwards, and shouted, "WE WILL NEVER FORGET ANY OF THESE MEN - NONE OF THEM - WE WILL REMEMBER THEIR NAMES FOREVER."

-- And during the mayhem ... the TVs are still blasting ... and one commercial came on ... a commercial that obviously they only would have run if the Red Sox had won. I do not even know what the hell it was for. But the shot was of 4 Boston fans, sitting in the stands at Fenway ... with a rolling scroll of dates beneath ... starting with 1918. And as the dates scroll ... you watched the people morph, and change. You watched the 1920s fashions morph into 1930s fashions ... you watched the hairdos change ... you watched people come and go ... and the dates kept scrolling ... The faces were elated, the faces were grumpy, the faces were excited, or devastated ... 1970s fashion now ... 1980s ... 1990s ... and finally ... the last shot had the date 2003 underneath ... and there were 4 old guys sitting there ... (I think it was 4 men, I don't know) ... 4 white-haired old gents ... watching their team play ... 2003. How long those gentlemen have waited ... and then the screen went to black, and the date showed, large: 2004. Anyway, that was a long-ass description of that commercial. But there was a kind of nostalgic music playing, a sweet tender music ... and as I watched the dates change, and the faces change, and as I thought about my grandfather, my uncles, my aunts, my cousins ... I thought about Boston as a whole ... so much of my own childhood tied up with this team ... Silly, I know, but I didn't shed a tear until I saw that commercial. Suddenly - watching that commercial - it hit me what had actually happened. And then I was standing there, with tears rolling down my face.

Tears of happiness, sure, but also tears of relief. We did it. After all these damn years, we did it. We hung with our team, we got beat, we got our hearts broke, we had to endure taunts, smug petty taunts, we had to be taunted with a stupid Curse that I don't even believe in ... Generations pass down the allegiance. I know it was the case in my family.

Relief that we did it, but also great great joy and pride in HOW we did it. In HOW it happened.

A sweep? What?? Beating the Yankees in their own damn stadium? What?

And to win that series through the strength of our PITCHING ... The Cardinals obviously have some of the best players in the league. But they could not get past our ranks of pitchers.

-- I came home (had left the cell phone at home, because I'm an idiot) - and there were 15 incoherent messages on my phone. One after the other after the other. "AHHHHHH" "YEE-HAW" Wild cackles of laughter. My brother screaming: "WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!" I listened to all of them, standing in my quiet apartment, it's 1 in the morning, I'm drunk, but my head is buzzing, my blood pumping with adrenaline ... and I felt connected. I felt connected with all of them.

-- And all the players continuously thanking US ... We all kept cheering and losing it whenever any of them acknowledged "Boston fans" - as though they were literally talking to us face to face, personally. "He means me!! He's talking about me!!"

-- Johnny Damon. Holy moly. You know what strikes me about him, besides his Grizzly Adams/Jesus general hot-ness? How un-attached he seems. By that I mean: he goes up there, with very little drama, and just does what he needs to do. You don't see him LINGER in moments. Home run? Run around the bases, move on. Next play. Strike out? Oh well, move on. His face reveals nothing (unlike the Derek Lowe nervous-boy face which made me so anxiety-stricken all summer ... Derek Lowe has seemed TOO attached - like his entire self-esteem and happiness and self-worth rest on his success ... But again: I OWE HIM A BIG FAT APOLOGY for doubting him.) Damon seems to just get the job done, and move on. LOVE that man.

I can't seem to stop talking now.

I know I'm writing badly. But my head hurts and my brain is spinning and I just don't care.

-- Most of all, I am so thrilled that - if I couldn't watch that momentous game with my family - I got to watch it with David and Maria. I'll never ever in my life forget last night.

How do you say Thank you to these guys? How do you say ... THANK YOU?? DO THEY HEAR ME?

I'm beside myself.

One comment.

Scott Stapp? Scott Stapp? Is that that jackass from Creed's name?

EWWWWWWW

Some other links

Here are a couple from Cubs fan Big Stupid Tommy:

Thoughts from 1:51 in the AM

Boston Yes. Curt Schilling should be given a throne. I can't even really think about that guy directly without getting misty-eyed.

Bambino's Curse is shutting down. Hopefully he will re-emerge with a new domain name ... but the "curse" domain is done.

Bill McCabe describes a perfect evening.

Steve Silver comments:

"Yes, Fox's coverage of the postseason pretty much sucked from start to finish. But their closing credits of the Series contained a masterstroke: it closed with the still photo, from the "Cheers" opening credits, of the guy behind the bar holding up a newspaper reading "WE WIN."

As a young fan I used to always love the closing montage of World Series highlights every year, and this was a nice reminder."

And finally - just go over here to Llama Butchers, and scroll down. Tears in my eyes from this one.

This is brilliant

There are 5 Red Sox fans living in Tashkent, Uzbekistan...

"This is bigger than the 25 guys in this clubhouse."

This photo ....

Johnny Pesky hugging Curt Schilling. I mean ... that's just huge.

I can't even look at that for too long. It's too much. Too much.

Last night, a champagne-drenched Theo Epstein said, "This is for anyone who ever played for the Red Sox, anyone who ever rooted for the Red Sox, anyone who ever saw a game at Fenway Park. This is bigger than the 25 guys in this clubhouse. This is for all of Red Sox Nation, past and present."

I guess I still can't really speak yet.

I can't even speak yet

Gimme a second.

In the meantime, read this. This is what it's all about. This is what this victory means.

I can't speak yet.

Game 4

Harvest moon. Lunar eclipse. Ted Hughes. Psychology. Three games won. Three games won? Yes. Three games won. Bambino's Curse has it all.

You know, I'm trying to avoid the self-referential, chip on the shoulder, Red Sox fan attitude that so infuriates the rest of the world, the "It's all about us" attitude, but what fans other than Red Sox fans would find themselves so wedged between this historical Scylla and Charybdis? No team comes back from 0-3 except our team who came back from 0-3, round and round the whirlpool cum cesspool of possible imagined outcomes spins and spins in my mind.

How did this happen?

And what of this moon?

Tonight, for Game 4, I'm meeting up with David and his wife Maria at a Red Sox bar in Hoboken - the same one where I overheard the "smotheration" conversation.

To cynics, all of this means "nothing". That's the "it's just a game" crowd. But those people don't count. They're party-poopers, and "it's just a game" adds NOTHING to the conversation.

I know it's just a game. I know. I know.

But what a game.

All the way from Australia ...

... they discuss the Sox.

Are you the type of fan who keeps the phone lines open during the game so every moment can be picked apart with your friends and family, also watching, but separated by geography?

Or are you the kind of fan who withdraws into solitude, so that you "may more deeply and harmfully dwell on the fortunes of [your] team"?

Tim Blair wants to know. Tim is the latter kind of fan. He withdraws. He "harmfully dwells". heh heh.

(Some of the comments in that thread, though, were so annoying that I couldn't even read further. "Kerry's from Boston, I hope the Sox lose, they deserve to lose." Yawn. Boring boring boring. I can't think of anything more uninteresting than seeing EVERYTHING through the filter of which political "side" you are on. Gawd. Get a life. Also one of the comments was: "It's Just a game, guys ... chill out." Another boring response.)

But back to the question at hand:

I myself keep the phone lines open.

However - I will not take the call if I know it's someone who's not watching the game, or unaware of what is going on, OR just calling me to bust on how into the game I am.

I keep the lines open for those who get it.

Uh ... what?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I have moments, sudden flashes, where it will hit me what is actually going on, what we are seeing. Other than that, I am moving around like in a dream almost.

The Pedro who pitched last night was the Pedro everyone had been praying would show up. There he was.

Read the first couple of paragraphs of this article. Gives the old girl a lump in the throat, I tell ya. If I saw Curt Schilling on the street, I would attack him. I would throw my arms around his neck. I would kiss his stapled-on foot. I would give him a huge kiss on the lips. I would wash his blood-soaked socks by hand in the sink. I don't know. I want to do SOMETHING for the guy. I can't even express the admiration I have for that man.

But Pedro. Man, what a rush. What a rush.

Sports Guy, as always, expresses better than I ever could what is actually going on with all of us right now. Not just about the games and everything, but what is going on with our emotions. Why this is big, why this is different, etc.

Sports Guy references a real tear-jerker of a post: Win It For, which, actually, my good friend Dan sent to me last week. Take a second and scroll through "Win it For". I dare you to do so without getting choked up. The post itself is a command to "win it for" people like:

Win it for Johnny Pesky, who deserves to wear a Red Sox uniform in the dugout during the 2004 World Series. Mr. Henry, the trophy needs to be presented first of all to him.

And

Win it for Carl Yastrzemski. While his heart still aches today, may a smile break through his personal storm-cloud this evening. His beloved son, Mike, will show us the way. God speed, number eight.

And

Win it for Tony, who taught us all the meaning of courage and grit. A day doesn't go by when I don't think of you, number 25.

On and on it goes, but it ends with:

Most of all, win it for James Lawrence Kelly, 1913-1986. This one's for you, Daddy. You always told me that loyalty and perseverance go hand in hand. Thanks for sharing the best part of you with me.

GULP. There are now HUNDREDS of comments to this one post - with everyone saying "win it for my grandfather who dreamt of this day ..." "win it for my friend whose dad has Alzheimers ... She so wishes her father were aware of what was happening..." "win it for my grandfather who took me to my first game..."

It's killer.

I say:

Win it for my Uncle Jimmy. My long-haired godfather who was one of the craziest Red Sox fans I have ever met. (Brendan - member the high-speed race up 95 he took you on, in order to get you to Fenway on time?) I can honestly say that not a day goes by when my Uncle Jimmy doesn't enter my mind ... and I can also say that as things happen to me in my life, big things, little things - and also things like this Red Sox series, I think of Uncle Jimmy and wish that he were here to be a crazy part of it.

I went to my first Red Sox game ever with all of my O'Malley uncles and cousins. They were playing the Oakland A's, and I sat with my new cousin Brenda, Jimmy's stepdaughter from his new marriage. Brenda and I became good friends during that game. It was a night game. My first time at Fenway. I was very small. We had all clattered down to the stadium on the trolleys, being very loud, very riotous, very O'Malley-ish. There were about 12 kids in tow, and 6 uncles. The stadium lights beamed down, the flag whipped in the air, the Citgo sign gleamed ...

Win it for all of my uncles and aunts. Win it for my cousin Brenda. Win it for my cousin Mike. All my cousins.

Win it for my father. Please. Win it for my father.

Win it for my sister Siobhan, my brother Brendan, my sister Jean, her boyfriend Pat ... all of them ... sitting on the edges of their seats ... watching ... watching with dawning understanding. Can we be excited yet? Can we give over yet? Win it for Siobhan ... who has, on her coffee table, a line of those little Russian dolls - the ones that get smaller and smaller and smaller ... only these guys are all famous Red Sox players, past and present. Win it for Siobhan, who also has a "Nomar flip-book" on her coffee table.

Win it for my mother. "Hunkering down" on the couch for the games. Immediately following each game, my cell phone rings - It's my mother. Calling me to discuss.

But most of all, win it for my Uncle Jimmy. God, I wish he were here.

Tonight?

Game 3 of the World Series.

In which the Red Sox are playing.

In which the Red Sox have won 2 - 0.

Is this for real, man?? Hang tight. Hang tight. It's not over til it's over.

I Believe (David)

When I want to write about the Red Sox I go and read Bill Simmons latest article and I realize it's futile. He lets me know what I am thinking and feeling. He's it. His latest article, "Why Not Us?" (And I would do that cool thing where you just have to touch those words "Why Not Us?" and you'd go right to it, since Sheila has told me how on several occasions, but I just can't for the life of me remember) is preparing me for the eventual end of this magical season. There's still a ways to go and of course there's absolutely no telling how it's going to turn out, but it is winding down isn't it?

I remember watching the home games last year, when they wore those fabulous red jackets, and thinking to myself, "I'd absolutely die for one of those babies!" They were rather expensive and I couldn't justify spending money on them, but man did I want one. I promised myself if they made the World Series I would buy one. Well, we know how last year ended, and needless to say I didn't get my jacket.

Another luxury I didn't afford myself was buying the extra innings package through my cable company so I could watch all the games here in Yankee Country. Instead I'd listen to them on the radio through my computer and try to convince my wife (the only person unfortunate to be nearby) that this team was amazing. They had heart and character beyond belief. They never quit; they came from behind more than any other team. She finally got hooked during the playoffs last year and I watched her fly into elation when they came back from 0-2 against Oakland only to plummet into despair because of Aaron bleeping Boone. She was seriously upset with me for coaxing her into the Red Sox Nation and she vowed not to let it happen again. I understood and felt bad for bringing her down that road. I remember feeling that baseball shouldn't hurt this much. Driving my delivery truck around NYC the next day was a torture I'll never forget. I was glad I didn't have my red jacket.

Then began this magical 2004 season. My wife stayed in the wings while I listened to my games on the computer and watched the occasional ESPN game and, of course, all the YES Yankee/Red Sox games. On one particular July afternoon I was watching the struggling Sox square off against the Yanks. They had been previously swept by them and things were beyond frustrating. I had had it with this rivalry. We were on the losing side again and things weren't looking up. Then Varitek shoved his mitt in A-Rod's face. Later in the game, in extra innings, Trot Nixon came up against Mariano Rivera and hit a shot that seemed destined to leave the park. I leapt off the couch daring to believe again and then the wind caught it and so did Sheffield. I let loose a vitriolic outburst. I described it in a post I wrote that very same evening right here on Sheila's Blog called Pathetic or Prophetic (again, I'd do that fancy "touch the words" thing but I can't, OK? I'll just Ctrl C, Ctrl V the damn thing) here's a piece of it:

I must admit that I was down and out. It has been a harrowing season already and I had reached my annual limit early of eating Yankee dust and swallowing Yankee crow. When Trot Nixon’s seemingly game tying homer in the bottom of the ninth was knocked down by the wind and caught by Sheffield, I let go some pretty choice and inappropriate expressions in front of my children. I’m not proud of this mind you, but I’m not ashamed either. I had felt all the defeats of the season and all the seasons past in that moment. “Why can’t things go right for the Red Sox,” I wailed pathetically. “Why can’t we catch one God damn, mother bleeping break!?” But when Bill Mueller hit that home run, I began to believe again. Seeing Varitek and Francona run out of the clubhouse to congratulate their team sent a surge of hope right through me.

It was then I started to believe. And it was then I got my wife involved again, this time by explaining to her what Jason Varitek did to lead his team. This was the hook and it has since become a full fledged love affair on her part. I'm often required to wear a catcher's mask to bed now while she calls me "Tekky". I really don't mind.

I broke down and ordered extra innings and have watched every game since while listening to Bob Orsillo and the Rem Dawg on NESN, something New Englanders take for granted. It was heaven. But I still couldn't break down and buy the coat. Not yet. "Maybe if they make it to the World Series this year," I promised myself.

On my Birthday, later last summer, my wife handed me some presents she had gotten at Macy's. "Odd", I thought, "She never buys me clothes." We don't do that for each other, we still rarely hit each other's tastes after being together over 16 years. I grinned and braced for the disappointments. I got a pair of shorts (since returned for a nice wallet) and some boxers (I only wear during emergency boxer depletion times). The biggest present was coming and I couldn't hide my anxiety. Now I'm sure you've already guessed what was in it, but I didn't. I filled up. I wore it in the 90-degree heat. It was the best present I had gotten since I was a boy! I couldn't wait until Fall to wear my authentic, down to the stitching, Major League Red Sox home jacket.

We also bought a big Red Sox Banner that flies on our flagpole outside our front door. Our neighbors hate us! We've had that all summer too. When we went down 3-0 to the Yankees I felt devastated that I'd be wearing my coat in shame all winter, if at all, and I knew I'd take the flag down the second we lost.

We all know the story up to now and needless to say the flag is waving proud (next year I'm installing a spotlight for it) and the coat has not come off. It's that bright, bright red and I've gotten some pretty nasty looks for it.

It's been a magical year to be a Red Sox fan, but it ain't over. I won't lie, if we lose this World Series, it'll be devastating. I was kidding myself that the victory over the Yankees could carry me through it, but it won't. At least my wife didn't wait to buy the coat and I think that's a good sign. The baseball Gods like that sort of thing.

That girl in the picture ...

Ready for some fun with scanning? Here we go. I also have a little Halloween-photo retrospective coming up ... but for now ...

It's all Red Sox, all the time.

I came across this picture of myself yesterday - during a fall-cleaning frenzy (I got waylaid in my photo albums - as is wont to happen). I'm holding our cat Widdy, it's in our backyard, I am 10 years old. Maybe 9. So this is the mid to late 1970s. A time of darkness in Red Sox Nation. But what strikes me, of course, is my shirt. This is the young girl who used to get in fights with Andrew Wright about who would get to "be Carlton Fisk" when we re-enacted his famous home run. Of course Andrew usually won the fight, because he was a boy, and also because I deeply deeply loved him. It didn't rob my soul TOO much to let him win ... because I loved him, and really, what did it cost??

So I can't help but think about this young girl in these oh so exciting days. I'm glad I came across her yesterday. I like the sense of a continuum. From her to me ...

Game 1

Woah, there, now that was some messy baseball. A messy SLUGFEST. I suppose that's no surprise. Uhm ... can we say "errors"?? Game 1 was like a Keystone Cops skit of baseball. Starring Kevin Millar and Manny Rivera.

At least we won. There was much screaming and carrying on at the game party ... Rachel (a recent baseball-fan convert) reached over and hugged me wildly at one point, waiting for Manny to be safe at first ... she couldn't bear it ... she needed to hug me ... It was a great group. Baseball freaks (to lesser and greater degrees), all of us.

I picked the wrong week to stop biting my nails.

Game 2 tonight. Like my mother said to me in a message she left today, "So we're getting ready to hunker down for Game 2..."

Yup. Hunker on down. It's gonna be a long week. A long messy slug-fest week.

My kind of invite

My sister is hosting a "game party" on Saturday night ... for obvious reasons. The invite reads, in part:

Saturday night, to get that World Series off to a good start, I am having a game party. Or rather, I am having people over to watch the game. We will not party. We will concentrate intently on the game. We will send good vibes. We will make fun of Joe Buck. Maybe later we will have a party.

I have read your invite about 3 times, and continue to find it funny.

"We will not party. We will concentrate intently on the game."

I am so there. And I will completely follow your instructions. I will not party. I will concentrate intently on the game and send good vibes.

The journalists have no words

I like this piece by Bob Ryan. He literally doesn't know what to say.

This pretty much sums it up for me:

Of all the conceivable outcomes in last night's game, the one nobody in New England dared fantasize about was the one we saw. And what we saw was a two-way display of dominance. Johnny Damon pretty much personally took care of the offensive end all by himself with his second-inning grand slam and his fourth-inning two-run shot off Javier Vazquez, while Derek Lowe threw perhaps the most efficient six innings of baseball any Red Sox pitcher has submitted all year, holding the Yankees to one hit and one run while dispatching the hated Yankees in a Tewksburyian 69 pitches.

Yesterday I wrote that I was steeling myself, I still felt bruised from last October, I was protecting myself, etc. etc. I never dared fantasize that the game would turn out to be the kind of game it was. It was beyond thrilling. You just had to shake your head, and throw up your hands, and watch it unfold, as belief and faith grew ... solidified ... manifested ... as it all became real.

Here's more from Ryan's great article -

What they did as a group will now be toasted and recounted for decades to come, and it should be. What we just saw was a tribute to 25 athletes and a coaching staff that refused to acknowledge a 100-year history. Baseball teams don't come back from being down, 3-0, they were told. They didn't buy into it.

The week of baseball they gave us would have been phenomenal under any circumstances, but when you're the Red Sox playing the Yankees, it is never a normal circumstance. To come within three outs of being swept in Game 4, to persevere in that extraordinary 14-inning Game 5, to receive the kind of gritty pitching they got from Schilling in Game 6, and then to put everything together in spectacular fashion in Game 7, and to do it all against the Yankees, was an off-the-charts display of class and determination.

One year ago the Red Sox lost a traumatic Game 7 in this very park. It was talked about incessantly. Last Saturday night, the team lost a 19-8 game in Fenway. It was another frustrating chapter in the great Yankee-Red Sox drama. Elimination was imminent. The entire relationship between the Red Sox and their greatest rival seemed fated to remain an endlessly repetitious story in which the dynamics would never change. Call it Groundhog Day. Call it Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Call it Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill. They all apply. Down, 3-0, and having been humiliated in their own park (19 and 22 hits), the Red Sox were regarded as toe-tag material -- again.

There was only one place on earth where there was any hope, and that was inside the Red Sox clubhouse.

What happened last night cannot be compared to other sporting events, other moments ... actually, this whole past week stands alone in its ... Jesus, I've lost my vocabulary. I was just going to write: this past week stands alone in its sheer amazing-ness.

Oh well. That'll have to do.

This week has been nonstop sheer amazing-ness.

Sometimes, emotions are way too deep for words

I can't express it, whatever it is - but I am FULL of it!

The screams, the shrieks, my sister's evil cackle on the other end of the line after Damon's grand slam, my phone ringing off the hook the second the game ended, the hanging on ... hanging on ... still not believing ... even with a lead like the one they had ... The game ain't over until it's over. You can't EVER relax. But then, eventually, it started to gain weight - force - reality ... We might pull this off ... Holy crap ... this might actually happen ... Is 8 - 3 an insurmountable lead? With our history as a team? Absolutely not. That lead could disappear in a flash. And then Pedro came in, and I saw my life flash before my eyes. The entire time he was on the mound I was muttering, with gritted teeth, like a crazy person: "Get him OFF the mound. Take. Him. Out. The End. GET HIM OFF." I couldn't believe we could watch our lead slip away - It would have been like it had never ever happened - I was on the edge of tragedy, on the edge of despair - I could feel victory slipping through my fingers - a terrible moment ... Sorry, Pedro - you're one of the greatest pitchers ever - but it's a tough world, and we needed to get you off the dern mound.

At the insane bar where I watched the game - slowly but surely over the night, all of the Yankee fans disappeared. They couldn't bear to even stay and watch the end. So at the end - when victory came - it was just us Boston-ites. All of us on our phones - screaming - jumping up and down - One guy opened a bottle of champagne and sprayed it everywhere ... The celebration went on and on and on and on and on - with no let-up, no diminishment of sound - for half an hour. I finally dragged myself away.

But then of course couldn't get to sleep. My mind was racing, buzzing, I kept going over and over and over the game ... one of the most incredible sporting events I've ever seen. An historical moment. I cannot believe that I have lived to see it.

I still can't believe it. It feels like a dream. I can't believe it.

As always, Bill Simmons says all of this better than I ever could.

Boston Dementia {demens -entis [out of one's mind , insane, senseless]; adv. dementer.}

My aunts and uncles on my mother's side have a couple of things in common: they are Red Sox fans and they are Latin fanatics. I come from a big family of Latin fanatics. Emails have been going back and forth between aunts and uncles (I've been copied on them) - discussing the Red Sox game in ... well ... in Latin. I have been crying with laughter reading some of them. Uhm ... "Who's Your Daddy" in Latin? That's what I'm talking about.

One of the emails opens with:

Ut Bomberi Bronxienses se toppleant in nasibus suis et creaseant pinstripos suos, we pray to the Lord.

More:

Papi Noster qui es in Fenway, sanctificetur nomen tuum...sed libera nos a malo, Amen. Ite missa est.

Everyone has lost their collective minds.

It has been raining all day here

Without letup. Will the game go on or no?

Keep the Faith (This is David, not Sheila)

I wish to God I had posted this when I returned from my family trip to Disney on Sunday night. It would have been more profound had I done that, but I was just too overwhelmed with my reentry into my life in Jersey and also, I had no computer. But something happened to me on the plane ride home. After a fitful Saturday night sleep in which my wife and I were both plagued by baseball stress/anxiety dreams, we packed up, depressed as hell that we were leaving our magical family vacation and that our beloved Red Sox were in a seemingly insurmountable 3-0 hole to the dreaded Bronx Bombers. At the airport I was casually watching a football game on the monitor when my youngest asked me who was winning the baseball game. I told her, loud enough for anyone around me to hear, that it was a football and that I never wanted to watch another baseball game again, that I was done with baseball for a while. A fellow next to me nodded and said, "Red Sox fan huh. Me too." We commiserated, as only fellow Red Sox fans can, and boarded the plane.

Then, while dozing, something overcame me. It started with a visual flash of a popular billboard near Fenway Park. A huge billboard with the words "Keep The Faith” in the Red Sox font and a picture of Manny pointing in his two handed signature point. There's another one nearby exactly the same with a picture of Pedro. Then came a conversation with God. Keep The Faith. Faith. What is faith worth if you didn't have to battle the opposite? Despair. It's easy to dive in when you know there's a net to catch you, but to "Dive in" (an anagram of divine) not sure if there's a net, is true faith. To believe when everything around you says not to, is faith. It's a test of faith. All year the catch phrase for the Sox has been "Keep The Faith". It was easy to believe this was the year when we got Schilling and Foulke. Not so easy to believe when we're down 3-0 against the juggernaut that is the Yankees. How could we possibly win 4 straight against them? We can't, I believed. It's over. And then the billboard came in and I realized I had lost my faith.

Now all this may seem silly, even blasphemous, to some, to talk about faith in regards to a meaningless game. Our faith is often tested on much more profound playing fields in our lives. But talk to any serious Red Sox fan and realize how meaningful a World Series victory is to them. How deeply we feel the losses and victories and it becomes a perfect arena to test one's faith for those more meaningful periods in our lives when a faith in Something is truly needed to get us through. So I decided, on that plane, to believe again.

The plane landed and the man who I had commiserated with was two rows behind me. My wife and youngest were one row behind me and I turned around and kneeled on my seat and looked in both of their eyes and I said, "We're going to win the series. I know it." They laughed and scoffed but I saw them believe too. I saw the glimmer of hope ignite inside them.

All through game 4 I talked to my buddy Brian on the phone and decided to do something that is completely uncharacteristic of me, I decided to believe, no matter what, that the Red Sox would win. His tone was filled with despair, mine was filled with hope. I was a nervous wreck, wracked with anxiety on the surface but deep down filled with a sense of peace and hope believing they would come through. I continually had to quiet myself and contact that reservoir of faith. I spoke out my faith time and time again and Lo and Behold, they won. Game 5 was no different except I felt on more occasions; I had become overwhelmed with doubt and despair. It was much more difficult for me to believe.

Today, I am filled with despair. It's getting harder to believe they can continue this miraculous come back and my doubt and fear is pushing me to put up the barriers of cynicism in order to protect myself from what I believe to be the inevitable crushing defeat; as if these barriers would protect me from the pain of the loss. Better to believe and have faith and stay present throughout the experience and feel whatever there is to feel when it's time to feel it.

Trust me, I am aware of how silly this may sound, but look at it as I do, as a metaphor of all the struggles in my life and the deep internal struggle I have with Cynicism versus Faith. It's easy to be cynical, to not believe that glory is ours to revel in, that it's for others. It's more difficult to have Faith. Particularly if you've lived a life filled with the feeling that joy is for others, not for you. That's the life I've lived and I'm battling, using this year’s ALCS to dive in to a life filled with faith, come what may!

Keep The Faith!

12 to 5

Say it with me. 12 to 5. Doesn't it sound nice???

Happy - Sad

The game last night. Well. Whatever. It sucked. Big ol' bummer.

However - I watched the game with the great Bill McCabe - and I finally met 2 longtime readers: Mr. Bingley and Dave J. These men are mythical in my mind. Dave J! Mr. Bingley!! So it was great to put faces to the names, and to hang out, drink beer, eat burgers, and watch the Red Sox. I was HIGH afterwards. (High on happiness, I mean.) I smiled like a goofball during my commute home.

My friend David (who did a brief stint blogging here) showed up at the beginning of the night - and joined our crowd for a time. Much fun. Then he left.

Then Mr. Bingley had to leave ... and then my sister Siobhan showed up. A table of musical chairs.

The bar was absolutely jam-packed. Going to the ladies room was a 25-minute affair. Everyone wearing Red Sox caps, shirts ... an absolutely fanatical atmosphere. Love it.

Conversation flowed, fast, furious ... as always. Even though we had all just met for the first time.

It was funny because I was heading down to the Riviera Cafe (the bar for Red Sox fans, an enclave in the middle of Yankee-Land) - to meet 2 men whom I had never met. Bill showed up maybe 20 minutes after I did, so I knew Mr. Bingley would be waiting for me, by himself, somewhere in that bar ... so I wandered through the bar ... saw a man standing alone, reading a big book ... I tentatively approached. Not sure ... not sure ...

And then I said, shyly, "Mr. Bingley?"

heh heh heh

Of course it was him, and of course he was standing there reading a huge biography of Alexander Hamilton.

My own kind!!

But then again - all of you people who read me are my kind. Curious, intelligent, funny, well-read, passionate about certain things, knowledgeable, generous with that knowledge ...

I just want to say, flat out: I had a wonderful time with you fine gentlemen ... you are just as nice, as funny, and as interesting as I imagined ... and despite the defeat of the Sox at the last freakin' second (this team! Jesus!!) - it was a great night.

I hope there will be more to come.

Ac-cent-uate the Positive

Bambino's Curse lists 10 reasons why all Sox fans shouldn't jump off a cliff. Just got a great email from my friend David (who guest-blogged here a while back) saying the same thing. Ah, not to worry. I'm not in despair. We're used to this drill over here. Besides, my emotions only last in their pure forms (anger, sadness) for about 10 minutes. My emotions don't exactly MORPH into other forms, it's more like they TRANSMOGRIFY.

11 to 1

Goldurnit. I watch ... I watch ... I go with the flow, bad things happen, good things happen, and then it's almost like I can SEE the wheels slip off the rails.

3 innings before it's over ... I can see: oh well, there it goes, buh-bye, it's over.

On a more positive note:

I find there to be something almost orgasmic about a double play. A triple play might cause me to die from ecstasy. I watch a double play and I see perfection. What I really see is this: Years and years of hard work, struggle, sacrifice ... suddenly manifesting in a one and a half second moment of total and utter ease.

But still. 11 to 1. GodDAMNit.

There's something I've been a little bit afraid to talk about

... and that is what is going on with the Red Sox right now.

I am highly superstitious. Maybe it's cause we've been disappointed so many times. It's hard to give over to hope, fully. Or joy. We know the path of despair too intimately. My fellow Sox fans and I have thrilled conversations - in whispers, practically - we are afraid to upset the Gods. It's all been QUITE an amazing ride.

The "blogger formerly known as Dan" discusses the Red Sox team's new confident bad-ass attitude - which naturally makes Dan think of Steven Seagal - and the rest is comic history.

The key word in the following post

... is "guarded". Any time you put "optimistic" and "the Red Sox" into the same sentence, you must add the word "guarded".

But it's a great post. Thanks, Dan. I especially enjoy the analogy in the first paragraph - that the Red Sox are like "that girl".

Red Sox, the moon, Cinco de Mayo, etc.

I was sitting in a bar in Hoboken last night, where I have watched the games recently, and, as I said before, I was all moonstruck because of the golden beams flowing down from the dark sky, I met up with the 5 random Red Sox fans I described in an earlier post, and we have all now become long-lost dear friends. We all speak AT one another, simultaneously. We cheer at the same moment. We groan at the same moment. We all know the stories of each other's lives now. Many of them are from Rhode Island. We reminisce. We do not know each other at all. It is very funny.

There's a positive spin over at Bambino's Curse on the Red Sox losing streak. An enjoyable read. As always. I like his comment on the French soldiers being "O-fer-the last two centuries". Good one.

The Bad Boys refrain

So last night was a tragic Red Sox evening. I watched the game at the Riviera - a bar for Red Sox exiles. It was a bummer. A bust.

I was with 3 other people.

At one point, a drag queen approached us. (This is, after all, in the West Village.) He/she was tall, black, wearing a sleek blonde wig with spit curls, like Liza Minelli in Cabaret. He was wearing an off-the-shoulder black glittery flowing top. He had on thick false eyelashes and the most incredible lipstick: glittery red. It wasn't your basic shiny lipstick, it actually spangled in the light.

He asked us if he could read our palms.

Nikki said, regretfully, "We don't have any money."

He said, "Oh honey, I don't care. This is what I do."

It is his calling, so to speak.

So what could we say? We agreed.

Now, our palm-reader, in my estimation, cheated. Because he asked for our signs before he read our palms. If you know someone is an Aries, and you believe in all that stuff, then you can go straight to the astrological stereotypes, and you probably won't be far off.

But still. It was such an entertaining encounter. I loved this person. He had kind of a southern drawl, he would pick up one of our hands, look at the palm, and begin to speak. He did not try to sugarcoat anything.

"Your spending is out of control. Just ... out. Of. CONTROL."

Stuff like that. He gave no advice, no suggestions. Just stated stuff point-blank:

"The lover you are looking for doesn't exist. Okay? He just doesn't exist. You look for someone who does not exist."

Hey, girl, tell me what you really see, and don't spare my feelings, okay?

One of our group had literally just got done telling us that she had recently watched "Requiem for a Dream" and had been totally freaked out by it (Uh... yeah! Not exactly a feel-good film). And then she said, "Over this past weekend I saw about 5 really dark movies - it made me feel like: God, people SUCK."

So the drag queen (who had not heard that comment) said, staring at her palm, "You have got to stop watching all of these depressing television programs." We all BURST into laughter. Drag queen went on, "Because you have a tendency towards paranoia, sweetheart, and these programs are just making it worse."

And as she looked at my palm: First of all, she said I would be traveling soon. Yeah, this is true. But if you know the stereotype of a Sagittarian, then you know that it is said that they must travel.

And then came the "bad boys" refrain.

Apparently, I like "bad boys". She (it doesn't seem right to call him a he ... he was more glammed-out than I have ever been) must have said the words "bad boys" 5 or 6 times.

"You like bad boys. I see a string of bad boys here. That is your type. The bad boy. Sometimes they love you too, but they are bad boys, and they are not right for you. That is why your love line stops right here. Because of the bad boys."

Uh ... so ... what you're saying is ... let me get this straight ... I like bad boys?

Bad boys bad boys bad boys bad boys....

Isn't that a goofball song from the 80s? "Bad bad bad bad boys..."

Well, regardless of WHAT she said, we all loved her. She just came right up to us and involved herself with us, and was unabashedly herself. Such a New York moment. In the middle of a Red Sox game.

Reunion of complete strangers

During the playoffs last year, I was watching one of the games surrounded by a sea of hostile Yankee fans. (This is at a bar in Hoboken, I love going there to watch games and such because of the sizes of the TVs and it's a bit off the beaten track). However, it is most definitely Yankee territory.

Here is my comment from last year on the pros and cons of this venue.

One night last year I saw 5 lonely men wearing Red Sox caps, surrounded by what seemed like 4,897 Yankee fans. I walked over, we struck up a conversation, we watched the game together, we became life-long friends. (For the evening, anyway. I promptly forgot about all of them the second I left.)

It was just one of those things. They welcomed me into their group. And we won that night, as I recall. Which was hilarious. My cell phone ringing off the hook, their cell phones were ringing off the hook - it was great fun.

Anyway - last night, I stopped by to this same venue after work to catch some of the game. (I don't have TV at my house. I'm a loser.) It's too early in the season for the bar to be crowded. Half the people in the joint were actually there for the hockey game on 3 of the TVs.

But anyway. I sat at the bar, facing a massive television - and within ten minutes, 5 guys came in and crowded into 5 stools next to me. They were rowdy, obviously good friends, smoking, drinking, talking on their cell phones, discussing the game. Within 1.3 seconds, I could tell that they were Red Sox fans.

I glanced over, one of them glanced at me - and instantly - we all recognized one another. It was as though we were long-lost friends. And there we all were, meeting up randomly in the very spot where we had originally met and become life-long friends. We were complete strangers, having a rapturous reunion.

"HEY!"

"You're that girl from last year!"

"We remember you!" (I loved that. The collective "we".)

"I was the guy who got in the fight - member me?" I did remember. Some Yankee fan had punched him in the face because of his Red Sox cap. Or maybe because of something else, maybe Red Sox fan stepped on Yankee fan's foot, but the Red Sox cap had begun the scuffle.

I said, "Oh yeah! I remember the guy punching you in the face!" I said this enthusiastically, and happily, as though I were saying, "I remember that you opened the door for me."

There was a brief pause.

He said, "Yeah, but you should have seen the other guy."

Which was rather amusing, because I had seen the other guy - who had basically knocked Red Sox fan onto the ground, and walked away unscathed.

Funny. A little face-saving moment on his part.

Oh, forgot to mention this: I asked one of them, "So are you from Boston?"

He said, "No. Southern California."

I said, "Then why on earth..."

He said, "Because I enjoy the torture, I enjoy being dejected, and I enjoy the brief moments of happiness."

That is word for word what he said.

Red Sox

Life is sweet.

'Til tomorrow...

The "We" of Baseball

The Bambino's Curse has a great post about the "we" and the "us" of baseball fan-dom. A commenter had asked: "We? Our? I don't understand the use of personal pronouns on any of these posts. Are any of you members of the Red Sox or the Yankees?"

He answers this question thoroughly and perfectly. Fans do feel that they "own" their respective teams. For all kinds of different reasons.

For me, being a Red Sox fan is part of the culture I grew up in - the same thing as being Irish, being Catholic, and coming from a Boston family. I still can remember my first jaunts to Fenway Park, as a kid, with my uncles, my cousins. My memory of 1976 and Carlton Fisk's home run are still vividly emblazoned in my mind. I jump up and down and cheer when they win. I sink into sadness when they lose.

Like ALL fans who really love the game.

Yankee fans don't have a monopoly on loving their team.

But the post I point to says it perfectly:

So when I consider the Boston Red Sox, I'm not only conjuring up objective facts of the team, the wins and losses, the errors, the fantastic plays, the pine tar on Trot Nixon's batting helmet … I'm also twitching upon the thread of who I am, the trips to Fenway with my dad, the muddy corduroy pants of 6th grade recess when my friend Andy Audet reenacted Doyle's slide in Game 6 of the '75 World Series… Seeing the "B" logo on a cap invokes the sound of my friend John's soft, Maine accent reenacting a game over the phone … seeing the green expanse of Fenway on TV brings me back to a lazy summer Saturday afternoon when my dad brought home our first color set and how we couldn't wait to watch the Sox in color, with Curt Gowdy's voice like Gabriel carrying the word of God …

These are some of the things that are the I and the We and the Us and the Ours of the Boston Red Sox.

"twitching on the thread of who I am". Very nice.

Good work. Especially the bit about the "muddy corduroy pants at 6th grade recess". I think I had the same pants.

Coming Clean about A-rod

I haven't written so far on the A-Rod thing because - I didn't have the words - and I found the whole situation unbearable and hateful. I have NO SENSE OF HUMOR. Got that??

ba-dum-ching

Anyway, thanks to Steve Silver, I read the following column by Sports Guy - an insane Red Sox fan - and all I can say is: I concur. Yes.

Bring it on. Bring it on, mo-fos ... Bring it on.

This season is gonna be damn exciting - from day one. It will be a baseball season filled with hatred, scorn, wild bursts of competitive laughter, schaudenfraude, contempt, and very little joy.

In other words - a lot of fun.

Go, Josh Beckett

Damn, he is the real deal. He looks like he is 15 years old. An astonishing game.

And to all you Yankee fans who have gloated in my face over the years:

I feel no sympathy with your pain right now. You gotta eat that pain, just like everybody else has had to.

Oh, and a funny thing:

I was walking home from the bar, walking cross town. There was a strange chastened quiet through the streets - there was none of the drunken yahoo-ness on display like in weeks past. People huddled together on corners, and I heard phrases like, "DAMMit" and "Fuckin' Allan Boone! He SUCKS!"

A homeless man, lying on the sidewalk, back up against a building, called up to me, "Who won tonight?"

I said, "The Marlins."

He took this information in for a second and then nodded like a wise sage. "The Marlins are a TEAM. The Yankees are just a collection of individuals."

The man obviously doesn't even have a television, but he knows the truth.

Tony Pierce, ladies and gentlemen

As always, he writes with passion - heartfelt - truthful.

He says it all - he says what I can't say:

this morning i realized that i might just have to start raising the money to buy the cubs or forever learn to live with this sick rotting nauseous feeling that is fermenting in the pit of my gut.

what do you do when your dreams will never become realized?

where do you go when all the beer at wrigley wont satisfy?

the beer vendors at the friendly confines come right to your seat and pour two cupfulls at a time to numb the oncoming pain. and if you dont think its pain, youre high.

or a yankee fan.

the meek will inherit the earth but i dont want the damn earth, i want a ring.

i want to wear a hoodie that says cubs world champs on the front and fuckers on the back.

it seems like i want so little and i cant even have that. i dont care any more if i never get a car, or a house, or kids, or even a hot wife who wouldnt mind being nice once in a while.

ive completely given up on having a career of any substance.

....and he just kind of takes it from there....

The picture Tony posts of that Red Sox fan is ... dreadful. Just dreadful. I relate. I understand.

Diary Friday

Today's entry is from October 1, 1983. I think I'm 14 years old. Something like that.

It seems a propos to post this today.

October 1, 1983 YAZ DAY

And now - Yaz Fever is in!

As we came down the little narrow street towards Fenway Park - it was packed with screaming people waving Yaz banners. And as we were driving up, we passed this schoolbus full of kids, they all had on Yaz hats - and were really rowdy. We started waving at them - I whipped off Jean's Yaz hat, and they all started applauding and cheering with us. The whole bus waved banners at us, and the whole street went nuts!!

Inside Fenway Park, it was a mad house. And coming out into the stands, with the lights, and the sizzling excitement, and the teams right there warming up ... Our seats were really good. Right along the third baseline.

We looked for Yaz but couldn't find him. I felt like I was waiting for the curtain to open on a big show or something.

At 7:30, they announced the line-up. Yaz was fifth. We all went wild when they called his name. The crowd was screaming and screaming and screaming - we just would not stop. It was great.

I love Boston. I love the Red Sox. I love the people in Boston.

The game started. Cleveland was up first.

I wish we could have seen Yaz play first, but he was the designated hitter. When they announced Dennis Eckersley, Brendan went, "Oh, don't boo!" Everyone did, anyway.

And Jim Rice was right out there. I LOVE JIM RICE. It was so amazing to see all these stars and players I have idolized since I was 8 years old! They were all right there!!

When the Red Sox were up, you could just feel the anticipation. Just waiting for Yaz. He was up 5th. But everyone went hysterical whenever anyone made a hit. I got so worked up!

Then - oh God - when Yaz was on deck - all these camera flashes went off - everywhere across the Park - blinding! All I could do was just stare at Yaz warming up. He is such a hero to me. I swear that nobody was watching the actual game. They were just watching him.

Then - when he was up - and he started for the plate - I can't explain it.

Or - yes, I can.

All of Fenway Park immediately stood up and cheered and cheered and cheered - I was leaping, waving my arms, SCREAMING. This went on for about five minutes. Or longer. Really! No one got tired, no one could stop.

Yaz just stood there with his bat - and stood there - as the whole Park went NUTS - and after a while, he turned to us, and tipped his hat.

Oh my God, it was so beautiful the way he did it.

We all went bonkers!

Me and Brendan were screaming and waving, Jean was crying - then Yaz tipped his hat again - It was positively wonderful.

I almost cried. I wonder if Yaz almost cried.

Finally - FINALLY - we all sat down, still all revved up. Then - he took his stance - and on the first pitch - you could hear this CRACK - the crack of the bat - and everyone JUMPED UP again - yelling, screaming, going positively crazy - I almost had a coronary. It was a single, but we got to see Yaz hit. We got to see Yaz hit. This will be the last time we ever get to see Yaz hit.

I have always loved Yaz. He seems like a really nice guy - or something. Like he has kept his feet on the ground. And the way he tipped his hat to all of us - to all of Boston - I still feel like crying, when I think of it.

The other amazing thing about the night was when we all stood up for "The Star-Spangled Banner".

It is very hard NOT to feel patriotic - with the flag waving in the wind against the dark sky, and everyone around you, hands on their hearts, singing LOUD.

America really is beautiful.

Baseball games make me realize that all over again.

Game 7

3 more hours until ...

I, like SageOne, do not want to say a word.

But I'm outta here.

Going to the gym, then heading down to Dempsey's.

And ... uh ... the Red Sox ...

HOLY SHIT.

But that's all I'm gonna say.

I'm very superstitious.

Let me just say: last night was a glorious experience - with my cell phone ringing off the hook - brother, parents, college friends - my sister Siobhan and I hugged like maniacs at the end ...

Here's the nicest thing:

The Yankee fan I "slayed with my penetrating gaze" - is a regular at Dempsey's, where Siobhan bartends. He had been saying all along, "This won't go to game 7. It won't go to Game 7." An interesting perspective from a man who actually had tickets to Game 7!!

Maybe half an hour after the Red Sox won last night, this guy (wish I could remember his name) came over to us, started talking to us - and, with no bitterness, with no jackassedness, offered Siobhan his ticket.

It did not come out of "SCREW the Yankees, and SCREW Boston" - it came out of, "You know what? Siobhan is a huge Boston fan - this would mean so much to her - and ... I think she should be there."

Damn nice of him, don't you think?

It's still a bit up in the air - whether or not she is going - for various reasons on his end - but she kept saying, "Even just that you offered - really. I appreciate the offer so much."

So tonight?

Yet another evening spent in a bar.

I am excited to get my life back. Do some grocery shopping. Read a book. Hang out.

But that's all I'm saying - any more and I feel that I will be jinxing something ....

It's gonna be quite a game, that's all I have to say.

One thing to add about the above: The Yankee fan refused to charge Siobhan for the ticket. He insisted on giving it to her for free.

This isn't fun

This sucks. It's no fun being a Red Sox fan. Some Yankee jackass said to me at the bar this evening, "After all this - the World Series will seem anticlimactic."

And I slayed him with my penetrating gaze and snapped, "You can ONLY SAY THAT because you're a YANKEES FAN!"

He accepted my scolding, and nodded. "Okay, okay."

Some people have no sense.

I'm not even enjoying myself.

Look at me: I'm blogging about how much this all sucks on my way home from the bar.

Dammit.

David Brooks nails it

A great column by Brooks on the Yankees and the Red Sox (or, more specifically, the fans of these 2 teams). And, in a broader context, it's about the entire rageful Northeast!

I swear I'll be able to write about other things some day in the future ... but not yet ... not yet.

A notable quotable from Brooks' column:

It's interesting, for example, to turn and watch Yankee and Red Sox fans as they watch a game. As the game goes on, they almost never display pleasure, contentment or joy. Instead, during the game they experience long periods of contempt interrupted by short bursts of vindication.

That is so aptly put it is not even amusing.

Go. Sox

Listened to the game last night on the radio. Cheering out loud, by myself, in my kitchen, having a glass of wine, and reading From Beirut to Jerusalem intermittently.

I am legitimately insane.

Thank goodness Jesus Christ was apparently WITH Trot Nixon last night. Interesting how, if Trot messes up, or if nothing happens, he doesn't say, "Well, Jesus Christ turned his back on me out there."

So ... in the world of Trot Nixon ... Jesus hovers around the bat, and decides WHEN Trot gets a huge play ... Jesus is the strategist for the Red Sox.

Whatever, dude. Wake up to reality.

Anyway. Glad they won. Sounds like it was a good game. My cousin was there, somewhere, in the crowd. Hob-nobbing with J-Lo? Who knows.

Today I will try to sneak out of work early and go down to Dempsey's to catch the tail-end of today's game.

I have spent more time in bars over the last week and a half than I have since college.

About last night...

I think Pedro Martinez is a disgrace. I think his behavior was disgraceful. I cannot believe he was not tossed out of the game. And God, I'm a Boston fan! We need him! But that doesn't change the fact that I think he behaved appallingly.

Zimmer was obviously charging Martinez - but Zimmer is an old man. There is no excuse for Martinez's behavior. It was an absolute disgrace. Push him away from you, bat him back, but to take his head in your hands, and throw him down onto the grass?

Not to mention the Yankee thugs beating up a Fenway Park worker. The man has CLEAT MARKS IN HIS BACK. Fucking neanderthals.

Jesus. The whole thing was a debacle.

And yet - this evening I will watch again. Riviera Cafe in the West Village. A watering-hole for Red Sox fans in the surrounding area.

But last night ... Jesus. The whole game had a bad bad vibe.

Zimmer could have broken his neck. You do not throw old men down on the ground. You do not throw old men down on the ground. You do not throw old men on the ground.

4:18 today...

Red Sox meet the Yankees once again.

4:18? What is up with that? Are the executives, the powers-that-be, testing our devotion, our commitment? "Heh heh, they expect the games to be at the hour or the half-hour...Let's see how they do with 4:18, baby!!"

Anyway, I am going to watch the game at Dempsey's Pub. My sister Siobhan, another insane Red Sox fan (she borders on autistic - although her autism doesn't hold a candle to my brother Brendan's level of Red Sox knowledge) - is the bartender at Dempsey's. It's in the East Village. Her Red Sox mania is so well-known, that Red Sox fans from around the boroughs of Manhattan flock to Dempsey's, in order to be with their own kind.

So it looks to me like it will be a good atmosphere for today's lunacy.

Clemens vs. Martinez.

I feel a knot in my stomach.

Bring it on.

Come on, baby, let's DO this thing.

Last night...

It's only fun watching the Red Sox play the Yankees in a sea of Yankee fans if the Red Sox win.

OBVIOUSLY.

Otherwise, it is a shrieking nightmare of depression and hostility.

The Boston Common

I go here and I don't feel so alone anymore.

They randomly linked to me a couple of days ago - which I LOVE - too funny - and have had a great time scrolling through the rest of the Boston/Red Sox links.

Some highlights:

A Fox Sports drinking game

Reasons for wanting the Sox to win

Too Early for Gloating ....

A couple well-chosen words to Yankee fans... from Erika

Superstition. Yup. I feel the same way.

I am drained

The game last night was great and all, but it is WRENCHING MY SOUL.

Glad to see Johnny Damon in the dugout ... for the most part recovered.

I was cheering my team on in a SEA of Yankee fans. That is no fun. There is a Red Sox bar down in the West Village ... I will go there to see the next one. I must be amongst my people for such a SOUL-WRENCHING experience.

Go, Derek Lowe!!

I do want to update you all on my performance evening (it went great!) - but right now the Red Sox are paramount in my mind.

Derek Lowe, man ... He just came ... and DID what he HAD to do.

Great game. A real nail-biter.

A fight broke out in the bar because the one random A's fan started cheering when Johnny Damon and Damian Jackson cracked skulls. Jackass.

How could you CHEER at that? What the hell is wrong with people?

Anyway. Here we go. Now things are gonna get REALLY nuts.

I hope Damon is okay. It looked really bad. And, of course, they KEPT showing it.

Has anyone heard any updates on how he is doing? I've looked ... but can't find anything yet...

I come from a long long line of Red Sox fanatics. As I watched the game, at Liberty Cafe, in Hoboken, I could FEEL, across the country, my brother watching, my cousins watching, my sister watching in Queens, my parents watching in Rhode Island ...

The first Red Sox game I ever saw, at Fenway, when I was 8 years old, was against the A's.

2 seconds after the game was won, my cell phone rang, and it was my brother, in Los Angeles, LOSING HIS MIND.

It was great. Just great.