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?<\/p>\n
Absolutely not.<\/p>\n
It’s all about the 2004 World Series. Naturally.<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“So where were you?” Etc.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We still CANNOT BELIEVE IT.<\/p>\n
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<\/i> 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<\/i> … 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading