Other Things Worthy of Your Time
The Red Sox Didn't Win On Sunday
9/10/03
I was laying in front of the TV on Sunday, as any respectable sports fan would during the NFL season, and watching the lovely brutes and ruffians (hello, you can call me prissy) bash into each other and not caring in the least. Last year I was high on Bledsoe and the Bills putting the screw to the Patriots that had so kindly sent him to the curb (for a Super Bowl…or something). He never did it then and for once I finally figured he wouldn’t do it this time either. I have a terrible habit of being wrong.
Bills ended up winning 31-0 even though I’m pretty sure New England scored with their little up-the-gut cheap shot at the end to combat a shutout. The officials didn’t agree and no one wanted to argue it either way. 31-0 looked prettier. And at this point, and like me, no one cared.
The only reason I fought myself through an NFL game not involving the Philadelphia Eagles or the latest story on ESPN (have to keep up of course) was in hope that they would maybe stumble off topic like most announcers do when one of the teams in the game being televised is, well, getting rocked. Maybe they would stumble into crazy and strange grounds like the MLB even… Then again, why would a flourishing association like National Football League even bring up the name of what’s best described as the Bud Selig Baseball Disaster Special (featuring Pete Rose and Sammy Sosa certainly). Maybe because more than half of the population watching this game were in New England—Patriot fans—and maybe just one of them couldn’t get to a TV, radio, computer, or any other link to the outside world and find out what the damn score in the Yanks-Sox game was.
I did get lucky though, if you could call it that. I wouldn’t, but that’s really beside the point now. It was towards the end of the football game (supposedly the ‘main’ attraction) and so would have been just about around the time the game of interest would have been getting over. This should have been enough for anyone who knew what they were talking about…to know what they were talking about. You’d like to think so anyway.
(Somewhere towards the ladder half of the Bills romping.) “At least folks in New England can be happy about Red Sox winning,” says the announcer, or in so many words.
Sickness, poverty, plague, and corruption were all gone from the world. I had gotten my answer after long last and it was that the Red Sox had taken Game 3 of the last series from the Bronx Bombers, in the Bronx no less, completing the sweep, taking the season series from behind, and sneaking up a half a game out in the AL East—the closest they’d been since they had the damn thing. It all fit too. Wells had been struggling. He was on the mound against a Jeff Suppan waiting to explode with the potential we’d heard so much about instead of the runs we’d seen so much of. It was also 25 years to the day after something called the Boston Massacre in which New York came into Fenway for a four game series, four games out in the AL East, and leaving with nothing more than a tie in the standings—just one of the countless blunders over the past 85 years that was somehow made right with the events that had ‘happened’ before me today. It was finally happening. New York was faltering, Boston was triumphant, and even though it was still well before the start of the playoffs, it didn’t matter. It could be the next day after the World Series, and the city of Boston still hasn’t ended the celebration. It would all be in succession now anyway. It was finally happening. This was the year and this was the dagger. What could have happened—what should have happened—finally did. You’re right Mr. Football Announcer, this is something that very well could make us happy—should make us happy—and does. It was finally happening.
Red Sox baseball has always been a game of coulda-shoulda hasn’t it?
Needless to say, I didn’t bother to make it to a computer, a TV, or even a newspaper for the next couple days. I didn’t need to. It wasn’t until I had completely forgotten Philly and Tampa were on Sunday Night and I hadn’t watched that I bothered to check a score (I had ‘heard’ that Philly was killing at one point in this game—another story altogether obviously as the Bucs won 17-0…). I logged on to the trusty Internet and set up everything so I wouldn’t have to get on for another week. Fantasy teams were all looking pretty—besides my NFL Survivor Pick-Em, because everyone got the Houston-Miami game wrong. And I actually had a few e-mails not involving Garfield or genitalia enlargement (as they are usually included together). Everything was in place, as everything should be in a world that just felt right. So I decided to check Redsox.com…
“Lowe on the mound, seeing if he can hold onto a lead.” (Again: or in so many words.)
Most would assume they had updated the site midway through the game and he was pitching with a lead in the game against the Orioles that night—which he was, Boston was up 4-0 as David Ortiz had just made new Red Sox team records in homers and extra base hits. That was nice. I, of course, being the young and ignorant, aspiring and hopeful Red Sox fan that I was though, had automatically jumped to the conclusion that ‘lead’ had something to do with a playoff race. Wow, I thought, New York is struggling if they lost again after the series in New York and have already relinquished their miniscule lead over the Sox (not that that’s a bad thing). I had been so wrong. It had all been so wrong.
The headline actually was talking about a playoff race, but it was the Wild Card, and the ‘lead’ had somehow slipped to only a game over second place Seattle. Shucks was what I thought, because I realized Boston must have lost the first in the series with Baltimore. Shucks was right. They had. Where did that leave them in the AL East race then? Three and a half games? What in hell?
A team can’t possibly lose two games in the standings in one day without both parties involved playing a double header and everything going dreadfully wrong. There wasn’t any double double-header, but things were still dreadfully wrong.
The Red Sox didn’t win on Sunday. They didn’t sweep the Yankees, they didn’t win the season series, and they didn’t close within definite grabbing distance of the team that had been in first place since June. Suddenly the city stopped celebrating—no one was jumping to conclusions. There was no end to pestilence and epidemic—things weren’t right in the world. And no blunders were made right—it wasn’t, finally happening.
As a true poster child of ignorance, I can truly say that one of the best feelings in the world is knowing you’re right, and one of the worst is finding out you’re not. There have been many things I’ve thought I was right on, and many of which that have turned out differently, but nothing has ever happened like this before. This is like bombing Russia because you translated the label in the wrong language on those bombs being dropped on you. Now that World War III has started, no one cares enough to ask why, and only know that there’s no turning back.
Just because the Red Sox aren’t winning championships doesn’t mean the world is ending though. If Sox fans had been spending the whole time they hadn’t been winning acting like the sky was falling, well, there’d have been a lot of paranoid people for a long time. But for Red Sox fans, the world sure could be a whole hell of a lot sweeter.
That’s the way it goes though, and the way it’s been going for the last 80-plus years. Maybe there is a curse. Maybe this Boston franchise will always be doomed by bad roster moves, above and beyond the Babe and his curse, while their AL East rival New York flourishes above and beyond and because of it. Maybe we’ll always be saying this is the year, and this is the team, and this is what it feels like to win, when we want so bad to.
We could give up on every other team, in every other sport because baseball will flourish in baseball after steroids, and after Selig, and after everyone else gives up on it for pigskin and training camp protests. It’s above Grady Little, or Nomar, or Manny, or a whole historic offense. It’s above Pedro, or Clemens, or an entire shaky bullpen. It’s above the Babe, or the Curse, or history, or even the game itself. It’s why no matter how bad Fenway gets and we could want it to move, we’ll never really want to leave it.
We may complain about management, hopeless roster moves, and failing farm teams. We may flourish through good times and give up when we should have a long time ago. We may sit on the Monster and pay a hundred bucks for a crappy seat believing there are no crappy seats in the whole park, and do it every single day of every single season, knowing, after this long, the fat kid with the annoying close up was probably right when he said, “the Red Sox will not win a World Series in my lifetime.” That doesn’t mean we won’t raise our fat little kids to be Red Sox fans and not see it in their lives either.
We may go through all of it over and over, always just as ignorant as we’ve always been, because maybe, that’s what feels right.
It might never happen that the Red Sox win some Sunday in October this year and we can say it’s finally happening, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still go on for a few days acting like it did—while some of us actually believe it.
NOTES
I hate the Red Sox. They could make me happy when I need it, but never do.