Dear Red Sox Nation Denizens and Those Who Envy Us,
It still has not quite sunk in. I returned home last Saturday from a performance given by a few local musicians at a café in Belgrano, disappointed that I had missed the better part of the baseball game but confident that I’d at least get to see a few innings. I switched on ESPN Deportes and saw a horrifying score in the bottom right corner. I watched for a few minutes and then made my way into the study, anxious to commiserate with a fellow Sox fan. I saw my brother Jamie online, and sent him an instant message, bemoaning the disaster unfolding at Fenway. He responded simply by saying that he could not bear to discuss it and subsequently signed off. I couldn’t believe that this team I had followed for 168 games this season could fall apart so miserably.
As I made my way home from mass on Sunday night, I hoped that they would at least make it respectable, that they would win one game and not allow the humiliation of a sweep. I watched them struggle to find their swings and in the bottom of the ninth determinedly claw their way back into the game. Fans in the bleachers held signs calling on “Papi” Ortiz to hit one deep and I remembered the discussion I had with my sister Kateri during the ALCS last year, when she was making her “Hit It Here Papi” poster and wanted to spell the name “Poppy.” And then he did just as all the signs asked, crushed the ball and kept the Sox alive for one more day. When game five went into extra innings and Tito brought in Wakefield, they showed the Aaron Boone clip and the well-formed knot in my stomach tightened. When it seemed like Varitek couldn’t get his mitt on anything Wake was throwing and the Yankees were trotting around the bases, I couldn’t believe it was happening again, and then suddenly the thirteenth inning was over and Wake came back with a flawless fourteenth. When Papi singled, I knew it was no longer about surviving one more day, these guys were going to shoot the moon or bleed trying. Schilling did just that in game six, his blood-soaked sock a symbol of this team’s heart and in game seven, well, D-Lo. was money and Johnny Damon decided to take personal responsibility for all the offense they’d need.
ESPN didn’t show the Anaheim series here, and I was forced to watch it on the computer, which would have been fine had it not been for Chris Berman pontificating on everything from why Quebec deserves baseball to how Red Sox fans would be disappointed if they won the World Series without playing the Yankees. I was delighted to hear that the sports radio talk shows had received so many complaints about Berman that they decided to sync the radio broadcast with the TV so fans would not have to suffer through any more of “Boomer” and his innumerable theories on how the Red Sox were going to blow the series.
Luckily all of the ALCS games were shown on ESPN Deportes, which provides a rather charming presentation of the games. The camera feed is the same one shown back home, with on-screen stats and such in English, but accompanied by Spanish-speaking announcers. This is a nice feature not simply because listening to Tim McCarver trash the Sox for seven games would be insufferable, but because the announcers give the game a uniquely Latin American perspective. The best example of this is that they refer to foreign players by their nationality, not just initially, but throughout the game. “El colombiano Orlando Cabrera en contra al panameño, Mariano Rivera, con dos bolas y un estrike” and so on. This treatment was not reserved for Latin American players; “el japonés, Godzilla (try to imagine that spoken with a Mexican accent) Matsui” got the same courtesy. The oddest part of the commentary, a part that began to wear on me, was the way that the announcer called a home run, saying “le dice no, no, no, no, no, no, no (and dragging this out for a good fifteen seconds) a la pelota.” What bothered me about this was not so much the way he dragged out the “nos,” but that the phrase didn’t seem to make any sense. “He says no to the ball” is the best translation that I could come up with, and it’s not as though it’s a phrase that sounds right in the original language and just doesn’t translate well. To me it sounds nonsensical in Spanish. “He says adios to the ball” seems to me a preferable alternative, but as the Argentines are so fond of saying “¿Qué sé yo?” Despite that one concern, I hope the same announcers will be back for the World Series.
With one notable exception, I watched all of the postseason games unaccompanied in my apartment, free to address the TV at critical moments and pace around the room or simply shake in my chair during times of peril. The exception, most notable, was on the third day of Izzy Gordan’s visit, when he, his special lady friend Abby and I were supposed to head to Palermo Viejo for a sushi dinner. With the score knotted at six after seven innings, I called the restaurant to ask for a reservation. The hostess informed me that there were no reservations available, but that if I arrived quickly, I would certainly get a table. If I waited, I may be out of luck. Faced with a critical decision, Izzy, Abby and I huddled and I explained that the game could (and did) go into extra innings and that if we stayed to watch the end, we might not get a table all night. I left the decision to them and like umpire Joe West in game six, they made the right call. We stayed and celebrated Papi’s walk-off home run, and only had to endure a fifteen-minute wait at the restaurant.
Izzy and Abby saw the best that Buenos Aires has to offer, including a tango show, dinner at a kosher steakhouse and a staggering assortment of wicker products in neighboring Tigre. To clarify a mistake I made in an earlier email, Buenos Aires is home to the only Kosher McDonald’s outside of Israel, and after Izzy and I dined there, he made a second trip shortly before heading for the airport. As it turned out, the second day of their stay here was Shemini Atzeret, the eighth day of Sukkot, a Jewish holy week.
While walking through Once, the Jewish neighborhood near my apartment, I was tasked with finding someone who could recommend a synagogue where they could observe the holy day. While Izzy and I were well prepared by Mr. McCarthy’s AP Spanish class, Abby was struggling with the language. In a kosher restaurant we would later revisit, I found a man who was more than happy to answer my questions, only to realize that I didn’t really know what exactly I was supposed to ask. I glanced at Abby and asked the gentleman if he spoke Hebrew, and when he answered in the affirmative, Abby and he began to speak freely. I, who fancied myself the local language expert of the group, listened attentively as questions were asked and answered and got my own taste of what Abby had been experiencing all day. After walking to one of the synagogues and chatting with a few of the arriving congregants, Abby easily ascertained everything she needed to know about the times and observances and concluded that when her students complain about having to take Hebrew classes, she’ll be able to tell them how useful the ancient tongue proved to be in, of all places, Buenos Aires.
I am happy to report that thanks to Izzy and Abby’s visit, I have developed a solid routine for any other potential visitors. Right now I have B.K. Leith and my Aunt Mary penciled in for January and my parents for April. I have a few trips of my own planned as well. I’ll be returning home for three weeks on December 19th, when I’ll be able to meet the newest addition to our family, my sister Kateri’s first-born, due in late November. I will also be traveling to Paraguay in late January for a seven-week internship with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Technical Assistance. The office provides training and counsel to the Paraguayan government on issues of budget, tax and public finance.
I will spend the next two weeks hoping for two victory celebrations in Boston, one when the curse is finally broken (game seven at Fenway on Halloween?) and the other on November 2. I believe.
Love,
Sean