One is better than none

Maybe it’s 1918. Maybe it’s 1975, 1986, 1999, or 2003. Maybe it’s Ruth, Dent, Buckner, or Boone. Maybe it is any number of those Yankee-favorite-fast-facts. Maybe it is just the curse.

All the same, I know, along with a countless number of other Red Sox fans, Sunday morning I was wondering why? Why after all that regular season blood, sweat, and tears we were just going to lie down in front of the Yankees.

Watching Tuesday’s game angered me at the Boston management. Wednesday’s game threw me into worry and despair. And Saturday’s game made me feel helpless, as if I was watching my dog get run over or seeing someone get hurt through a glass window, unable to do anything about it.

Sunday morning and hurt overwhelmed me. Despair was a black cloud right above my head. Anger spewed from me like hot lava from a volcanic mountain erupting with the highest level of force.

This was not the 2004 Boston Red Sox I had come to know and love.
This was not the team I believed in.
They had given up on themselves.
Why should I not give up on them?

After games 2 and 3 I was quick to feel betrayed by the team I knew as I watched a team that seemed foreign give up and lose. If this team continued to play there was surely no hope besides “Go Cardinals” or “Go Astros.” It would have been better to be swept by the Angels; at least they could have salvaged a win.

Sunday’s game; down 3 games to none in the series, was a desperation attempt. Not many fans had the World Series in sight; they just merely wanted the Broom of New York back in the closet with out any sweeping action.

It was in those 9th and 12th innings I saw our team return. The joy of tying it and the sheer “crunkness” of Ortiz’s 12th inning walk-off-two-run-home to beat the yanks in 12 brought back hope.

Hope for this year? Naw, not really. Maybe next.

Feasibly we could beat the Yankees, in fact many experts have them going to 7 games now. But, objectively and honestly there is, in my mind, no way we can pull the World Series off. Sure its depressing, but after tiring out our pen, losing pitching, and losing sleep, it just is not very likely that the highest paid team is going to sit down and lose 3 straight - sending us; their hated enemies, to the World Series. Then on top of that beating the Astros or Cardinals? Maybe next year.

The thing is, next year is our hope; there will be a next year and if you, like me, felt more drawn into yesterday’s game, even when there was but a modicum of hope for this year left, you, like me are a die-hard. You may have said you had given up, but you, like me, know better. Die-hards never die or give in; they may get angry when they don’t see “their” team but a different one instead. But Sunday night through Monday morning the 2004 Boston Red Sox that had disappeared on Tuesday were back out in full force.

Joy in Sunday’s game, in part, is due to the fact that I got to see the real 2004 Boston Red Sox – playing their hearts out and even breaking Rivera “one Mo time.”

The hope remains; we still care, we still believe we will win it all someday, and someday soon. We will always be Sox fans. I don’t care if it is 2004, 2005, or 2018. I don’t care if it is another 86 years in what would be 2090. “We”, the Boston Red Sox, will still be here always posing a threat.