I know that I'm writing this column at 2 a.m. on Monday morning.I know that this column won't be in the paper until Tuesdaymorning. I know that the Yankees might have won last night andended the series by the time you read this. I don't care.
Saturday night around 10 p.m., I was despondent. It was theseventh inning and, unable to bear any more humiliation with theSox down by about 132 runs, I, along with my friends, gave up onthe season. We turned on "Die Hard: With a Vengeance," put the Soxgame on the radio and started talking about the Patriots. TheYankees really were our daddies.
Unlike the heart-wrenching disgust and anger I felt last year asI watched Aaron Boone circle the bases, I felt strangely hollowthis time around. Not quite miserable, but somewhere in the greyarea between resigned and shocked.
I came of age rooting for Mo Vaughn and a young, fresh-facedNomah. I remember trading for Pedro. I remember watching JoseCanseco, Jeff Frye, Mark Portugal and Mike Benjamin in Red Soxuniforms. I remember when Jason Varitek took away the startingcatcher job from a then-injured Scott Hatteburg. I remember Tom"Flash" Gordon slamming the door on games for us, with scrawnyDerek Lowe as his setup man. I remember Rich "El Guapo" Garces(What the hell happened to him, anyway?).
Everyone has that team, that group of players that they rememberas their childhood team. They loved that team like no one had everloved any team before; decades afterwards, they can still recitewith glee the names and statistics of every player on the squad.After that team, their fan virginity has been taken. They grow up,learn about free agency and egos, watch players traded and retired,and settle into the middle years of fandom.
For me, that team was the 1999 Red Sox. I can name every playeron that team, including the bench and the bullpen. Games lost tothe fading memory of time from that season still stand out for me.When that team lost in five games to the Yankees in the ALCS, ittook me almost a month to recover.
This is the last year of my childhood players. Nomar is now aChicago Cub. Pedro and Derek Lowe are probably on their way out.Other than Jason Varitek, Tim Wakefield and Trot Nixon, the 2005Red Sox may be entirely different from the teams that I grew upadoring.
The thought didn't occur to me until about two hours afterSaturday's 19-8 drubbing, or, as many Yankee fans put it,19-8(teen). That thought, more than the Sox's historic and shockingcollapse, saddened me.
And what of the supposed rivalry? Although 1978 and last yearhad hurt more, one got the sense that the 11-run loss was a newlow. Not only were we about to lose to the Evil Empire yet again-wewere a joke. We were the baseball equivalent of Carrot Top or DanQuayle. Say what you will about the misery of the Boone home run; Iat least came away with the knowledge that I'd seen history made;ESPN Classic started saving copies of that game long before Boone'sdagger to my heart.
This Red Sox team, a team with the best record in baseball sincethe All-Star Break, a team widely favored to win this series andeven the World Series, a team clearly better on paper, was alaughingstock. I was honestly and truly embarrassed to be a Red Soxfan for the first time in my (albeit short) life. What to say tothose detestable arrogant Yankee fans after the beating the Sox hadjust endured?
So it was with a heavy heart that I sat down with my friends towatch Game 4. After going through every article of Sox clothing Iowned and deciding them all unlucky, we enforced a ban on any andall Red Sox apparel. We were sheep being led to the slaughterhouse.There was no way that the Sox could come back; all we were hopingfor was a quick and painless death.
So it went. Despite a strong outing from Derek Lowe, despite themuch maligned Tito Francona managing the game as well as his famedcounter-part in the visitor's dugout, our exhausted team lookedbeaten. Heading into the bottom of the ninth inning trailing by onewith Mariano Rivera on the mound, things didn't look good. And thenit happened.
As the Red Sox played small ball and Dave Roberts turned intoWillie Mays Hays in "Major League," I could sense the tide turning.I spent the next excruciating hour (or was it five?) on my feet,willing Embree to get outs, begging Leskanic to retire BernieWilliams with the bases loaded in the top of the 11th inning. AsOrtiz did it again and I engaged in awkward man-hugging, I was 15years old and rooting for the '99 Sox again.
How about that game? Derek Lowe, left off the postseasonrotation, pitched his heart out. Francona managed the gameperfectly; Roberts came into the game and immediately broke forsecond. Everyone rose to the occasion. Curtis Leskanic, a veteranwho had been hammered the night before, came up enormous. And youjust knew that Pap� was going to crush that ball. You couldfeel the walkoff coming.
Are we going to make history, coming back as no baseball teamhas ever done in the hundred plus years of the league? Who knows?But just imagine the turnaround 24 hours can bring.
If you saw the Yankees walk off the field after that Ortiz shot,you knew they weren't looking forward to facing Pedro in Game 5.They sure didn't look like a team with an insurmountable lead.
In his post game interview Francona casually dropped a bombshellthe size of Saturn, explaining that Schilling would start Game 6tonight were the series to get that far. Not maybe, not hopefully,but definitely.
Curt Schilling. The man brought in to break the supposed'Curse,' the man to end decades upon decades of misery. The manwho, not three years ago, was popping champagne and sharing MVPhonors after a World Series win over these same Yankees. The manwhose ankle tendon was snapping like Corn Pops not two daysago.
More importantly than the Sox storming back from the grave, theyhave restored my faith, reminding me why I love this team in thefirst place.
Are they just setting their faithful fans up for the ultimatemisery? Will they just blow it and send us into despair again?Perhaps. Maybe they wouldn't be the Red Sox if they didn't. But Idon't care.
As Ortiz circled the bases I once again realized why, regardlessof the results of this series, I'd be back next year and every yearafter that. I'm a Red Sox fan for life. Through shame and failure,I'll be here. That feeling I got watching when Ortiz was mobbed athome plate is simply not replicable.
And that's what they Red Sox really give us. Eternal hope.
