Red Sox fans, I feel your pain. I know what it's like to see your team hit cruise control with a month left to play and forfeit a seemingly insurmountable lead. I know what it's like to watch your entire season slip away like a feather in the breeze. And I know what it's like to lose it all on the final game of the season. Yet, don't feel too miserable, because only I know what it's like to see that same fate become my team two years in a row.
For those of you who were hibernating, living under a rock or on tour with Phish last week (the only three justifiable reasons for not knowing about the dramatic end to the 2011 MLB season), let me inform you about the historic turn of events now etched in baseball lore. The Red Sox, who held a nine−game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for the AL Wild Card on Sept. 3, lost 20 of their last 27 games and missed a playoff bid by one game. In the process, the Sox lost their last game of the season to the bottom−feeding Baltimore Orioles after a blown save by the usually stellar Jonathon Papelbon, while the Rays overcame a 7−0eighth−inning deficit to overcome the New York Yankees in extra innings. Babe, Buckner, Bucky, Boone and… Baltimore?!
To put this into terms everyone can understand, imagine a monkey beating Bobby Fischer in chess while, simultaneously, the Yankees lose a seven−run lead to the Rays! There's nothing to compare with the latter part of this equation because the Yankees haven't blown a lead like that since 1953. The year 1953, as in Eisenhower was president, "Peter Pan" was released and the polio vaccine wouldn't come out for two more years.
Anyway, the Red Sox's loss is particularly alarming for Boston fans, who have grown complacent after watching their four major sports teams win seven championships since 2002. Yet, despite all of the Tim Thomas shutouts, Paul Pierce buzzer beaters and Adam Vinatierigame−winning field goals, nothing matters more to a Boston fan than a Red Sox win. Bostonians have more passion for the Red Sox than any other team simply because of the legacy. After being historically bad for a quasi−century, Boston fans continued to stand proudly behind their team; memories of Ted Williams' last at−bat and a Carlton Fisk homer waved fair provided unwarranted hope.
The untimely end to the 2011 season, however, brought back a bad taste for Sawx fans everywhere, and I can commiserate. My New York Mets blew a seven−and−a−half game September lead in 2007 and a three−and−a−half−game lead in 2008 to the rival Philadelphia Phillies, missing the playoffs with a loss to the luckless Florida Marlins on the final day of both seasons. I felt like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day" (1993), if "Groundhog Day" only consisted of a big dude offering you a cookie then punching you in the face with it.
My friend told me that the day the Sox won the World Series in 2004 was the first time he saw his father cry. I first saw my dad cry when I crashed his Jeep into a telephone pole, but that wasn't quite as powerful an image. The question remains, however, when will it be my turn to weep for my team? Not with Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" in the background and an empty tub of Ben & Jerry's in my lap, but with a smile on my face and a Mets cap on my head.
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Zach Drucker is a senior majoring in international relations and Spanish. He can be reached a Zachary.Drucker@tufts.edu.
