Posted In Octber 2003
Hello sportsfans-it's me-late again and with no excuses. No I haven't forgotten you. No, I'm not suffering from writers block [or ranters block or for that matter spewers block]. And no, I haven't found another web site to vent my mental guts at. It's just that once again I've become obsessed with baseball in general and the Red Sox in particular and I'm miserable. "How can that be bad," you say, "they're in the playoffs?! You should be happy!!" And I look at you in your innocence and think " How can you know how excruciatingly painful this kind of thing can be." I haven't shaved in over a week, I forget to eat and, worst of all, I stumble around the Fools Mansion swearing like a victim of Tourrets Syndrome. To understand this disease you have to have it yourself; there's nothing I can tell you about it that will make you understand what it's like for me when the Sox are in the playoffs. My dad tried to explain it to me when I was a lad."Be careful" he told me before the '67 World Series, "strange things can happen to the Red Sox". Then he told me tales of the '46 series when the sox clinched the pennant early and their manager, worrying about his team getting rusty, set up a one game exhibition against a pick-up team of national league players. In that game a loony pitcher [whose name I've forgotten-but may he rot in hell] thought that Ted [if you don't know I'M TALKING ABOUT THE IMMORTAL TED WILLIAMS, THE GREATEST HITTER WHO EVER LIVED you should probably stop reading now] was standing a little too close to the plate so he dusted him, as the saying went at the time, with an inside pitch. The pitch hit Ted on the right elbow and, though he played in the series, he wasn't the same [it was cruel of the baseball gods to decide that this would be Ted's only trip to the World Series, but what are you gonna do?]. Even with an injured Ted they still took the series to the 7th game before losing. Then my dad talked about the '48 one game playoff with Cleveland [they had tied for 1st] to see who would go to the World Series. Against all common sense, the Sox manager decided [on a 'hunch'] to start an untried rookie pitcher named Denny Galehouse instead of one of his regular veteran pitchers. The Sox lost that game and Cleveland went on to win the World Series. By now my dad was raving [it runs in the family]-there was also the '49 season when our boys headed to New York at the end of the year needing to win only one of the final two games to beat out the evil empire for the pennant. They lost both games. My dad is 87 now and that 4 year run of those '46-'49 sox forever changed him as a fan. Don't get me wrong, he's not bitter or superstitious about them-he's just very careful not to get too involved with any Sox team. '"Huh" I said as a kid back in '67," those aren't my Red Sox." But they were. My favorite player of all time, Carl Yastrzemski, had just led the Sox on an utterly thrilling chase through the month of september [HE HIT .523 WITH 5 HOMERS AND 16 RBIs IN THE LAST 2 WEEKS FOR GODS SAKE!!!] to capture the pennant on the final day of the season. He did everything you could ask of a boyhood hero, he hit clutch late inning homers, he dove for balls in the outfield and threw runners out at the plate. But in the end, though he hit .400 in the series, the sox lost to the Cardinals and an other-worldly pitcher named Bob Gibson who was the Pedro of his era. By now I'm sure I 've lost at least half of you, except for the die hards, but jeezus do you think this crap is any easier for me? And I haven't even mentioned '86 yet!! Okay okay...deep calming breaths...there, that's better. The loss of '67 wasn't horrible to me because I just knew they'd be back in it soon. But it wasn't until '72 that they were close again. In that year it once again came down to a final game [you couldn't make this stuff up!] and there was our soon to be hall-of -fame shortstop and very fast runner Louis Aparicio tripping for christ sakes rounding 3rd base and getting thrown out at the plate. It would have been the winning run and we would have gone on to the series. Then came '75 and what some still say was the best world series of all time. Most casual fans know about Fisk's homer to win game 6 but not as many know about then manager Don Zimmer begging nutcase lefty Bill Lee [one of my favorite all time players anyhow]in game 7 not to throw his big eephus curve to cincinnati reds slugger Tony Perez. Boom!! home run which ended a tie game and led to another series defeat. By then I was a grown up [and getting ready in a year or two to think about maybe starting a band that maybe would be called the fools] so I knew that it was only a matter of time before my team got 'it' done.......Oh the '78 team. Now there was a team.....Jim Rice...Fred Lynn....Fisk...an ancient Yaz...oh I just knew they would do it. They had a 14 game lead on the NY yanks in august. The manager said if they only won half of their remaining games they would win the pennant. And that's what they did. Well--they did their part --they won half their remaining games. But the creeps from NY went on an insane run where they won 32 out of their last 40 [or something like that] to tie the Sox on the last day of the season. So what happens ---another one game playoff in Boston. My memory is of Sox pitcher Mike Torres sailing through the first 6 innings and the Sox [on the strength of old man Yaz homer in the 1st and rbi in the 6th]leading by a couple. Then a fill-in-crap-ass-wouldn't-start-on-many-other-teams-player named Bucky Dent hit a 3 run homer and the world shifted once again. Are you beginning to understand the way long time fans feel about the Yankees? I've decided not to talk about '86 and poor star crossed Bill Buckner. You couldn't create a more cruel and fiery baseball hell than the one he ended up in. So tonight on the eve of game one of the '03 playoffs I'm trying to be more philosophical. My daughter is convinced this is the year......so do I....again...so does my dad....my daughter by the way hates the Yankees 'with the fire of a thousand sons'...and so we endure...but don't tell me this is fun...I love you guys...see you on the other side of this fun thing they call playoffs...adios, mike
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