Relief: a Red Sox story

I was sitting when they won the World Series. Not standing, not kneeling — sitting. Present

An old friend and loyal fan, who spent $350 just to watch NESN broadcasts of nightly games a coast away, grabbed me by the shoulder and stared as if he couldn’t shift his concentration because reality might turn to fiction.

It hadn’t been 86 years, it was right now.

I watched the ball roll through Bill Buckner’s legs, watched Aaron Boone launch a home run into the left-field stands, yet now, simply, the Red Sox had won.

Past

I never grew up in Boston, never watched games at Fenway with my father and never listened to personal stories about Bucky Dent. I grew up in New England’s New York commuter ground, Connecticut. My first baseball game was at Yankee Stadium.

When I was 8, my parents and I visited their college landlords in Summerville, Mass., whose son grew up in Fenway, collecting Red Sox signatures after games.

When they asked me who my team was, I replied, of course, “the Red Sox.”

I remember reading box scores and collecting Red Sox baseball cards, but not cold New England nights by the TV pining over Red Sox playoff woes.

It wasn’t until I went to school in Rhode Island that I learned that being a Red Sox fan is like having a terminal illness. No matter the treatment, there’s never really hope.

Wade Boggs didn’t bring hope. Roger Clemens didn’t bring hope. Mo Vaughn didn’t bring hope. And Pedro Martinez didn’t bring hope.
We were always going to lose.

Patience

When David Ortiz picked Jeff Suppan off third, part of me felt it was over.

Big Papi has the grace of a rhino with a keg of Sam Adams running through his veins. He sent the Yankees home with his bat, but I never would have thought he’d send the Cardinals home with his arm.

Curt Schilling had a bloody red sock, an unrealistically perfect symbol of the team’s struggle and triumph. He wore all 86 years of suffering around his sutured ankle.

In maybe his last game in a Red Sox uniform, Pedro Martinez, who alone carried the Red Sox burden on his back for so many years, let his jheri-curl down and pitched a masterful seven innings.

Yet it was a designated hitter’s defense that brought the World Series trophy back to Boston.

As Suppan stumbled around between home and third, it was clear the Red Sox couldn’t lose. There was a greater power at work, a divine intervention.

My Red Sox pain goes back further than I can remember. It doesn’t stretch to the Splendid Splinter and barely to Yaz and Fisk, but far enough to know there’s never a time for overconfidence. Definitely not up 2-0 against the Cardinals. When it comes to the Red Sox, there’s always room for failure.

But when Bill Mueller put the tag on, as I let out an elementary-school-girl yelp, the dam broke and hope took over.

Relief

My brother called, his words slurred, and he kept repeating, “The Red Sox just won the World Series. The Red Sox just won the World Series.”

As kids, we’d argued over whether Mike Greenwell or Ellis Burks was the better player, pretended to be Jim Rice and Fisk in the backyard and debated whether Clemens should have been let go.

Fox was cutting between the Red Sox melee and Cardinal pain. It’s a cheap trick trying to steal my joy and replace it with sympathy.

This night, I had no compassion.

Not for Cardinals fans whose team didn’t show up for the World Series and certainly not for Yankees fans whose worst nightmare is a Sox championship.

I can’t share their suffering. For once, there was only relief.

And my brother once again belched in my ear, “The Red Sox just won the World Series.”