Redsoxchickie: Just This Side of Stalking

Two games can define this entire season.

Two games can define this entire season. #1 - The Yankees vs Sox Brawl Game and #2 The Sox vs Tampa Bay game last week. Let me explain....Last year the team was like free crack. They gave you a good beginning, a taste of being the best and kept stringing you along with impossible come from behind victories so that you couldn't NOT watch. You started twitching if there was a game on that you couldn't watch because of work, school, weddings, coronations, etc. People everywhere were mastering how to look scores up online on their cell phones. I was teaching VPs the best ways to watch the games online during meetings! Everyone knew how the Sox were doing all the time. Two-year-olds could tell you the box score from the night before. The best part was that it was FUN.

This season is a whole different story. This season is like being in an emotionally abusive relationship. Take the Yankee Brawl Game. Were down, what? 3 runs by the third inning? At that point any self respecting pessimist like myself was convinced that was it, not only was the game over, but the series, the season and any glimmer of hope for a post season berth. Then it happened, one of those crazy moments that can turn around an entire season. A good old fashioned smack down with our biggest enemy....Luke vs. the Emperor, Indiana Jones vs. Random Nazi guy, Moral Fortitude vs. Paris Hilton. Its like being mid-sentence in the "break-up monologue" and the guy whips out a 3 carat diamond in a platinum setting. You just need to see how this is gonna turn out. So we watched and eventually we regain the lead...and promptly give it back up. This is the point where every person in New England threw their remotes down cursing and walked into the other room...close enough to hear what was going on in the game but far enough that you could ignore it if you had to. Its like having an argument and wanting to walk out but sticking around to see if an apology is forthcoming. And so the game played on...back and forth..feeling like you've gotten slapped over and over again. Many times people swore "That's it! I can't do this to myself anymore. All they do is break my heart!". But somehow just when all hope had got into the crapper...bottom of the ninth, down by one run, two outs...a tailor-made Sox hit into a double play to end the game for the 5347th time. But against all odds they hit a game winning homer. We are then convinced that this kind of love was going to last forever.

And then the preverbal crap hit the fan. Just a week and a half later, still smarting the whole Nomar trade mess, we had finally convinced ourselves the eastern seaboard would, if fact, stay attached to the continental United States despite the fact Nomar was going to Chicago. We became complacent. After all we were playing the Devil Rays, our baseball bee-atches. the game started well enough, we had a 3 run lead going into the late innings. Then suddenly, the rug gets pulled out from under us, we give up a grand slam and our now down by a run. Its the equivalent of finding a charge slip for some bling-bling that you never got. But you give the benefit of the doubt...it could be for you and you just haven't gotten it yet...its a surprise maybe. Of course we were going to come back, its the Devil Rays after all!. Then your S.O. walks out the door to get a pack of cigs and never comes back. That would be mildly less painful than watching the apparently blind, deaf, mute of a third baseman wave in our runner from third with no outs and that runner getting tagged out at home after the catcher gets the ball, cooks a 6 course meal and gets his nails done before having to apply said tag. Game over

Somehow though, we're still waiting by the door for a possible reconciliation. It won't be easy but we're open to it. Either that or the divorce papers will be served promptly in October.