Redsoxchickie: Just This Side of Stalking

Ok, so I can almost comprehend what transpired over the last month. Almost. I’m still convinced this may all be a martini-induced dream.

The Red Sox won the World Series. AND beat the Yankees. This doesn’t happen in real life. It just doesn’t. If this was reality, we would have lost after being down 3-0 to the Spankees and spent another winter writhing in pain and humiliation, banging our heads into the wall muttering “Why, God, Why?”

But no matter how many times I pinch myself the headline still say “Red Sox are World Champions”. I should know I keep buying any paper or magazine that alludes to it. I thought I was going to need a hermetically sealed box to keep everything in, now it looks like I’m going to need a hermetically sealed room. I’ve considered getting a Pet just so I can name it Big Pappi….or The Big Shill…or Yankee Spanker…you get the point.

Technically I think I’m still in shock from the Yankees series. You don’t watch a team come back from 0-3 to win a series and not feel like you’ve been playing chicken on the Southeast Expressway for a week. I was physically ill after the 19-8 ass-whoppin’ that they handed us in game 3. I felt hurt, betrayed, and mighty PEEVED! I sat there calculating the money I had spent in Fenway and realized I could have financed a small third world country for 6 months and now they were going to rip my still beating heart out of my chest and slam it with a sledge hammer??? I wanted to cry, but there’s no crying in baseball (by the way, who ever wrote that line was obviously not from New England).

Then inexplicably the tide turned. I could go on for ten years about every pitch but I sometimes like to think I have a life so I’ll just touch on the highlights. We took down Rivera not once but twice. A ball bounced in OUR favor. I always hated physics but the minute Tony Clark’s ball bounced into the crowd and saved a run I was calling Isaac Newton my daddy. Then the umps made two bad calls, which is nothing new to us, but then they actually corrected themselves. It was like watching Sadam say “this Democracy thing, not so bad! Pass me that Big Mac over there”. A-Rod damaged his reputation in a way that will haunt him for years. Come on! Has there ever been a more pansy-ass move than him trying to whack the ball out of Arroyo’s hand? Big Papi for President anyone? Schilling has just managed to make him self a Boston sports icon the likes of Larry bird and Bobby Orr in just a 12 month period. This will be the first bedtime story parents will be telling kids that starts with a bloody sock that ends with living happily ever after. I admit it, I would have benched Bellhorn. That’s why I don’t get paid to manage a professional sports team. I’ve never seen a team’s entire pitching roster goes down in flames like I did the Yankees’, well except for our own. Nothing says baseball like riot police on the field! Johnny Damon for Savior anyone?

I didn’t care that we were up by 7 runs in the bottom of the ninth with 2 outs. I’ve let my guard down before and had my heart broken. I was nervous until I saw the ball firmly in Mankweoisfioshk’s glove and his foot firmly planted on first and the ump made the last out call. Even then like many people I was convinced I would wake up to news that a Game 8 had been added. They had accomplished something no other team had done in major league baseball. I reiterate, NO ONE. I was so excited I nearly threw up that night…then again the next morning. We were going to the World Series. Then all I could think of was “What? I have to go through this for another week? More nights of 4 hours sleep and pretending I’m working with my eyes closed? More OCD, ADD, multiple superstition rules to follow? More Maalox by the gross?” I felt like I had gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson but without the part where he mistakes my ear for a pork rind. It seemed like we had won the World Series and the next few games were merely exhibition games. But then I realized, it’s the Red sox in the World Series…86 years of pain were following us so nothing was to be taken for granted.

And so it began. The “Big Show”…complete with inane pre-game show and incoherent and irrelevant commentating. Seriously, are there no other sportcasters available than Buck and McCarver. Fox showed exactly how much they were biased by having an ex-cardinal player and an ex-cardinal announcer calling the game. What were Bucky Dent and Mookie Wilson otherwise engaged? Why didn’t they just dig up Babe Ruth’s decaying shell of a corpse and prop him up to do sideline commentary? God I hate Fox. So anyway, I immediately start getting the shakes. Could my boys do this? Could they possibly have anything left in the tank after such an emotionally draining series in New York? Would Schilling’s ankle come flying off? Would I survive to a game 7??? So many questions. So little coffee.

The first game was typical, we had a lead the other team tied it, we pulled ahead the other team tied it, etc., etc. Because its all still a blur I can’t quite remember what exactly happened except that a pitching duel turned into a hitter’s clinic and luckily we got more than the Cardinals in the end. The second game was more entertaining. We got to watch the man with the bloody sock make the Cardinal hitters look like T-ball players. But we he came off the mound you knew he wasn’t going to come back again. He already proved he was a hero, anything more would have been greedy. So I sat there after we won the second game and thought “Boys, you’re gonna have to do this a little quicker than usual because we just lost Schilling for game 6.” Up two to nothing I was still apprehensive. We were in their house now. You could tell from the start Pedro was just happy not to be looking at pinstripes in the batter’s box. However it was shaping up to be a typical Pedro outing when he’d give up a couple runs and then our offense would take a nap for the rest of the game and we’d lose by one or two runs. But then the fun part about playing in a national league park came into play. Pitchers hit. Well Suppan got a hit. Then ended up on third. Long story short, the most boneheaded base running mistake cost them the game. Suppan, who could have walked home (and when I say home, I mean his actual house) on a fielder’s choice because we conceded the run (much to my hatred). He could have done “the worm” down the third baseline and still been safe at home. But no. He hears the third base say “no” but turns out he said “go” (gee, this sounds familiar) so he started and stopped about a dozen time before deciding to go back to third and Ortiz picks him off. Not bad for a guy who hadn’t played first since April. But on the bigger scale the game was done from that point on. You could actually feel the momentum shift back here in Boston. Pedro locked down and mowed ‘em down. Even the cardinals had to figure the game was over. They sure looked like they knew it in the dugout, all just staring off into space while Tony LaRusso mentally thought of excuses to skip the post game wake for his team.

And that’s where we were, up 3 games to none……