Redsoxchickie: Just This Side of Stalking

Call it a parallel universe, a worm hole, a shift in the time-space continuum…call it whatever you want, if it wasn’t for a snowy night in January 2002 the Patriots never would have won last night.

The night the Patriot’s got the “Tuck Rule” call, all of Boston sports changed forever. In any other previous game in any sport, if there was a call that could have gone our way, a freak bounce of a ball in our favor, or a single moment of an undeniable individual player’s heroics to save the day, the sports gods would get together, gift wrap it and FedEx it directly to whatever team we were playing.

But then the “Tuck Rule” game happened and from that moment on the impossible happened…Boston sports teams not only started to learn how not to lose is catastrophic fashion, but actually, gasp, start to win! Sure it took time to trickle down to the Red Sox, but it has, and now it seems to be making its way to the Celtics (apparently the Bruins’ owners dismantling of the franchise has ruined any chance at some good mojo for the foreseeable future).

The Patriots have won 3 Super Bowls since 2002. The Red Sox have won 2 World Series in my lifetime. This was inconceivable 10 years ago. Remember the show “Not Necessarily the News” on HBO? It was on back when cable had a rotary dial to change the channel. It was basically a full length cable version of the “Weekend News Update” from SNL. I remember clearly to this day that they had a bit called ESP sports news, or something to that effect that was a take on ESPN. They were talking about the results of sports in the future, hence the ‘ESP’ part. The anchor was rattling off all of these improbable outcomes in the sports world. The one I remember most was them saying that in the year 2000 the Patriots would win the Super Bowl. To put it in perspective, it’d be like saying Tampa Bay is going to win the World Series in 2008, we were THAT bad. I would pay money if I could find a clip of this.

Think about it…think of all the calls that have gone our way since that night that before would have screwed us. The A-Rod “purse” slap of the ball out of Arroyo’s hand. Normally he would have been called safe and two runs would have scored and we would have lost the ALCS and never would have gone to the World Series. Imagine a world where everything that went right, went wrong instead: Vinateri’s field goal missed, both times. Tom Brady tanks under the pressure of being a 1st string quarterback. Dave Roberts gets called out at second. Schilling’s ankle is too injured for him to pitch in Game 6. They put Gange in to close any of the last 3 games of the 2007 ALCS…..disturbing….very disturbing.

Last night was an example of about 15 ways the Patriots could have lost. As it was, the receivers looked like they dipped their hands in Crisco and the Ravens defense looked like tanks on crank. The Ravens did start their own problems with 137 penalties at the beginning and the end of the game. I’ve never seen so many yellow hankies in my life. But despite their own problems, we could have lost on any of the 86 times they had us on 4th down with under 2 minutes left in the game. The penalties? The time out call from the sideline? How many times can you actually blow a game in under 120 seconds? And that hail-Mary pass at the end? If that was ten years ago, the receiver would be standing smack in the middle of the end zone when he caught the ball, not 2 yards away from the goal line with no time on the clock. But in the end, we won and all is right with the world again.

Let’s just hope it stays that way.