Red Sox Reprise 2006

I just realized that I've been doing this blog for a while now, and I haven't even mentioned my beloved Red Sox. It occurs to me my Grandfather, Pa Hennessy, must be turning over in his urn by now. To wit, here is a republished account, originally penned into 'Tales from East Mosquitoville...and Beyond', on October 27, 2004:

For the first time in 86 years, for the first time since the Wright Bros. took to the sky in Kitty Hawk, for the first time since Doughboys fought Facism in the muddy battlefields of Europe, after the Great Depression, after the advent of the Nuclear Age, after three generations of Americans watched with painful anticipation, the Boston Red Sox have won the World Series and are champions of the baseball world. I repeat...the Red Sox win the World Series.

Now take a deep breath and look around...the earth is still rotating on its axis. Fields of locusts aren't ravaging the Midwest. There seem to be no signs of the Apocolypse on the horizon. So let's think about this for a minute. In 1918, the Boston Red sox beat the Cubs in the World Series, their fifth at the time. The Star Spangled banner, which wasn't even our National Anthem yet, was sung for the first time at a baseball game. The Sox were the most formidable force in th American League.

The next year, the Sox owner, needing money for a lame Broadway show he was producing ('No No Nanette, I think it was), sold the contract for his star pitcher Babe Ruth to the Yankees of New York. Since then, the so-called 'Curse of the Bambino', coined by lame sportswriter Dan Shaunessy, has vexed the loyal fans of the Olde Towne Team. Many years the Sox were so close to winning it all with Hall of Fame players like Speaker, Williams, Raditz, Pesky, Yaz, Pudge, Freedy Lynn, Buckner, El Tiante, Spaceman Lee among the littany of memorable names. Always so close, but always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Each time Sox fans were brought to the brink. Each time they vowed that next year would be their year. Like Syssaphus, in the Greek myth, cursed to forever roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down to the bottom at near climax, the fans had snatched from them the joy of a championship, like Santa had snatched back the G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip, just as you openned it Christmas morning. Even in my lifetime, witness the tragedy: 1967, Captain Carl almost singlehandedly brought the Red Sox to the big dance, only to have Bob Gibson annihilate them in the end. In 1975, the Red Sox on the brink, were saved in the 12th inning, early one October Boston morning, by a homer of the left foul pole by by Carlton Fisk, in the most highly watched baseball game in baseball history to date. The next, and deciding game, of course, they lost. In 1978, a schedule anomily forced a 1-game play-off to decide the American League East. The Sox had a 14 -1/2 game lead in August, but let it slip and slip, until, a diminuitive 2nd baseman named Bucky Fuckin' Dent homered off Mike Torres and dashe our hopes again.

In 1986, on the pitching arms of Ratchet Roger Clemens and Oil Can Boyd, we were one out from a World Series clinch when an injured and hobbling Bill Buckner, who was, in my opinion, a fine a player as there was, and in NO position to be in the game as injured as he was, could not come up with the play at first and Mookie Fuckin' Wilson scampered home. The rest is misery.

In 2003, the Bean-eaters brought the Yankees, the Fuckin' Yankees, to the brink, into extra innings, when again a dolt from no-where named Aaron Fuckin' Boone took a Ttim Wakefield knuckleball deep into the Bronx stink-pit and the Yankees go on and lose in the World Series to a most infinitely beatable Florida Marlins team, usurping our hopes again.

But THIS year, something happened. Down 3-0 to the same evil and dreaded Yanks, the Sox, visited by some sort of miracle, beat the Bronx Boners in 4-straight games. Talk about your Heimlich Maneuver. Took it to them, right in the Bronx. The American League Championship was ours. At this point, even with the World Seies yet to play, I knew the curse was lifted. Destiny was about to be revealed.

In four straight games against the St. Louis Cardinals, the most formidable line-up in the majors, so they said, came up, and four straight games they sat back down. T-Bone and I got out the special expensive hootch and poured a couple of glasses. We got out the 'more than $2' cigars we had prepred for the unlikely occasion. I thought of my old Paba, who would have loved to see this, and took a healthy swig of some really good Polish Vodka.

"Ground ball to Faulke, he stabs it, he has it, underhands to first, and the Boston Red Sox have won baseball's World Chamionship. For the first time in 86 years the Boston Red Sox have won the World Series. Can you believe it"?!

Ahem,...my cigar please.