Remember those poignant stories when the Red Sox won a World Series in 2004 after an 86-year intermission? People were showing up in cemeteries carrying bouquets of flowers and saying, “They finally did it,” to deceased fathers and grandfathers. Well, this week those same fans are probably showing up at those same graves carrying weeds and saying, “They did it again” and the deceased fathers and grandfathers are spinning like ice augers.
I was born in Boston, grew up in Boston and attended my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park in 1960 with my father and grandfather, both of whom are deceased. They asked me where I wanted to sit that day and with no frame of reference on choice seats I said “Left field” so I could be near my hero Ted Williams. The lineup trotted out on the field–and Gene Stephens was playing left for the Sox that day. I did not recognize this as foreshadowing.
Being born in New England means that baseball pessimism is in your DNA. Even by the 1960s the phrase, “The Red Sox will win the World Series in my lifetime,” was part of the lexicon. As it so happens, my father was born in 1921 and died in 2000 and although he lived 79 years, the Red Sox did not win the World Series in his lifetime.
Actually, until I was 16 the real mantra could have been, “The Red Sox will get out of last place before I graduate high school.” That came true with the Impossible Dream season of 1967 when the Sox made it to the World Series–which they lost. That became their new pattern, winning lots of games during the regular season only to spontaneously combust in the playoffs.
Just think of Bucky Dent’s 1978 home run winning a playoff game for the Yankees. That would be Bucky of the disgustedly added middle name that starts with F and rhymes with upchucking. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in television sportscasting occurred many years later when Dent was unobtrusively settling into his seat for another Sox-Yankees game at Fenway and was cornered by Jim Gray. Gray capped his interview by asking Dent if he had a real middle name. (It’s Earl).
Everyone from New England mutters Dent’s name under his breath. We also commiserated together when the ground ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs, opening the gates for the Mets to win the 1986 World Series. Then there was 2003 when Pedro Martinez was a fastball away from sending the Red Sox into the World Series against the Florida Marlins. I was living in Chicago at the time and my brother Alan (who has never lived more than 20 miles away from Fenway Park except when he went to college 100 miles west of the Green Monster) and I spoke on the phone discussing a potential Florida rendezvous. We based this road-trip idea on the two-pronged theory that Series tickets would be easier to obtain in Miami because the Marlins’ park was larger than Fenway and the fan base not as rabid. Five minutes after we hung up the Sox blew the game. We didn’t speak again for weeks after they were eliminated. There was nothing to say.
All of which leads to last week when the Red Sox’s season culminated with an historic collapse. From May 1 to September 1, the Red Sox were the best team in baseball. In April and September they were the Houston Astros North. They started embarrassingly, apparently not recognizing spring training had ended. And they finished humiliatingly, somehow squandering a nine-game wild-card lead over the Tampa Bay Rays.
You could see it coming two weeks away without even turning on your headlights. Yet on the final night of the regular season circumstances set up perfectly for a reprieve. Tampa Bay fell behind the Yankees 7-0. The Red Sox led the Baltimore Orioles 3-2 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and closer Jonathan Papelbon on the mound needing one strike to end it. And then Ripley’s Believe It Or Not kicked in. So “House” is back on TV this week, but the Red Sox are not.
That same brother, a man of few words, had only one in his repertoire to describe the fatal developments that sent Tampa to the playoffs and the Red Sox to vacations viewing New England’s lovely fall foliage. “Unbelievable,” he said.
You would think Red Sox Nation would know better by now that nothing is unbelievable when coping with Sox Karma. Still, I thought the Red Sox were out of the heartbreak business. Nope. Add 2011 to the list, along with 1978, 1986 and 2003.