This'll be my (thankfully) last entry about baseball for a while. I suppose I should be happy the Series only went 4 games, thereby sparing me the incipient cardiac arrest brought on by having to sit through a 4-game St. Louis comeback.
Yeah, I don't buy it either. Sounded good at the time, though.
Now that Boston has finally "reversed the Curse" or whatever other cutesy expression Globe columnists will be using until spring training begins, you Sox fans should probably take a minute to realize something else that's changed with your victory (and with apologies to Bill Hicks):
You're no longer special.
The last 86 years have been great for you, in a way, because you could always count on support from those vast legions of baseball fans who might have been indifferent to Boston, but absolutely hated the effing Yankees. Every year, as fall rolled around and the playoffs loomed, talk inevitably turned to the Sox and how they'd screw the pooch this time. Boston's spirit was admired, like your dumbass kid brother who keeps getting up no matter how many times you pound him, even if their play on the field didn't hold up. Anyone who'd ever struggled against seemingly insurmountable odds and gotten slapped down for it could sympathize.
No longer.
You guys are just another AL team that hides behaind the designated hitter to us now. Your sportswriters will have to come up with some other reason to explain away future chokes and heartbreaking losses, but nobody else will care. Your World Series clock is reset to 0, leaving you ahead of everyone else in the majors (including - horrors - New York). Worse, attention now swings wholly over to the Cubs (though, inexplicably, not the other Chicago team), who can enjoy the attentions of part-time fans who need another loveable loser to root for. And they've got a lot to choose from: Cubs (1907), White Sox (1917), Indians (1948), Astros (n/a), or Padres (n/a). And what about San Francisco?
Some may call it sour grapes. That after watching one of the great post-season collapses in history by St. Louis, I'm being somewhat petty. Not at all. I'm not happy with the way the Cards played, that's no secret, but I'm not trying to take away from Boston's well-earned victory. I'm just trying to prepare my BoSox brethren for the letdown. It won't come tomorrow, or next week, or probably not even until next season, but it's out there. Like a pissed-off Ray Bourque with a hangover and a Sher-Wood 7030, it'll be along to reintroduce y'all to reality.
And hey, it's been 22 years since the Cards won it all. Maybe we should be considered hard luck now, too.
Congratulations once again to the Red Sox, who just completed one of the hottest runs in postseason history to win......
| --Posted to Off the Kuff on Oct 28, 2004 12:14 PM:. |
The Red Sox will always be unique -- all they lost was the 86 year albatross. Their identity will merely be redefined going forward. You make it sound as if Red Sox Nation should have appreciated the albatross because it made them distinctive. I dont know many folks who think like that.
Hopefully the Sox and Cards can meet up again next season, Pete. And yes, the DH blows.
Pete,
While there will be some adjustment to the fact that we are the World Champions(say it again... World Champions)... you are mistaken if you think Red Sox Nation defines itself by "the curse" and not our team.
Yes, we have a tendency to dwell on the improbable events that have befallen our team, but contrary to the image manufactured by Fox and others, we are more than happy to have won, and we will not have any trouble continuing to identify ourselves with our team. (By the way, how do you think St. Louis would react if the Cardinals don't win another World Series until 2074?)
A bigger question is why Cardinal fans - supposed to be the "best fans" from "the best baseball town in America" just utterly gave up on their team and allowed Sox fans to turn Busch into Fenway West last night. I was more than a little shocked by that. Say what you will about RSN being obsessed with the albatross... we show up for our team year after year with the same faith and devotion - and we don't let anybody turn Fenway into their home away from home.
Oh well. So now we're "just another AL team." Fine. Rather that than some boring "small ball" NL team with an automatic out at minumum of every three innings, and whose idea of a big inning consists of a bunt single, steal of second, sac fly to third, and fielder's choice that plates a run. Ooooh... scintillating!
So maybe you're right - maybe we're not special anymore. Now we're just baseball fans who love their team and who'll be back to cheer for them again in the spring, just like everybody else.
Except that, as you pointed out, our World Series clock is shorter than everyone else's. (sorry, had to do it)
I do sympathize with Chicago fans, Cleveland fans, Houston fans, and as soon as Ivan Drago retires I will sympathize with Giant fans too.
Len, didn't see the column. Thanks for the link.
Tim, maybe I was thinking of Cubs. Still, I've known plenty of fans from up your way who talked about the albatross like it was a badge of honor.
'mudge, I don't know if Busch was necessarily Fenway West, or if Fox was just going out of its way to show every damn Boston fan in the stands. There were quite a few, but there were quite a few Cards fans in the stands at Minute Maid for the NLCS, and I suspect they didn't get as much pub.
See, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. A home game for St. Louis, and everyone's so hyped up about history being made, they have to cut to anyone with a 'B' on their hat. That ain't happening next year.
And I suspect one of the reasons the Cards fans never got going was because, quite honestly, Boston never let them get going. I'm not going to overlook the obvious here.
But frankly, I'm not buying your protestations about "the curse." Your own blog - and every column today discussing the win - talks about what this means to fans whose parents or grandparents never got to see a World Series win. If that isn't at least obliquely about the curse, I don't know what is. Tell it to your sportswriters who invoked it every year when Boston got knocked out of the playoffs, or to the people who made that "Curse of the Bambino" doc for HBO, or whoever let it gain momentum after 1975 and 1986. They may not speak for you, or even the vast majority of Sox fans, but they're the ones everyone's hearing.
Your question about the Cards "not winning until 2074" is moot, because they'll win at least five times before then.
My blog never mentioned a "curse." I have posted repeatedly about how much this will mean, absolutely. And I did pass along/encourage the dedications to the great players of Sox teams past who never won one - admittedly.
Would you not consider it a shame if a player like Albert Pujols (who I'll put my money on as the most complete player and best hitter in MLB; Barry Bonds is unwilling to situational hit or do a Larry Walker -- ie, deliberately ground to second in order to score the run from 3rd) never got to win a World Series?
And recognizing that generations lived and died without seeing this moment is not a reference to a curse. If Joe from Houston's father loved the Astros, and wanted nothing more than to see the Stros win a WS, and then died before seeing it... does that not make the moment when they finally do just a little more poignant or bittersweet? After 86 years, we had a couple of generations in that spot. Doesn't mean we were cursed, it just means we hadn't won in 86 years and that several generations hadn't seen it.
I will agree that the Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy is pretty much out of a job now. But that's the media side of the house. You can't really fault the novelists and fiction writers for knowing a good story backdrop when they see it.
You're right on the "Curse" aspect being overblown. But we're not the ones who do it. It was nauseating listening to NY sports radio this morning, whining about how Sox fans are allegedly curse obsessed. Who the **ck do they think kept chanting "1918" and trotting out pictures of stupid Babe Ruth? YANKEE FANS. And yet we get blamed for obsessiveness? You're telling me that we're to blame for Fox's shot selection or production values?
As for the Cards winning five more times before 2074, I hope they do, actually. A player like Pujols deserves a ring.
I'm not trying to be deliberately antagonistic, man (well, maybe a little). What I hear from friends and family in New England differs from what you're telling me, is all. My angle, if you want to call it that, to all this was that there's been an element of sympathy to Boston's situation for quite a while now, and that's all gone.
Maybe I can't fault the media side of the house, but there were plenty of Red Sox nation in the stands for the games at Fenway holding up "Reverse the Curse" signs, wearing t-shirts with Ruth's face crossed out, and the like. You, personally, may not have bought into the whole deal, but plenty of your brethren did.
Fair enough. Can't argue that there weren't plenty of folks who bought into it.
Well, though it will sound hollow and false I am sure, I do want to extend congrats to the you, the Cardinals and their fans. St. Louis had a great season -- 105 wins, 3 players who went 30-100, an NL pennant... there's 28 other teams in baseball who'd like a season like that. It didn't end the way I know you'd hoped, but it was still a great season.
Here's to 2005.
Yeah, the White Sox have been longer suffering than the Red Sox. Send the Red Sox to Canada
Right, Frank. At least the Red Sox have only ever blown World Series'... not thrown them.
;-)
Pardon the blatant self promotion, but if you visit (you may have already, Pete):
http://www.cleavelin.net/archives/00001139.htm
I reprint a column from the Providence Journal which makes pretty much the same point, though it enlists a clinical social worker to give it some pseudo-intellectual cachet.
You raise an interesting point about the White Sox. It seems to me (but I've only limited observation here) that practically nobody outside of South Side Chicago even knows that The Other Sox exist. If you head south out of Chicago, it's pretty much Cubs country down to about Peoria or a bit south, when it starts becoming Cardinals country.
Go figure.