Winning the World Series was supposed to change everything. We said the day after was going to different and I guess to a certain extent it was. Suddenly there were a bunch of people who were never there before, the working class fan was priced out by the suits and pink hats who spent more time on the phone or at the bar then watching the game, it was now the cool thing to be instead of the birthright it use to. But none of that is what we meant by change. We thought the suffering was going to disappear, the torture was going to stop, the pessimism was going to be washed away. But watching the 2010 season limp off into the sunset Friday night, I couldn't help but feel all those old emotions bubble to the surface.
The 2010 Red Sox were a vintage pre-championship team. I had them written off from the get go, which I guess was something slightly different from the old "this is the year" attitude I held on to every April. They had no offense. The "big" signings in the offseason only brought more question marks. There was nothing in the minors. GM Theo Epstein said it was going to be a bridge year, but my question was, a bridge to what? And to top it all off, the team had no personality. They just weren't fun to watch. So, I was far from surprised when they fell behind early. I watched the games, but was torn between rooting for my team because they were my team and rooting against my team so I could boast, "I told you so." Somehow, though, they never fell totally out of contention. Even when one of the biggest injury bugs in the history of baseball hit the team, they hung in there. Never close enough to be a threat, but never so far behind to be discounted. I should have known right then.
The most painful aspect of being a Red Sox fan BC (before championship) wasn't that they didn't win. Perennial losers aren't hard to follow. People always wanted to compare us to the "long suffering" Cubs fans, but what is there to suffer about knowing where you are going to finish every year. Chicago fans never started a year thinking, "this is the year," they never popped the corks off the champagne only to have the ball go through the firstbase man's legs, they never had Bucky "F-ing" Dent or Aaron "F-ing" Boone. What was most painful about being a Red Sox fan was that they were always in the mix, but they never came through in the end. Each year you would tell yourself that you weren't going to be fooled again, you weren't going to get excited because it was never going to happen, but then it would be September and against all odds they were in the race and you fought the desire to give in, to let yourself get hurt again, but you couldn't and the minute you thought, wait, this could be the year, they watched a called third strike or they gave up that homerun or they committed that error and it hurt that much more then the last time.
So, the 2010 Red Sox went into the last two weeks of the season with the smallest of chances of making the playoffs. As much as I had disliked the team that started the season, I had grown to love the band of misfits and youngsters thrown together due to all the injuries. The Daniel Nava's and Ryan Kalish's made me almost forget how much we were overpaying JD Drew to hit .242. Every bad start by the Beckett's and Lackey's seemed to be offset by Lester and Buckholtz. The Yankees magic number was 3, but they had 6 games left with the Sox. If the Sox could take those 6 games and 3 of 4 from Chicago, the Yankees would have to sweep Toronto. It was a long shot... but they won game one in New York... then they won game two. It wasn't until they scored two runs in the top of the 9th inning off of Mariano Rivera to take a one run lead in game three that I thought, "Wait, we can do this." And then it all fell apart. Our answer to Rivera, one of the major reason we won it all in 2007, Jonathan Pappelbon couldn't get three lousy outs before giving up the tying run and then Okajima walked in, yes WALKED in, the winning run. And it hurt.
I write all this because it wasn't supposed to feel like this anymore. The team proved in 2004 and again in 2007 that they were capable of winning. There wasn't a curse. They weren't out to cause us all pain. The Boston Red Sox were no different then the other 29 teams in the league. We now knew what it felt like to win, something my grandfather never experienced, so there was no way we could feel let down again. And yet, here it was, three short years since the last championship, and those old feelings were back. I turned off the TV cursing myself for falling for the same old bullshit. How could they do this to us again? But then it dawned on me, maybe it wasn't them. Maybe there is something about a Red Sox fan, a real Red Sox fan, those of us who's hearts broke when Yaz fouled out with the winning run on second, who shed tears when that ball went through Buckner's legs, that courts these emotions. Maybe there is something about growing up in New England that makes one illogically hopeful and intrinsically pessimistic at the same time. Maybe we brought all the pain on ourselves. All those years I spent blaming the Red Sox for breaking my heart, maybe I was just projecting, pushing my fears about life and relationships on something that couldn't argue otherwise. I realize that most of you will find it ridiculous to find life lessons in a stupid sports team, but maybe there is something there. Maybe us Red Sox fans had it wrong all along. Things have changed since 2004, just not what we expected or wanted because the problem wasn't where we thought it was. It wasn't bad ownership. It wasn't players that folded in the clutch. It wasn't a bad trade made 80 some-odd years ago. Maybe the problem has been us the whole time.
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