As I write this, it's been a day and a half since the Red Sox...uh...ah...man, it's just hard to get my brain around the concept, let alone form it with my mouth. I have no doubt it's a common feeling around these parts. Well, not even around New England, but around Red Sox Nation. I keep waiting for them to announce that it's a best-of-eleven series, or that after review, Dave Roberts was actually out after he stole second in game 5 of the ALCS, or as someone said in the paper, that Derek Lowe had been traded to the Nippon Ham Fighters before the last game and was ineligible to pitch as a result.
I guess what makes it all so surreal isn't the fact that it happened, but that after their last loss - almost two weeks ago, now! - they ran the table. Eight straight games, a postseason record. Never been done before. And since that fateful game 5 - which I still can't believe I had the incredible fortune to witness in its entirety - the games were won rather handily, except for game 1 of the World Series. As I commented to Chris, we're so caught up in waiting for the other show to drop that we completely forget to realize the first one hasn't even dropped yet. But it was done so convincingly, especially the last three games being no-doubt-about-it contests. No freakish calls going the Sox way, no back-and-forth seesaw games, no incredible run of good luck. In other words, nobody other than the most dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox hater is giving this team the 2002 Patriots treatment, when the team was thought to have gotten lucky on the "tuck rule" game during the AFC title game against the Raiders, and then won on a last-second field goal against the Rams in the Super Bowl. Critics said the team had just gotten hot or lucky at the right time, and the title was tainted. The next year the team didn't make the playoffs, and critics felt vindicated; when the Patriots made it back to the Super Bowl last year, there were still doubters.
But none this time around. The Sox reeled off four straight wins against the winningest National League team of the year. In fact, no NL team had ever won that many games since...the 1986 Mets. And the '86 Mets had won more games since any NL team since...the 1975 Reds.
I was watching that '86 series. I'd been following the team for the entire season, even hunting down Boston Globes while we were in the old family station wagon on a cross-country trip. I remember tracking the team's magic number - they started it as high as 25 or something like that - and I still have a pile of 1986 newspapers in my closet at home. I still remember Oil Can Boyd clinching the AL East, and the front-page headline read simply "That clinches it!" I started a scrapbook during the ALCS against the then-California Angels. I was about three feet from the screen of our ancient RCA set, downstairs in our home in Needham, hands clenched during game 5 of the ALCS when the bottom of the 9th came around. Baylor homered, Henderson homered, the Angels tied it back up and Hendu won it in the 11th with a sac fly. My first taste of victory from the jaws of defeat. I started a scrapbook, cutting out ALCS news stories and box scores. And then the World Series came...and those newspapers are still gathering dust. The game 6 disaster, and the game 7 headline read something like "Boston is Mudville again".
To be honest, I don't remember if my parents and brothers were even watching the games with me - maybe my parents were watching in their room, leaving me alone with the TV, or maybe they were sitting back on the couch while I was inches away from the TV. I just remember snippets of the games - heck, it was 18 years ago - but those were the last major postseason games I watched with my family, I think. Maybe 1988 and 1990, but being swept by the A's those two years, I may have just blocked those out. By 1995 I was in college, and another unmemorable sweep in the first-ever ALDS (though it was the last time we took the AL East title). In 1999, I had relocated to Boston, and I think I saw Pedro's famous 5-inning no-hit stint to clinch game 5 of the ALDS with Chris at Boston Billiards, and I know for a fact I was watching the 13-1 spanking of Roger Clemens there. A few years later Chris moved to DC but we've always spent time on the phone during Sox playoff games. Last year during game 7 of the ALCS I think I said more to him than I did to my wife (who tolerates this unquestioningly...I really don't know why) and we spent most of the last four innings on the phone together. Not even saying much of anything at all. When the Bad Thing happened in the 11th, he said "Good night, Dave", I said "Good night, Chris", and that was that.
A month ago, we made plans for my parents to come visit us and have dinner out on Tuesday the 26th, since we hadn't seen them for a while. When the Sox came back from the dead against the Yankees, we changed plans and they were going to come that night for pizza. Rain threatened to delay the beginning of the game, so they rescheduled for the following night - the night of game 4, since as my mother put it, "We thought we'd come down and watch this with you, since we're responsible for starting you on this whole journey." They showed up at 7:15, I came back 10 minutes later with some pizza, and I actually got to watch a playoff game with my parents for probably the first time in 15 years. We cheered as Johnny Damon improbably led off the first with a homer, and shortly after Trot Nixon banged a bases-loaded double in the third, they hit the road back home, to celebrate back in Maine.
Around the seventh inning, with a 3-0 lead in the game and a 3-0 stranglehold on the series, Chris called me and our conversation came around to finally getting to pop the cork on some champagne. He told me that he'd made the trip to the local liquor store to pick up a bottle of bubbly earlier in the day. In making small talk with the cashier, he mentioned that he was all excited and nervous. "Oh, you're going to pop the question tonight?" he was asked. His answer: "Fuck no, this is WAY more important!"
My parents ended up making it back home to see the last out of the eighth. As the top of the ninth ended, the phone rang - Chris informed me that he'd be breaking with tradition to spend the last three outs on the phone with his mother. That's hard logic to argue with, so I told him to enjoy and hunkered down on the couch with Viv to watch what nobody had ever watched before (and as it turns out, what nobody had ever listened to before - the first baseball radio broadcasts didn't happen until 1920!). Two minutes later, the phone rang again - Chris again. His mother wanted no part of breaking with tradition and claimed she'd be too nervous to be on the phone anyway - she instead watched the end from her undisclosed bunker basement, away from all other human contact. Minor nervousness ensued when Albert Pujols drove a single up the middle, right through Keith Foulke's legs (BAD flashback), but one out, then two, and the only thing standing between the Red Sox and a championship was Edgar Renteria. Edgar Renteria, who I had watched play minor league ball in Portland, as a Sea Dog. Edgar Renteria, who had graduated from Portland to play for the Marlins, and who had the World Series-winning hit in 1997. Edgar Renteria, who wore the number three on his back - the same number three that George Herman Ruth had worn all those years ago. A one-hopper back to Foulke, a flip to Mientkiewicz, and my left eardrum was exploding with joy. We screamed, we shouted, we rolled around on the couch...and then we didn't know what to do with ourselves. I hung up to let Chris celebrate, and called my parents. At 11:42pm. I'm surprised it even went through, that the switchboards weren't jammed beyond belief. There aren't many calls you want to get that late, but I'd say this qualified as one of them.
And then just like that, the journey was complete. One that had begun four months before the Sox battled against the Big Red Machine, continued through an epic collapse in the 1978 stretch run, a heartbreaking trip to the brink in 1986 where FIFTEEN TIMES the team was one strike away, thirteen straight postseason losses (the last two in 1986, 4-game sweeps in 1988 and 1990 plus three more in 1995), and then the bitter, tooth-and-nail Boston-New York faceoffs of 1999 and 2003. No more "wait till next year". Next year had finally come.
Can't wait till next year.
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