It’s a queer feeling. Knowing from the fourth pitch that the Red Sox would win and yet all the time not allowing yourself to say it out loud. Waiting. Waiting for the inevitable collapse. Waiting for the Cardinals’ bats to wake up. Waiting for a Buckner-style error. Waiting for a Bucky Fucking Dent homer. Waiting . . .
Waiting . . .
Three outs to go.
Come on Foulke. Come on baby.
Two outs to go.
Just a couple more.
One out to go.
Oh hell!
Goddamn! What a beautiful play! Waitaminit . . . was that it?!
*open Guinness. Drink happily while listening to the happiness in Boston over my friend’s mobile phone*
Of course, in retrospect it all makes perfect sense. We should have seen it at the time. It was all as inevitable as the collapse anyone with sense was waiting for. Naturally nobody will admit to it. Everyone will happily crow about the ‘Team of Destiny’ and how they knew it was the year. I may not have been a member of Red Sox Nation very long but I’ve followed the Phillies since I was a kid and I can deal with reality.
In the end, they had to make it all look easy.
It’s all so obvious now:
- They had to go through the Yankees to get there. That’s a given.
- Naturally they’d be the only team in postseason history to come back from a 3-0 deficit.
- Of course a fellow who led the team in strikeouts would rediscover his power and be the deciding factor in game after game.
- Why wouldn’t a pitcher who’d been benched due to piss poor performance make the start in all three clinching games?
- Certainly they’d have to play the best team in Major League Baseball to win it all.
- Isn’t it clear that they’d hold the middle of the lineup for the best team in the MLB to virtually no hits and a .190 team batting average overall?
- Who wouldn’t have thought you could pitch even more dominantly with your ankle sewn together?
The list goes on and on, ad infinitum.
Maybe there is something to this ‘Team of Destiny’ bollocks after all. Maybe the 21st Century will be the Red Sox Century in the way the 20st was the Yankees Century.
I’m still waiting for the Red Sox/Phillies World Series. Then I can die happy.
Does a Patriots/Eagles Superbowl count?