good for the red sox. although i really didn’t watch much of the series with the yankees. baseball at it’s best is all about delayed pleasure, which is the only reason anyone is a red sox fan in the first place. so how better to really be a true hardcore baseball fan than to not watch what you just knew was going to be a historic series of games, no matter what actually happened?
besides, i have french class for three hours at night and physical therapy for my back at seven o’clock in the morning. i can’t do it all. and the games will be on espn classic or yes channel some weekend when i’m bored.
it’s seventeen after eight in the morning as i write this, and already the yankee fans at the office are loudly dissecting this game i didn’t watch. it’s perversely pleasurable this morning to hear these people wailing and gnashing their teeth, along with all the tv interviewees i saw this morning. the yankees lost! how could this be! where was the ghost of babe ruth? why didn’t x player do y? how could torre jeter williams rivera have done that? i’m sure it makes sense to these people when the yankees lose to someone else, because, well, that’s someone else. but they never lose to the red sox, at least in their mind, which conveniently ignores both karma in general and their season record against the sox.
yes the red sox curse isn’t over. and that’s the one hope that yankee fans are clinging to this morning. they are still clinging to that shred of hope that the red sox will collapse in the series and their precious curse will remain intact. and, being such a yankee hater, paradoxically i can respect them for that. it’s exactly like how i live for the season when george steinbrenner breaks the $200 million level on player salary and misses the playoffs altogether.
but the karma wheel turns, as it will for me, and these vastly entitled fans finally understand just a sliver of what it means to be a true baseball fan, to be a red sox fan or a cubs fan. it probably took something this epic to get it through their thick skulls. the yankees are, now, (and this deserves capital letters on a lowercase site) The First Team In Baseball History To Lose A Series After Having Been Up Three Games To Nothing. and ain’t nothing going to change that.
although, to be truthful, i’m betting that a lot of these vocally devastated fans are fair weather fans, and not even really baseball fans in general, and really aren’t buying tickets and such. so, all credit to the yankees, their fan base will probably continue to generate the kind of cash that can finance $200 million payrolls year after year, and this year is probably just an aberration for their franchise. and it ain’t like we have the small-market-low-salary twins beating them, which would probably be better karma overall than having the $120 million dollar red sox beating the $180 million yankees. but i’m enjoying this. don’t let logic dim this moment for me.
but, for once, in spite of the greed of the owners of baseball, and the profligate spending of steinbrenner, and the invoking of babe ruth and all of the other ghosts, and the diamond-visioning of mickey mantle pre-game at yankee stadium, and the presence of yogi berra and mr. october and everyone else they dredged up to be there, the red sox won. and, in some sort of reverse curse, it’s not only possible but probable that the very act of summoning all these spectres has now rendered them forever powerless. regardless of the outcome of the next series. this was the series that mattered.
now we just have to get to work on the cubs. anyone for goat stew?
