BASEBALL'S OPENING DAY IS SUNDAY AND THE BOSTON REDSOX ARE PLAYING THEIR LONG-TIME RIVALS.....THE YANKEES.... IN NEW YORK.
BUT THIS YEAR, THE SOX ENTER YANKEES STADIUM AS THE WORLD CHAMPS.
IT'S BEEN 86 YEARS, AND WRITER LOIS SHEA CONFESSES THAT EVEN SHE GAVE UP HOPE.
I want one of those Red Sox t-shirts that says ?I kept the faith.?
But it would be a lie.
I lost it in about the seventh inning of the Saturday Night Massacre.
You remember ? Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.
The Yankees were rubbing the Red Sox? noses in a 19-8 whuppin?. They were Pedro?s daddy, and we were done.
Winter was declared. Conversation turned to politics. I was ridiculed for checking the score; the more cynical and urbane among us had detached innings earlier.
After almost 30 years of this, I should have known better. But I had extended giddy hope again.
I had embraced the Idiots, trusted in Theo, begun to believe, even, that Manny Ramirez could catch a fly ball and throw to the right base in the same play.
But the Red Sox had fallen into a mineshaft.
Down, three games to none against the Yankees.
You don?t crawl out of that.
You die down there.
It has been said that the mood of our entire region rises and falls with the fortunes of the Red Sox.
That is frivolous, illogical -- and true.
By Sunday morning, when our neighbor Klare and her dad came through the door, I had worked myself into a state of bilious wrath.
A polite ?Hello? was more than I could manage.
?Fragagh,? I said, mostly to Klare?s dad. ?They?re DONE. That?s IT. I can?t (expletive deleted) STAND this any more. I?M NOT WATCHING IT.?
Ten-year-old Klare looked up at me with wet and widening eyes and said:
?But?I never though YOU would lose hope in the Red Sox.?
UGH. Sucker-punched by a ten-year-old.
Now I had to watch. And attempt to believe.
I knew what was going to happen.
But still I sat, late into October nights and early mornings, watching.
I watched, with agitated pulse; heart pounding so violently that it occurred to me that these ballgames should come with a consumer warning: watching Red Sox in post season could increase risk of stroke in patients with cardiovascular disease.
Ask your doctor if becoming a Mariners fan is right for you.
I covered my head with a blanket when the Yankees came to bat, wincing under there, trying to protect myself from the inevitable and the ghastly.
And then the Red Sox?won.
Four straight, they won.
They scrambled up onto the broad shoulders of David Ortiz, climbed out of that mineshaft into the daylight -- and all New England sang a hallelujah chorus.
The actual World Series was, of course, forgettable by comparison (they played the Cardinals, right?)
Still with the Sox up, three games to none, and two out in the ninth inning, the adults in the room held our collective breath.
When Foulke picked up the hopper from Renteria and threw to Mientkiewicz, we made this gasping/choking sort of noise, hhhhnhmph.
And then ?OH MY GOD HE CAUGHT THE BALL!?
My nine-year-old wondered about this later: They were way ahead, mom. It was an easy play.
Mientkiewicz is a great player.
Why did you think he might miss it?
Oh, child, to have been born after 1986.
Emily Dickinson wrote: ?Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.?
Our friend Klare knew right along.
She may as well have been singing when she walked through the door that bleak Sunday morning in October
So on the eve of Opening Day, Red Sox Nation finds itself in a peculiar and acutely unfamiliar state of euphoria.
This is our season of unencumbered joy.
It doesn?t even matter what happens.
Manny can throw to the wrong base all year, Kevin Millar can go 0-for-June and New England will keep right on grinning like David Ortiz in a post-game interview.
We can, finally, watch every inning of 162 games of Red Sox baseball with the irrepressible hope?of children.
