I promised a sort of omnibus playoff post once the ALCS was over. And it’s over. And I sort of can’t believe it. I’m writing today off as obnoxious fan day. I have my Yankee Hater hat on, and I’m ready for anything. SOX WIN THE PENNANT means, to me, that I get one day to glare at everyone who ever shouted “1918″ to me, or (I or they) imagined doing so. Do you want me to hit you?
Yes, I’m still delirious. I blankly stared at the television for some two hours last night, still in disbelief. Finally, I returned home and started plotting research strategies for a five-page paper I have to write on Tender is the Night. If that sounds like a weird response, well, it is. This series, these playoffs, have been pretty weird. Anyone can go back in time and read what a mess last year’s playoffs were. In fact, maybe I should even do that, so I avoid repeating myself here. Nah. Well, let’s go ahead to the ALDS…
If I can be blamed for overwhelming arrogance, it would be during the ALDS. I am not sure I ever had the slightest doubt that the Sox would beat the snot out of the Angels. The Sox beat Anaheim during the regular season for the first time on July 16, on their fourth try. After six games, they had gone 2-4 against the Angels, and the split series in July was emblematic of the Sox troubles of earlier in the year that they had started to shed by sweeping Oakland earlier in the month. The Anaheim series, I remember, I considered a sort of return to form. The playoffs were still distant, and I still had faith, but I started imagining a playoff-free October.
Then we swept the potent, surging Angels to open the last month of the season. I was cocky. The wins came right in the middle of a 20-2 swing, a month since the last back-to-back losses. So yeah, I expected a win. Maybe even a sweep. I was so cocky that I didn’t really pay much attention to the series. Yeah, MLB complicated things by making two of the games day games, but still. I left work in the middle of Game 3, and Rimas called me to tell me Vlad had just tied the game off of a grand slam and got upset that I didn’t start freaking out right away. It was Game 3, after all, and, well, I had no doubt the Sox would win the series. If I got antsy, it was only since I was feasting on the idea of a sweep while the Yankees and Twins battled out a winner in five, with depleted bullpens.
Yes. I’ll get back to this, but you read correctly: “Yankees and Twins battled out a winner.” I didn’t care whom we met in the ALCS. In fact, my choice was the Twins—mostly since I never root for the Yankees to win—even if a Yanks win helps the Sox or makes better theater. Never. Would I have been crying last night if it was a bunch of silent people at the Triple-H Dome last night staring on in disbelief? You’d better believe it. Loving the Red Sox means you want your team to win the World Series. That ring is the prize, and everything else comes secondary.
That said, and with the hindsight of history, DAMN.
I was distinctly unexcited about facing the Yankees. I had faith in my team—I expected them to split in New York, pick up two in Fenway, and battle out a win in the Bronx—but I really didn’t have overwhelming faith. And anticipating the “Who’s your daddy?” and “1918″ chants—the smug Yankees fans yet again cheering and screaming in Sox fans’ ears after the decisive loss, while hoping that some beer gets poured over their heads if only to artificially age their brand-fucking-new Yankees caps—seemed not worth the price of entry. The Sports Guy tries the reverse jinx, but “There’s no way the Yankees can lose. Too much history. It’s impossible” sounds a lot like my perspective going in. History and luck. The Yankees get all the breaks. Every year. Look at, for example, what won “worst call in history” over at Page 2: Yippee’s phantom tag on Jos
October 21st, 2004 at 15:03
i don’t see how you can complain about NYY fan behavior late in the game (which was less than human) while wearing a Yankee Hater hat. one, yankee hater hats are sort of ugly. Two, they’re emblematic of the sort of problem, taking more joy in the other guy losing than your guy winning, that you’re bitching about. So get yr mind right.
October 21st, 2004 at 15:27
I don’t see the two the same way at all. First, the YH hat is a lark. Mostly since hate is funny. Second, I said this is for one day—as soon as I got the YH hat, I felt awkward about wearing it, for the reasons you cite. The Yanks fan prof I mention saw me this morning on his bike, and I hoped for a sec he wouldn’t recognise the hat. Finally, the main point about all of this is that, when all the chips are in the pot, the Sox are going to the World Series. That they humiliated the Yanks is second. Compare, I think, this post to the Sports Guy’s, which is all about what a sense of relief it’s been to beat the Yanks. That’s all his dad has to say when he wakes him up. I woke up this morning with tingles when I heard Lisa Labuz or whoever on the radio say that the Sox were going to World Series.
I want a ring. I would have been as excited after beating the Twins.
That all said, I fucking haaaaaaate the Yankees. I hate their smug attitudes. I hate that it seems totally acceptable for me to heckle them about dead family members (hi, Paul O’Neill!) because they are so congenitally evil. Recall Leyritz’s interview where he said he was rooting for the Yanks. What an asshole. Who looks like a biker Hector Elizondo. If you like baseball, you root for the Red Sox in that series, and baseball has been berry, berry good to Leyritz. More later. I’m late for class.
October 22nd, 2004 at 9:14
I’m hoping to hear more about your Mia Hamm theory. He shuld have known that stealing another’s man’s wife was a bad idea.
October 22nd, 2004 at 20:55
As odd as it sounds, I felt a renewed hope in all that is good in America immediately after game 7. Part of my thoughts were captured in this letter to the editor in today’s NYT: “After a grueling struggle, a tenacious underdog from Boston defeated an aggressive, overfinanced and arrogant rival. This come-from-behind victory avenges last season’s heartbreaking defeat and, as Mr. Vecsey implies, restores the faith of many in a national tradition. Which raises the question: Is what’s good for baseball good for politics as well?”
October 23rd, 2004 at 10:33
Mo, the Sox fans in Yankee Stadium weren’t chanting “Who’s your daddy?” They were chanting “Who’s your caddie?” Get it? I swear this is true.
October 25th, 2004 at 21:07
Look. I think it’s the Sports Guy that said that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house. When Yankees fans, who should be happy with all their success and rings, and so on, cheer for Boston to lose, tragically, WHILE GETTING THEIR ASSES KICKED, shows that the fans have no grasp of what it means to root for a team.
I root against the Yankees since I root against the house. As I explained to a friend last night—the Sox aren’t the team of virtue. They’re just a few mill less evil than the Yanks. But the Yanks built the despicable camp, and they’re the head that needs to be chopped off.
As you know, Pete, I’m a huge Brazil fan. The greatest soccer national team ever—more World Cups by two than any other nation. In a way, the Yankees of soccer, except for instead of buying cups, they economically depress a huge portion of the population who turns to soccer to make money or something. My point here is, if Brazil were playing a team with a great history of choking spectacularly against them (hi, Italy!), would I, should Brazil fall behind and then equalise, start cheering “Baaaggio…. Baaaaaggio”? Of course not. I want my team to win, first.
I’ll root against Italy in all the other matches they play. Fucking Italians.
October 25th, 2004 at 21:13
Was “19, 18″ then a list of Jeter and A-Rod’s respective handicaps?
I gotta say. I loved the whole “A-Rod to the Sox” thing, since I liked getting rid of Nomar. But in a way, I’m relishing his plunge into goat status in New York.
To which I offer this: http://hexachord.net/alcs/
Up two games on the Cards, I’m liking things. I wanted to go 1-1, so as to make a six or seven-game series more likely, but, I think I’ll take a WS win without my being in Boston to celebrate it.
Did I just jinx? No. Fuck you.
Also, Puma, the “Curse” had nothing to do with the Yankees and everything to do with the Sox. If you’re a curse adherent/crypto-anti-Semite, then the Sox must beat the Yanks so that, again, in Game 7, they can collapse utterly, another ring missing.
If you listen to the “Impossible Dream” from 1967, there’s such a sense of elation among the description, even though the Sox lost the Series. It’s funny to hear no gloom, no doom, no talk of curses, nothing. It’s the World Series that “no one won,” since both teams were great—the Sox came back from a terrible season to win the pennant, and the Cards were good, too. That’s part of why I can’t hate on the Cards; they beat us in a WS that had a winner only since these things, contractually, must.
October 26th, 2004 at 15:09
despite my hesistation in actually rooting for the red sox in any way, shape, or form, i shall put my political conscience aside, and cheer for them, just because i like you. (the world will probably end if they win.)
October 26th, 2004 at 15:51
Guy I talked to for a column last week said the following: “The Red Sox will always bring you back to where you believe in them only to crush you again.”