A month ago today I was in Maui, taking in the sights along the road to Hana. Got some pictures in the mail yesterday from Mom, primarily of that particular tour. Sure wish I was still there...



Last night was game 5 of the ALDS, which is not the acronym for Lou Gehrig's Disease, but the American League Division Series, and who could resist what with the Red Sox having surged back into the fray with two straight wins at home after dropping the first two in Oakland. It was 1999 all over again, same pattern, same result, the major difference being there wasn't a 23-2 game in Fenway (or whatever it was) like last time, and Pedro wasn't injured and doing duty as a closer like last time. All the games were close, two went into double-digit innings, but last night's game couldn't possibly have been more of a squeaker, where the Sox did everything by the book to blow a three run lead, but still managed to come up with the win.



What's different about these kind of games is that there's some sort of emotional involvement (from me, that is, lots of people get that way at every game). Since I grew up in Illinois and there were no winning teams in Chicago, you never got that feeling of anticipation in a close game. Sure the Bears made the playoffs a couple of times in the late 70's, but only to get stomped by Dallas in the first round. As soon as I moved here, the Bears won the Superbowl, and against the Patriots no less, the timing stunk as I couldn't see all the Bears games on tv out here, and they were so dominant there wasn't much concern about them winning the whole thing. The Patriots squeaked in by upsetting the Dolphins ("Squish the Fish") and although the rallying cry was to "Berry the Bears", or, even better, "Smear the Bears", which only rhymes in Boston, they ended up the smearees and were out of the game after about five minutes.



In '86, the Celtics won their last championship, not a big basketball fan at the time (with only the pre-Jordan Bulls to go by, and the NBA not on tv that much before cable, it wasn't a top sport of mine), then the Red Sox made the World Series, and we all know what happened there. After that came the long dry spell in Boston, the Patriots gave it another go in the mid-90's, the Bruins and Celtics every so often would squeeze into the playoffs and lose in the first round, but nothing much to get excited about, and after the heartbreak of the '86 Red Sox (which was only a year after I moved here so it still wasn't that big a deal to me, bearing in mind that in '86 I still didn't think I was going to be staying here forever), who could afford the attachment to another team's playoff aspirations?



The Wildcats came through, though by having a spectacular season out of nowhere in '95. I have fond memories of watching them beat Notre Dame on tv in the first week of the season, and then it just kept happening. Nate, Tony, Wolsky and I were all in weekly contact as NU piled one win onto the next, to the point that we were bowl-bound for the first time in our lifetimes. As those late season matchups against Illinois, Penn State, and Michigan State came around, when each additional win meant not only a better shot at a bowl, but at a better bowl, until the Big Ten title was on the line, suddenly I was watching games that mattered. Instead of having a passing interest in who won or lost, it seemed to be important, and there was that heady sense of unease, the wild swings in mood from euphoria to devestation that went with each great play or great goof. At the end of each game, and almost every one was a nailbiter, you couldn't help feeling exhilirated and exhausted, and downright giddy with anticipation for the next matchup. And lo and behold, 10 weeks after chloe was born, I was heading to Pasadena for a rendezvous with my fellow alums and a date with destiny.



Of course we lost, but it was a lot of fun. The Rose Bowl game itself would of course been great to win, but winning it wouldn't have accomplished anything more than what the team had already achieved, and the 'Cats made a game of it, keeping it close until the last quarter. The next year they were right back in it with a trip to the Citrus Bowl, but after the once-in-a-lifetime experience of the Rose Bowl, neither Tony, Adam or I went since it didn't seem like as big of a deal.



The Patriots finally broke the logjam in Boston in 2001, again with a series of close games and some questionable calls going their way for once, and their last-second Superbowl win is still talked about today. By this point of course I was a Boston sports fan (although not as "what have you done for me lately" as most of the natives around here), so that was a fun ride, the Patriots were underdogs in every playoff game but they won them all anyway, and came close to giving away the Superbowl but just couldn't do it. The Red Sox had teased in '99, but after the gutsy come from behind series against Cleveland they were crushed by the evil Yankees in five games and that was that. This year the Yankees once again are the next roadblock, and of course are favored by everybody, but Arizona showed they were beatable, the Red Sox have never been better, so anything could happen. Watching game four on Sunday sort of reminded me of the Bulls' heyday, when they could go down by 20 or 30 points in a crucial game, and you just sat back and said, "they'll come back", and they always did. The Sox were down then, too, but with the hometown crowd and the sudden ascendance of the bullpen and any number of other factors, you couldn't help but think, "they'll pull it out", and sure enough they did. That was not the feeling last night, where you could barely stand to look at the screen for what was happening before your eyes, but you didn't dare give up on them, and they somehow pulled it off.



And the Cubs are still right in it, too. While we were on the snorkeling trip we struck up a conversation with some people from Marblehead, one of whom was conspicuous by his Red Sox baseball cap. I said I liked the idea of a Cubs/Red Sox world series, in that at least one curse would be broken, and this guy agreed, but cautioned that the odds were good that if it did happen, somewhere towards the end of game seven the earth would open up and swallow the stadium and both teams along with it, leaving the outcome in doubt for all time. Like a movie or a book that ends on a cliffhanger, we'd all be left to speculate for the rest of eternity what would've happened. And what's so wrong with that?