Sox win! Sox win!

Over the last couple of weeks, I've watched more baseball games from start to finish than maybe the rest of my life combined. The theory has always been for any postseason series that I'll watch as long as the local team is involved (except for hockey). Until the Pats started winning a few years ago, that was always good for a few games every couple of years, but no more. Now suddenly this year I saw the Sox sweep the Angels, watched all seven games with the Yankees (didn't quite make it to the end of game four), and now a four-game sweep of the Cardinals to be witness to a defining moment in Boston history.



I realize that may sound like hyperbole to those who don't live around here, but ever since I came to Boston lo these many moons ago, there are two things that everybody always talks about, where they were during the blizzard of '78, and how the Sox hadn't won a World Series since 1918. As Shaughnessy's column today says, the fact that the Red Sox seemingly had this streak of bad luck, culminating in the '86 series but continuing on since then up until game 7 of last year's ALCS with the Yankees, helped to define the city as a collection of rabid, loyal fans who were always the also-rans, who could never quite overcome the stigma, even if it was largely in their own collective minds, that they couldn't get it done. Meanwhile other teams like Florida and Arizona could grab a championship only a few years into their franchise history and wonder what all the fuss was about. At least for years Boston had the Celtics and Bruins to fall back on, but they've both started losing streaks of their own since the '80's, and besides it's just not the same as baseball.



Coming from Chicago, which has twice as many baseball teams, both with an even longer losing streak (and I believe neither has even been to the World Series since the Truman administration), it took a while to get caught up in the Red Sox mania, but even though I don't watch the games very often and only go to Fenway once every few years, I'd consider myself a Sox fan. If the Sox had ended up playing the Cubs in the World Series last year as it should have been, I would've been rooting for the Sox all the way, but otherwise I root for the Cubs too (hard to do these days).



It was great when the Patriots won the Superbowl. It was even better when they won it again. Now everyone here expects them to win. So far, they still do, but that bubble can only last for so long. Dynasties are hard to come by these days in any sport, and a Red Sox team that sinks back into mediocrity or, even worse, almost-greatness from whence it came, will be that much harder to bear now. On the other hand, what about a Red Sox team that re-signs Pedro and Varitek and comes roaring back next year to do it all again? It would be fun, to be sure, but it's possible that it just won't quite seem like the Red Sox we've been living with all these years.



As far as this year goes, in the end they made it look easy, the Cardinals never really showed up, so we all got a reprieve from the expected seven-game marathon with multiple extra-inning, five-hour games like we saw with New York. But even so, it was a lot of baseball. Now I'm going to go sleep for a week.