Tonight it begins...

By Boston Dan
Correspondent for www.drunkenbleachers.com

Tonight, it begins....

You are Keith Foulke. It is October 31st, 2004, Game 7 of the World Series. You are standing on the mound, facing the last Cardinals' batter in the bottom of the 9th with a man on second. The Sox are up 4-3; there are two outs and a full count. You are one strike away from winning the world series for Boston on Halloween night, and the crowd is roaring...thundering, louder than it’s ever been in 102 years. You know that 35,000 people are screaming at you from inside the park, but you also know that about 1,500,000 are jammed into Kenmore square, ready to experience for the first time, what many have waited a lifetime for. And they are thundering and cheering. They are louder than the people in the park and drowning them out. From the Hood Blimp 600 feet over Kenmore Square, you are one tiny speck in the midst of a sea green, surrounded by a sea of red. The red is a constantly moving mass of fans. Millions of them. You are at the epicenter of this scene and their hopes and dreams weigh on your shoulders... just a speck. You have to deliver the baseball over home plate, and if you can do that without letting the batter crush it over the right field wall, you will be deified. The plate is 60 feet 6 inches away, and the batter is paid about 5 million dollars a year to do only one job: hit baseballs over right field walls. You can’t hear yourself think. The batter stands in… Time to go to work.
How do you feel?

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