There's Always Last Year

2005

I had a David Lynch moment Saturday night.

While sitting on my barstool at the Quarter Lounge, the music stopped suddenly, the lights flickered and a little beady eyed man that I had never seen before shuffled toward me, held up his right index finger and for no apparent reason shouted in my ear: "The universe has been turned upside down. First the Red Sox won the World Series and now this year the White Sox are going to win." Then he stumbled away and the music came back on in the bar. I'm not sure if he was real. I may have been dreaming. What I do know is that I wanted the universe to stay at whatever cosmic angle it was at in October of 2004. I wanted the Red Sox to win the World Series again.

One year ago today, I had thrown in the towel (we all had, admit it). How naive! The Yankees had just beaten us 19-8 the day before. It was getting ugly. No baseball team had ever come back from a 3-0 series deficit to win. The Yankees were headed to the World Series. Then a little man named Dave Roberts stole a base and a big man named Papi hit a homerun and "The Comeback" was on.

2004

If you need some chicken soup for your baseball fan soul the way that I do, here is an excerpt from Dan Shaughnessy's October 18th article, The Dream Stays Alive:

Down three games to none, and down 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth, the Sox last night rallied to tie the game against indomitable Yankee closer Mariano Rivera. They won it in the 12th inning at 1:22 this morning when Ortiz hit a Paul Quantrill 2-and-1 pitch into the Yankee bullpen to give the Red Sox a 6-4 Game 4 victory at Fenway Park. The game lasted 5 hours, 2 minutes, and many of those who stayed for the finish lingered even longer into the morning.

Aaaah. Sigh.