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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Red Sox rule in the
ultimate fantasy game
DID you see that? Did you watch the live reaction? Did you see the looks on their faces, the pure, unrestrained joy?Did you watch them pour out into the streets by the thousands, people who didn't know each other but just wanted to be together?
The Boston Red Sox.
The Boston Red Sox had just won the World Series.
Did you see the man in the bar with his face in the camera, the way he held his head in his hands, not once, but again and again, as if he simply could not process this moment. As if he believed it for a split second, then couldn't again.
Three times in a single second, he was floored.
This was too big.
The Boston Red Sox.
The Boston Red Sox had won the World Series.
Can you comprehend that kind of joy over a sports team? Most of us can't, not these days. That innocence is long lost.
No, now we have fantasy teams to keep track of. Now free agents come and go. Now we have real, adult lives.
Now, our favorite sports teams serve mainly as vehicles for trash talk. In phone and e-mail exchanges that we tell ourselves are "friendly," but too often are just another excuse to rub salt in another's wounds.
And at stadiums, when we hurl insults we (or most of us) would be ashamed of in the light of day.
Now, too often, a sports team is just another excuse to riot -- online, if not in the street.
But this was different. Did you see it? This was joy. This was what sports used to be.
Fantasy sports? This was a fantasy. This was the ultimate fantasy.
One of the proud, great old teams in this grand old game.
The Boston Red Sox won the World Series.
It's a miracle, Boston winning at last. It was history. This must have been what it was like when the Brooklyn Dodgers finally broke through.
(Only better. Did you see Manny Ramirez doing "Isaac the bartender"?)
And we got to see it. In some small way, we got to share it.
It was one of those rare television experiences that let us feel the emotion through the screen.
The man holding his head like it might pop right off.
The people pouring out into the street.
Maybe it had to do with the old uniforms, the ones that rarely changed. The classic "B" hats. All the talk about losses endured, and Babe Ruth and 1918.
Maybe it just felt "baseball" in a Ken Burns, "Field of Dreams" kind of way.
Maybe it was all the old players, still Red Sox, Red Sox forever, talking about having come so close time and again. The talk of generations that endured the pain, but never lost the love.
We've seen World Series celebrations before, but this one was different. This one was pure.
Did you see it, when it happened at last?
In the end, there was no curse, not at all. It turned out that for 86 years, the people of Boston were blessed.
In the end they were luckier than all of us, that their team still means this much to them, even in this day and age.