"Can You Believe It?"

Since I've gone to all the trouble (uh-huh) of starting a blog, it'd be a shame not to post my thoughts from when the Red Sox won the World Series 6 weeks ago, on October 27, 2004. It was, after all, an amazing, life-changing event! So here's just a copy of an email I sent out the morning after, for, uh, posterity's sake (not that anyone else will care!).


Wow. World Series Champion Boston Red Sox. I've dreamed about hearing that title since I was 11 years old; I've cried about NOT earning that title several times since I was 13 (that was in 1975). Now it seems unreal... like we're in an alternate universe suddenly, just ever so slightly askew of our own.

Since before last year's ALCS I've many times wondered what it would be like to succeed. It's the stuff of legend for our generation to actually accomplish this goal, this driving focus of the candy always being dangled deliciously just out of reach. Would reaching the candy prove, as Spock once said, that having is not as good a thing, after all, as wanting

Hmmmm, I think I like candy. I want more!

The incredible, almost incomprehensible buzz of this victory will doubtless fade over the coming weeks and months as life goes on. But what came out of this wasn't a loss of something to strive for in the future. Certainly next year and in the years to come we'll still as much as ever desire to win that championship; there won't be any "Aw, we've been there, done that" malaise.

What came out of this year was Redemption. An exorcism. (And I'm not referring to a "curse" here!) It was a removal of the pain from the past 30 years (in my case). To get all Trekkie here, it's as if Sybok (see Star Trek V, the sucky film) reached into my mind, found my "hidden pain", helped me through it and just totally lifted it away.

Aaron Boone? Man, what a great ALCS that was! Buckner? I never held a bad thought against the guy, but of course the Mookie Wilson moment hurt like hell. Now I can think about it and maybe even smile... yeah, we almost got it that time, that was special!

We have perspective. We can continue to enjoy the hunt, to thrive on the drama, to LIVE FOR THIS.

But maybe the ghosts of the past don't have to hurt us any more.

Besides, there's no way those idiots could do it again next year anyway, right?