warm up the hot stove

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti'The Green Fields of the Mind' Yale Alumni Magazine, November 1977

and so ends another season for the boston red sox.... this year, defeated in game 7 of the american league championship series by a younger, healthier and superior tampa bay rays team. the rays pitched better, fielded better, ran the bases better and hit better than the red sox and so i harbor no bitterness, no vitriol, no contempt for this year's red sox team and wish the rays (and haverhill's own carlos pena) well in their efforts to win the franchise's first world's championship.

game 5 of this year's ALCS will always be remembered for the red sox dramatic comeback. after appearing all but dead in games 2, 3 and 4 the sox defended their 2007 championship with vigor extendeding the summer if only for a few more nights...

now that the 'season' has ended, theo and the baseball ops group have a lot of work ahead... varitek's free-agency, lowell's ability to come back from surgery, papi's wrist, what to do with julio lugo, buchholz's ability to contribute at the major league level - all these questions will need to be answered this winter

I wrote last year on the night of the red sox second world championship in four seasons about my arrival to sports fan normalcy. After a 162 game regular season that started in japan back in march and a trip to the alcs that ended tonight, i am content to say 'normalcy' will allow me to survive the coming winter without suffering through any of the anger and hurt of seasons past...
*well, normalcy and knowing the defending world champion boston celtics start the defense of the team's 17th title in less than 6 weeks.

'over'? Nothing is over until we decide it is!

so i had a very 'different' post ready to go tonight when the score was 5, then 7 to 0 in favor of the rays... it was a post thanking the sox for another great summer of baseball and congratulating the rays on being the better team all season and during the playoffs... blah, blah, blah a real bunch of feel good !@#$% horse sh!t

The 2008 Boston Red Sox just said 'fck all that' and scored 8 unanswered runs to win game 5 and send the series back to tampa! the sox are winning games 6 + 7 and then it's on to the Series for Championship #3!




**this post may end up looking ridiculous in 48 hours but you know what? eff it, I don't care... DIRTY WATER!

The Big Tizzle is Back

so it took roughly 3 1/2 games and some dozen at bats but Big Papi is back! of course he never really left, despite what mark simon and the rest of the baseball tonight crew would have you believe... sure he was 0 for the season coming in to today's game but a ringing single in the 5th was followed by a drive over the rightfield fence off lefty (and old friend) alan embree. That ended a scoreless tie and sent the Red Sox to their second straight victory over the A's and provided Jon Lester the run support needed to pick up his first win of the season.

lester looked strong over 6.2 innings, papi got his stroke back and even the captain kicked in a homerun in the 9th for insurance. a positive day all around for the nation - tomorrow's an off-day and then another 3 days out of country before returning to the lyric little bandbox for the Home Opener and trophy presentation on April 8th... can't wait for this year's festivities!

*still amazes me that i am able to compare world series trophy presentation ceremonies at fenway park

opening day

“I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones… I’ve tried ‘em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.”
Annie - from Bull Durham





It's opening day (morning? the next day?) with your defending World Champion (never gets old) Boston Red Sox taking on the Oakland A's at the... Tokyo Dome?! 6a est is start time, can't say I'll be awake for the first 'official' pitch of the season but that's what TiVo is for...
Not sure how I'll handle this season's posts - maybe play-by-play and running commentary on Twitter?! (or maybe not, I'm thinking that could easily become very annoying for everyone involved so i'm open to suggestions) anyway as always, the sox blog will be the place to go for in-game rants and raves and some post game analysis as the development of AFSAB continues...

LET'S PLAY BALL!

A Welcome Arrival to Sports Fan Normalcy

The joy, exhilaration, fulfillment and satisfaction that come from this latest Red Sox World Series Championship cannot be matched by the complete and overwhelming sense of 'normalcy' I now feel.

This is what it should be like to be a fan of a professional sports team. You cheer your team all season long enjoying the wins while agonizing over the losses. The team is successful and reaches the playoffs where the intensity of each game rises to a higher level. The wins become more rewarding, the losses more painful. But there is no sense of sickening dread. No feeling of physical anguish, no heart-stopping, stroke-causing, mind-crippling, comatose-inducing accompaniment to every...win (the losses go beyond any literary description I am capable of)

I thought (hoped, wished, prayed) those feelings would have left me after the glorious 2004 Season. That October, The 25 triumphed over 86 years of not hopelessness, hope is what had made it all so cruel...
Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane©Red What that Team did was triumph over all the forces; cosmic, karmic... demonic, that had made being a Red Sox fan a fantastically miserable one that could only be understood by those who had staggered on as survivors of the team's tortured history.

Sadly though, those same feelings persisted. Once the elation of 2004 subsided and a new season began, they returned once again. Only now they were accompanied by a new feeling nearly as devastating as 'what if I never see them win it?'. The feeling that 'what if I never see them win another one?'. Those fans of the 1918 Red Sox had no idea what their life and the lives of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would become. But fans of the 2004 Red Sox knew all to well the burden that had been hoisted upon us... "what if there are no more championships? what have we done to future generations who will be born in to this unholy cadre with only the mythical memories of the names of Ortiz, Schilling, Varitek, Ramirez and Foulke... no more real to them then the names Ruth, Hooper, Mays, Leonard and Strunk are to our generation?"

But now, after the Boston Red Sox second World Series championship in the last four seaons I feel a sense of... normalcy - which as a fan, is all I've ever wanted. I don't need to cheer for a team that wins Back-to-Back-to-Back' championships or becomes a 'Dynasty'. As a fan, all I have ever really wanted is simply the chance to enjoy the game. To know that if my team possesses the necessary talent and performs to their potential over the course of the season, that as a fan, I will be rewarded quite logically (remember the word 'logically' once held no meaning for Red Sox fans) with a Championship.

No longer does each season carry with it a sense of dread. No more intolerable anguish. All those feelings can now be replaced with normalcy. Happiness follows a win, disappointment a loss... and that's it. Am I somehow less of a fan now? I don't think so. Is being a Red Sox fan somehow less special, the experience less singular than it once was - probably. Is being a member of 'The Nation' now just like being a fan of any other successful sports team? I hope so...

The 25 made a chance at normalcy a possibility on October 27, 2004 but it wasn't until tonight, October 28, 2007, that Sports Fan Normalcy became a reality.
So Thank You and Congratulation to the 2007 Boston Red Sox - World Series Champions and bringers of normalcy to Red Sox Nation.