i believed: part one
Where to begin? It still seems like a dream, an impossible reality. I still lie awake, well past my bedtime, a smile plastered to my face as visions of Foulke to Minky flash through my head. I still find myself tearing up as I think back to those October nights, when the impossible became a reality; I space out at times, a goofy grin encompassing my face, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. What began on a cold Sunday evening in Boston and ended on a chilly Wednesday night in St. Louis was the journey of a lifetime, an adventure ultimately bringing joy to myself and to red sox nation, a joy previously experienced by few diehard sox fans.
I know it’s dangerous to go looking for things to believe in as it just distracts us from what is – the truth doesn’t change; all that changes is perception and distance – but I believed in the 2004 Boston Red Sox, quite possibly more than I have ever believed in anything in my life, religious deities aside, of course. I lived and died with this team more than ever before, and that’s certainly saying something. After the heartbreak of 2003, when Boone dashed my hopes, and those of RSN as a whole, with an extra-inning homerun, I have to admit that I cursed the team, among others. I vowed never to get sucked back in; I was done with baseball, done with the Red Sox, done with this so-called love of my life. I believed in the curse for the first time; I questioned why God hated me so much; what had I done to deserve such unfathomable torture? But gradually, the pain lessoned; I’m not saying it went away, but, day-by-day, I found myself able to grasp the reality of the situation, that the timing was just not right. The puzzle was still missing a few key pieces.
So off young Theo went, searching for those magical pieces. From the beginning, Schilling personified a baseball fan’s dream come true, a player willing to give his all to the cause at hand. From his first foray into the blog world that is SoSH and his “I guess I hate the Yankees now” quote to the infamous “I’m not sure I can think of any scenario more enjoyable than making 55,000 people from NY shut up”, he linked diehard fans to the team they loved so much. He instilled a World Series clause in his contract for crying out loud. He started game threads for all three wins in the ALDS and pushed us to question ‘why not us’. His heroic embodiment of Roy Hobbs is sure to serve as an inspiration for years to come, his bloody sock an image forever embedded in Red Sox history.
I have to admit that I questioned Theo throughout the Arod debacle; I adored Nomah, with all his rituals and superstitions. He’s a true throwback player, the one Teddy personally anointed his protégé. I was brought up with number five, my return to obsessing over the team coinciding with his rookie season. Needless to say, my enthusiasm on obtaining Payrod, the anti-team player, was low. Remember, at this time, Nomar was still Nomah, an icon adored by children and adults alike throughout New England, the ultimate team player, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the team. This was before the trade rumors and the lies and the Achilles injuries.
Then Theo got us a closer, the same closer who failed to close out the ALDS for the A’s against our very own Sox. Unexplainable, certainly, insane, perhaps, a bold statement to the rest of the league that he was building a championship team, definitely. He signed a second baseman whose defensive skills left us in awe when he took over for the injured Nomar at short as well as a backup second baseman who ended up starting and playing a crucial role and whose OBP impressed despite leading the league in strikeouts, because after all, ‘who died and made you Mark Bellhorn”?
A new manager, who had a losing record in Philly, was hired to replace the gutless Forest Gump. How was he ever going to handle it in Boston? All the scrutiny coupled with a clubhouse full of characters including one very interesting little Dominican, what were the boys in charge thinking? Were they letting Schilling make all management decisions now too? Nevertheless, the Boys of Francona were born.
From the beginning of spring training, it seemed the fates were once again playing a hand in the Red Sox destiny. Our fallen hero ailing from an injured Achilles Heel of all things, our mighty Dirt Dog sidelined by first a back injury, then a pulled muscle, our famed pitcher suffering from a loss of his feared fastball. Certainly the team made up for what it had lacked in the past as far as hair goes: Manny’s dreadlocks casually sticking up like bad morning-after hair; J.D.’s reincarnation of Jesus; Bronson’s white-boy cornrows; Pedro’s frizzy Soul Glo ‘fro; Millar’s spiked tips and Amish beard. And the personalities matched the hair: Manny became a fan favorite, supplying reporters with countless quotes and starting a website instilling the extremely useful advice to ‘see the ball…hit the ball’; Damon inspired a group of “Disciples” who dressed in robes and donned shaggy long beards questioning ‘what would Johnny Damon do’; Schilling endorsed Dunkin Donuts ‘wicked hahd’. Keep the Faith billboards appeared throughout the city as fans repeated their yearly mantra ‘could this be the year’? A spring training game versus the MFY’s where ticket prices made OU/Texas look like a bargain began the battle of good versus evil, our boys of summer versus the robots of SiaS.
After a torrid start, including a 7-1 record versus the Evil Empire, the Red Sox went into a tailspin. Barely treading above .500, thanks mostly to that 15-6 April record, it became clear that something needed to change. To my dismay, I attended all three games of the May sweep at the Ballpark in Arlington. Arroyo pitched well, failed by the bullpen; Pedro appeared to have completely lost it; the bats were as cold as ice. Certain that I had to see at least one sox victory in 2004, I trekked to Kansas City to watch Schilling pitch for the first time. He did not disappoint. I knew even then that I was seeing something magical with him. The team continued to play .500 ball, however, as it was evident that morale was low. After the memorable standing ovation introduction upon his midseason return, Nomar began to sulk, leading the fans to chant, ‘Pokey would have had it’. Sitting in the dugout pouting, while all his teammates perched on the steps, while Jeter made an outstanding play, Theo concluded the team posterboy had to be traded.
Mere hours before the passing of the trade deadline, Theo completed the most talked about move in Red Sox history, next to the selling of the Bambino, of course. Red Sox nation was angry, how could Theo do this? The children of New England cried over the loss of their hero; the fans demanded an answer to which Theo responded that the infield defense was a liability. Another less scrutinized trade brought Dave Roberts to the team. Cabbie made an immediate impact, hitting a homerun in his first at-bat, Minky crossed the lines at the Metrodome and vowed that he was here to help.
Somewhere along the way, this loveable band of idiots, as branded by Damon and Millar, forged a bond as tight as brothers, creating a chemistry unlike any other (besides maybe the Patriots whose team introduction still gives me chills). Some say it was the Nomar trade, but I think it goes back to a few days before that when slap-happy Arod took a glove to his blue lips. Why…because ‘we don’t throw at .260 hitters’.
And then we started winning. And kept winning. We were the hottest team in August and stayed that way in September. We took the Wild Card with apparent ease with a record trailing only that of the Yankees in the American League. Ortiz and Manny continued their run as a two-man wrecking crew; Johnny Damon became the best leadoff man in the American League, including Ichiro. Everyone was playing a part, from Cabbie making effortless plays at short to Arroyo striking out a record 12 men in a row. Pedro befriended a 27 inch tall fellow Dominican, and strangely enough, I wasn’t frightened of him - he was simply too small to scare me. Manny and Petey rubbed heads; the entire team had individualized handshakes. I continued to pitch with Petey, my right arm sometimes feeling like it was going to fall off as I now understood the notion of pitch counts. I scored every televised game, watched Baseball Tonight every night and slept to Sportscenter, but only on nights the Sox won. I read countless blogs, made bostondirtdogs my home page and scrutinized Simmons Page 2 articles daily. I lived and died Red Sox baseball.
It had happened again…I had fallen completely head over heels in love with the Red Sox.
I made cds solely for the playoffs, consisting entirely of songs that in some way reminded me of the Red Sox. I included Modest Mouse ‘Float On’ because of an April Bambino’s Curse column, Journey ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ for obvious reasons, some of the player’s at-bat songs, ‘Take Me out to the Ballgame’, Dropkick Murphy’s ‘Tessie’, the Standells ‘Dirty Water’, ‘Cowboy Up’, and the Beatles ‘In My Life’.
The ALDS ended as quickly as it began. I listened in Spanish as Ortiz golpeó un funcionamiento del hogar to win Game 3, and, just like that, he Angels were done. Swept. Was it really going to be this easy? Of course not.
The time had come; it had to be this way. It just wouldn’t have been right any other way. The gods of baseball had spoken, and the world was getting just what they wanted – the scraggly unkept fun-loving band of misfits versus the clean-cut straight-laced all-business robots. The Red Sox had to face the Yankees. ‘Would you be happy if the Red Sox won the World Series without playing the Yankees’, I was asked. Of course, but it just wouldn’t be the same. We had to defeat the nemesis, the one who had stood in the way so many times before. Like David and Goliath, the tortoise and the hare, this was for all of those who had come before us and failed.
Hating Jeter cannot be explained; it’s inherent that he exemplifies the Yankees and everything about them. Captain Intangibles with his ‘all I ever wanted to be was a Yankee’. Aura and Mystique, he certainly has those. But, as Schilling said so many years ago, ‘Mystique and Aura are dancers at a nightclub’.
I know it’s dangerous to go looking for things to believe in as it just distracts us from what is – the truth doesn’t change; all that changes is perception and distance – but I believed in the 2004 Boston Red Sox, quite possibly more than I have ever believed in anything in my life, religious deities aside, of course. I lived and died with this team more than ever before, and that’s certainly saying something. After the heartbreak of 2003, when Boone dashed my hopes, and those of RSN as a whole, with an extra-inning homerun, I have to admit that I cursed the team, among others. I vowed never to get sucked back in; I was done with baseball, done with the Red Sox, done with this so-called love of my life. I believed in the curse for the first time; I questioned why God hated me so much; what had I done to deserve such unfathomable torture? But gradually, the pain lessoned; I’m not saying it went away, but, day-by-day, I found myself able to grasp the reality of the situation, that the timing was just not right. The puzzle was still missing a few key pieces.
So off young Theo went, searching for those magical pieces. From the beginning, Schilling personified a baseball fan’s dream come true, a player willing to give his all to the cause at hand. From his first foray into the blog world that is SoSH and his “I guess I hate the Yankees now” quote to the infamous “I’m not sure I can think of any scenario more enjoyable than making 55,000 people from NY shut up”, he linked diehard fans to the team they loved so much. He instilled a World Series clause in his contract for crying out loud. He started game threads for all three wins in the ALDS and pushed us to question ‘why not us’. His heroic embodiment of Roy Hobbs is sure to serve as an inspiration for years to come, his bloody sock an image forever embedded in Red Sox history.
I have to admit that I questioned Theo throughout the Arod debacle; I adored Nomah, with all his rituals and superstitions. He’s a true throwback player, the one Teddy personally anointed his protégé. I was brought up with number five, my return to obsessing over the team coinciding with his rookie season. Needless to say, my enthusiasm on obtaining Payrod, the anti-team player, was low. Remember, at this time, Nomar was still Nomah, an icon adored by children and adults alike throughout New England, the ultimate team player, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good of the team. This was before the trade rumors and the lies and the Achilles injuries.
Then Theo got us a closer, the same closer who failed to close out the ALDS for the A’s against our very own Sox. Unexplainable, certainly, insane, perhaps, a bold statement to the rest of the league that he was building a championship team, definitely. He signed a second baseman whose defensive skills left us in awe when he took over for the injured Nomar at short as well as a backup second baseman who ended up starting and playing a crucial role and whose OBP impressed despite leading the league in strikeouts, because after all, ‘who died and made you Mark Bellhorn”?
A new manager, who had a losing record in Philly, was hired to replace the gutless Forest Gump. How was he ever going to handle it in Boston? All the scrutiny coupled with a clubhouse full of characters including one very interesting little Dominican, what were the boys in charge thinking? Were they letting Schilling make all management decisions now too? Nevertheless, the Boys of Francona were born.
From the beginning of spring training, it seemed the fates were once again playing a hand in the Red Sox destiny. Our fallen hero ailing from an injured Achilles Heel of all things, our mighty Dirt Dog sidelined by first a back injury, then a pulled muscle, our famed pitcher suffering from a loss of his feared fastball. Certainly the team made up for what it had lacked in the past as far as hair goes: Manny’s dreadlocks casually sticking up like bad morning-after hair; J.D.’s reincarnation of Jesus; Bronson’s white-boy cornrows; Pedro’s frizzy Soul Glo ‘fro; Millar’s spiked tips and Amish beard. And the personalities matched the hair: Manny became a fan favorite, supplying reporters with countless quotes and starting a website instilling the extremely useful advice to ‘see the ball…hit the ball’; Damon inspired a group of “Disciples” who dressed in robes and donned shaggy long beards questioning ‘what would Johnny Damon do’; Schilling endorsed Dunkin Donuts ‘wicked hahd’. Keep the Faith billboards appeared throughout the city as fans repeated their yearly mantra ‘could this be the year’? A spring training game versus the MFY’s where ticket prices made OU/Texas look like a bargain began the battle of good versus evil, our boys of summer versus the robots of SiaS.
After a torrid start, including a 7-1 record versus the Evil Empire, the Red Sox went into a tailspin. Barely treading above .500, thanks mostly to that 15-6 April record, it became clear that something needed to change. To my dismay, I attended all three games of the May sweep at the Ballpark in Arlington. Arroyo pitched well, failed by the bullpen; Pedro appeared to have completely lost it; the bats were as cold as ice. Certain that I had to see at least one sox victory in 2004, I trekked to Kansas City to watch Schilling pitch for the first time. He did not disappoint. I knew even then that I was seeing something magical with him. The team continued to play .500 ball, however, as it was evident that morale was low. After the memorable standing ovation introduction upon his midseason return, Nomar began to sulk, leading the fans to chant, ‘Pokey would have had it’. Sitting in the dugout pouting, while all his teammates perched on the steps, while Jeter made an outstanding play, Theo concluded the team posterboy had to be traded.
Mere hours before the passing of the trade deadline, Theo completed the most talked about move in Red Sox history, next to the selling of the Bambino, of course. Red Sox nation was angry, how could Theo do this? The children of New England cried over the loss of their hero; the fans demanded an answer to which Theo responded that the infield defense was a liability. Another less scrutinized trade brought Dave Roberts to the team. Cabbie made an immediate impact, hitting a homerun in his first at-bat, Minky crossed the lines at the Metrodome and vowed that he was here to help.
Somewhere along the way, this loveable band of idiots, as branded by Damon and Millar, forged a bond as tight as brothers, creating a chemistry unlike any other (besides maybe the Patriots whose team introduction still gives me chills). Some say it was the Nomar trade, but I think it goes back to a few days before that when slap-happy Arod took a glove to his blue lips. Why…because ‘we don’t throw at .260 hitters’.
And then we started winning. And kept winning. We were the hottest team in August and stayed that way in September. We took the Wild Card with apparent ease with a record trailing only that of the Yankees in the American League. Ortiz and Manny continued their run as a two-man wrecking crew; Johnny Damon became the best leadoff man in the American League, including Ichiro. Everyone was playing a part, from Cabbie making effortless plays at short to Arroyo striking out a record 12 men in a row. Pedro befriended a 27 inch tall fellow Dominican, and strangely enough, I wasn’t frightened of him - he was simply too small to scare me. Manny and Petey rubbed heads; the entire team had individualized handshakes. I continued to pitch with Petey, my right arm sometimes feeling like it was going to fall off as I now understood the notion of pitch counts. I scored every televised game, watched Baseball Tonight every night and slept to Sportscenter, but only on nights the Sox won. I read countless blogs, made bostondirtdogs my home page and scrutinized Simmons Page 2 articles daily. I lived and died Red Sox baseball.
It had happened again…I had fallen completely head over heels in love with the Red Sox.
I made cds solely for the playoffs, consisting entirely of songs that in some way reminded me of the Red Sox. I included Modest Mouse ‘Float On’ because of an April Bambino’s Curse column, Journey ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ for obvious reasons, some of the player’s at-bat songs, ‘Take Me out to the Ballgame’, Dropkick Murphy’s ‘Tessie’, the Standells ‘Dirty Water’, ‘Cowboy Up’, and the Beatles ‘In My Life’.
The ALDS ended as quickly as it began. I listened in Spanish as Ortiz golpeó un funcionamiento del hogar to win Game 3, and, just like that, he Angels were done. Swept. Was it really going to be this easy? Of course not.
The time had come; it had to be this way. It just wouldn’t have been right any other way. The gods of baseball had spoken, and the world was getting just what they wanted – the scraggly unkept fun-loving band of misfits versus the clean-cut straight-laced all-business robots. The Red Sox had to face the Yankees. ‘Would you be happy if the Red Sox won the World Series without playing the Yankees’, I was asked. Of course, but it just wouldn’t be the same. We had to defeat the nemesis, the one who had stood in the way so many times before. Like David and Goliath, the tortoise and the hare, this was for all of those who had come before us and failed.
Hating Jeter cannot be explained; it’s inherent that he exemplifies the Yankees and everything about them. Captain Intangibles with his ‘all I ever wanted to be was a Yankee’. Aura and Mystique, he certainly has those. But, as Schilling said so many years ago, ‘Mystique and Aura are dancers at a nightclub’.
posted by Chelsea @ 2:24 PM
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