Over Four Games, "Why Not Us?" Transforms Into Simply "Us"

In 1845, Asa Lovejoy and F.W. Pettygrove flipped a coin to determine the name of their new townsite on the Willamette River. Lovejoy, being from Massachusetts, wanted to name it Boston. Pettygrove, being from Maine, wanted to call it Portland. Some historians have looked back upon the town's early days and referred to some set of "New England sensibilities" existing here.

In some indefinable and fateful sense, then, perhaps these things help explain why there seem to be so many damned Red Sox fans in this town. Ourselves included.

Yes, that's our local hook into being able to discuss the fact that -- as firmly declared today by the shellshocked editors of the NY Daily News -- hell froze over last night as the Boston Red Sox completed their historic comeback from a 3-0 deficit in the ALCS by storming right into the heart of enemy territory and trouncing the New York Yankees, securing for themselves their first World Series appearance since 1986.

Residents of Red Sox Nation, here in Almost-Boston as well as everywhere else, could not have scripted a better way to achieve the upper-hand in this long bitter rivalry. Sure, it would have been nice to see it happen at Fenway Park. But watching Game 7 come to a close at Yankee Stadium was like watching the Death Star explode.

That metaphor is likely worn by now, but for us Red Sox fans, it's nonetheless entirely fitting. For years, the Yankees and many of their fans have wrapped themselves in a kind of sense of entitlement, in which they felt winning the pennant, if not always the World Series that followed, was simply somehow their due. All-powerful and too often smug about it as they can be, how could we not -- as aptly illustrated by the opening sequence to Game 1 of the ALCS -- see this as the ragtag and scruffy band of misfit heroes trying to overcome the overly-cleancut and menacing badguys?

We can't help but wonder if the fact that the Red Sox never seemed to clean off their batting helmets, let alone their devotion to an unruly diversity of hairstyles, wasn't in fact an intentional attempt to foster that very image. Especially when you watch the Yankees come to the plate in their nice pinstripes and seemingly-buffed headgear.

At any rate, perhaps the single biggest game in the history of this rivalry has been won. Over the course of the final three games -- games which, to the Yankees if not to any number of Red Sox fans as well, never should have happened -- we saw not only the Boston team for which so many have waited for so long, but a Yankees team which seemed to suffer some sort of karmic reversal of fortune with their nemeses.

We even got to see A-Rod demonstrate that we never wanted him anyway, since now we know, from his desperate attempt to cheat his way onto first base in the absence of he and his team being able to beat us fair and square, that the A doesn't stand for Alex, but for A**hole.

To truly reverse the curse, we of course now need to win the World Series itself. But for now, and not at all unimportantly, we can satisfy ourselves with the knowledge that the Yankees at least know who their Daddy is.

And for those of Red Sox Nation who have taken up residence here in Almost-Boston, see William Bragg's invitation for us to gather for Game 1 of the World Series this Saturday.

This entry was posted by The One True b!X on October 21st, 2004, at 4:02 PM and is filed under Life & Times. There are nine comments (most recently on October 23rd, 2004, at 5:03 PM) and .