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| AL BEHRMAN/AP |
| Aaron Boone puts another dagger into Red Sox lore with an 11th-inning home run that sent the Yankees to the World Series |
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| ALCS Diary: The End |
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Robert Sullivan on another year of disappointment for Red Sox fans |
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By Robert Sullivan |
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Posted Friday, Oct. 17, 2003
LIFE managing editor and longtime Red Sox fan Robert Sullivan spent the past 10 days following the ALCS from the press box
and the stands. This, his final entry, covers the last three games of the series, starting with the eventful Game 5:
In preparing to bomb back up to Boston for what I will always remember as The Brutal Game, a.k.a. Game Five, I decide to change my look from ballfan to ranchhand. I have not only the will but the wherewithal to do so, as I spent most of 1992 on assignment in Australia, and returned from Down Under with Coogi sweaters and koala dolls for family and friends, and a good deal of outback garb for myself. The Stetson of Australia is called an Akubra, and while I was posted in Oz I bought a good, widebrimmed one. It has a small, stylish feather. I picked up a Driza-bone riding coat that Clint Eastwood might envy, and added to my collection of western-wear boots. Lucille rarely allows me to go about Westchester County in this stuff, but just now I am riding off to Beantown, where the rallying cry of the moment is Cowboy Up!
If the cabbie from Ernie's Taxi thinks me strange, he keeps it to himself, and for his discretion receives a handsome tip upon delivering me to LaGuardia. I struggle getting my boots off and then back on at the X-ray machine, but nevertheless make the 11:30 Shuttle after a sprint across the lobby. The fellow taking my ticket at the gate looks me over carefully, then thinks he gets the gag. "Well, you sure are ready for 'Saddle up!' " I hold my tongue. Yes, I could summarily humiliate this New York dolt with an indignant, "It's Cowboy Up!, fool." But the Sox have squared things at two games apiece, I am confident of our chances and I am full of feelings of well-being for my fellow man. "Yeah," I say to the buffoon. "Right."
The flight is smooth, and in a snap of the fingers I am back in the land of the Bosox — back in Xanadu, Shangri La, back where I belong. On the cab ride in from Logan to the Pru Center I notice that a sign redirecting traffic at one of the Big Dig work sites has been creatively altered. A graffiti artist with wit has taken his spray paint to the instruction REVERSE CURVE, modifying it to REVERSE THE CURSE.
How do I feel about all of this Curse of the Bambino nonsense? I reflect on the question as we make our way through downtown. I am happy that, as a book title, it helped the talented and friendly Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy sell a few copies, but beyond that I figure I don't put much stock in it. I've felt all year that Theo Epstein and Bill James and their Rotisserie style of team-building is going to hit on the right combo one of these seasons — maybe this one? — and we will have deliverance from the Curse. I do hope the Yankees are in our way when that happens. John Henry, the team owner, says the World Championship is the only goal, though he admits that some of his club's fans care more about beating the Yanks. I'm in that camp, pretty much; it is, as I have often mentioned, very, very tough living here in the New York realm in October, if you're a Sox fan.
Have I mentioned the BLOHARDS? No, I don't think so. I am a BLOHARD. I am a card-carrying member of the Benevolent Loyal Order of Honorable and Ancient Red Sox Diehard Sufferers of New York. The club was started years and years ago by its forever president, Jim Powers, an ad exec from Fairfield, Conn., (but a real New Englander by birth, hailing from Duxbury, Mass.) We BLOHARDS lunch together in the city twice a year, when the Sox visit the Stadium in the spring, and again when they come in the fall. We have guest speakers; Fatass Clemens attended during his rookie year with Boston, and managers and GMs are regulars. Our lunches are fun and frolicsome, lots of gallows humor and "we'll get 'em next year."
There are hundreds of people on the BLOHARDS mailing list. Strangers in a strange land, enemies behind the lines, living day by day in a condition perhaps most acutely expressed by Aeschylus in Agamemnon when he wrote: "I have seen how men in exile feed on dreams of hope." I'd like to poll that membership right now (I think to myself as the cab pulls up to the curb), and ask the question, Would you rather win it all, or would you rather beat the Yanks? I would wager that, while the larger Red Sox Nation would choose the whole enchilada, the BLOHARDS precincts would vote for a Yankee killing. I know I would, I conclude as I hand over 30 and, still feeling beneficent, say, "Keep it. Cowboy Up!" The cabbie doesn't understand English very well, but nods energetically.
Where would you meet to divvy up the ducats but at Legal Seafoods? My sister Gail, who works at Gillette, comes down from the 47th floor of the Pru Tower to join us, bearing the pair of Game Five tickets that she has scored. Her friend Millie arrives, and she will sit alongside Gail in Section 8. I have my press pass plus four excellent seats in Section 13, several rows up but right behind first. In the Spirit of '78, which you might have read about in Part I of this diary, I have called my friend Bag, who is coming with his wife, Annie (to whom I had introduced him, lo those years ago). The other two seats will go to my lifelong friends from Chelmsford, Bruce and Mike. When it comes to valuable Bosox tickets, you call the usual suspects. And those suspects show up.
Mike and Bruce order Guinness; I have a bowl of the world's finest (and realest) clam chowder, plus a Sam Adams, because this is a day about Boston, not Ireland.
"Cowboy Up!" we toast, as I hand out the tickets.
"Slainte!"
"Reverse the Curse!" someone adds.
"Yeah, " I say. "I read where David Wells actually believes in it. He said it was one man's opinion, but he believes the Babe has cursed us and he's going to do his part to keep the Curse alive even though he hasn't pitched well in Fenway. He believes the Curse is real."
"You don't?"
"Well . . . no. Do you?"
There is a good deal of equivocation among these several college-educated, non-institutionalized adults. Finally I change the subject. "What's with Gerry Callahan, anyway?" (see Part II here)
"A shame upon Chelmsford," Mike answers.
"He made a mistake," says Bruce, who also has great sympathy for Rush Limbaugh as he heads in for treatment.
We have two rounds and then head for John Updike's bandbox. Walking up Comm Ave, we lament the (long ago, now) demise of the Eliot Lounge, and talk about how spiffed up and luxe the brick townhouses look. "When I was here in '76, college kids lived in them."
"Couldn't touch 'em now."
The river of Bosox fans that streams through the Kenmore confluence on Game Day is a shimmering, sublime organism. On Game Day Against the Yankees, ALCS tied 2-2, it is biblical in its gloriousness and, by way of contrast, in its solemnity. It has in its flow the wide-eyed child, the rambunctious youth, the hopeful parent, the dreadfilled pensioner, the helped-along grandmother. And, in this instance, at least one suburban cowboy from Westchester County. "Can I borrow your hat?" asks an (obviously) B.U. coed who has recently (and very obviously) been in proximity of a keg. Not today, sister. But by the way: Where were you 30 years ago?
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