2005 Red Sox, RIP

Thank God the (wonderful, debauched) wedding festivities this weekend kept me from obsessing over the Red Sox (well, beyond receiving calls every ten minutes from friends updating me on the game during the rehearsal and dinner). A shocking number of you have emailed and called in the past few days to ask how I am doing. I appreciate that. I'm fine. The reality of being on the receiving end of a sweep is that it removes all illusions. Chicago was the better team when you have to be the better team, and there was no heartbreak involved in the way that we lost.

One of the vexing aspects of the Sox winning is that two ridiculous ideas emerged, neither of which make any sense whatsoever. One was that Sox fans would not know what to do with ourselves once the team won it all. The other was that Sox fans somehow should feel happy and content and that our outsized passion was no longer warranted. These are both stupid arguments posited by people whose connection to being a serious sports fan almost has to be tangential. As far as the first issue goes, all we ever wanted as fans was to see them win, and then to deal with it. And we dealt with it as I knew we would -- with the same level of passion, but maybe just a little less dread. As for the second point, why would Red Sox fans suddenly have to become content with just one championship? Why is it that we always hear about how Yankees fans expect their team to win? Why the hell should any successful team, which by any measure the Red Sox have always been, not have fans that want to win? Why should fans who pay the most for home tickets, who have the greatest presence at away games, who buy more books and dvd’s and hats and jerseys and crap for their team than just about anyone not expect the ownership and the team to produce every year?

This ties into another argument I have been making for some time: These two ideas presupposed something so obviously false that one ought not to have to mention it, but here goes: Red Sox fans did not exist in some hermetically sealed vacuum of almost but not quite. Red Sox fans are, almost universally, also Celtics and Patriots and Bruins fans. For those who need the quick history lesson, the Celtics are the most successful franchise in the history of basketball. The Patriots are the reigning dynasty in the NFL and are the most successful NFL franchise in the salary cap era. The Bruins are in a prolonged drought, but fans of a certain era can remember when they won Stanley Cup championships. So this idea that Red Sox fans had no idea of success was only valid in a world in which sporting loyalties across sports are not fungible. Cleveland fans across the board have no experienced a championship since 1964. Seattle fans since, well, ever. Philly fans since 1983. Boston fans have not been in that boat.

One person, a Yankee fan whom I know only peripherally (a brother of a friend and grad school colleague who is also a Yankees fan) sent an email to me and a handful of other baseball fans in which he posted a picture of a broom with a caption along the lines of "The Curse is Back." What a jackass. Unless his argument is that the Sox are cursed because they are not capable of winning every year, he is exactly the sort of knuckle-dragging dimwit who has come to represent Yankee fandom.

In any case, it's football season now, so how have those Giants and Jets been doing these last few years? I've lost track.

(Much of this whole rant is a slightly more visceral version of the epilogue to the Red Sox book, which is, I understand, available on Barnes & Noble's website, albeit without the cover picture yet, but is not yet on Amazon -- I'll provide links when I make an official announcement within a few days.)