Red Sox as a Metaphor for Life

The Red Sox have taught me some amazing life lessons over the last half decade or so. Actually, they have been trying to teach me, but I have been too hardheaded to learn, mostly. And so last night, when the Sox were trailing 7-0 in the seventh inning, I went to bed. Did I have a tiny twinge of hope left? Maybe- it's hard to say. Mostly, I was sick of watching them roll over for the last three nights in a row. They got shelled in games 3 and 4, losing by embarrassing amounts, and here they were in game 5, facing elimination, getting shelled again. And it looked to me like they had given up. Players were marching to the plate as if to their execution by firing squad- fully expecting to be mowed down, and simply hoping it would be over quickly. It was so excruciating, I couldn't watch anymore.
I closed the slingbox window on my computer, and headed to bed. Slingbox is a thingy you hook up to a cable box, and it broadcasts that cable over the internet to users with password. Brielle got me the slingbox last Christmas so I could watch games, after I complained about how impossible it was to watch the Sox in Lexington, KY. It was an amazing, albeit dangerous, gift. Last year I had to wait for the Sox to make the post-season to watch games finally carried by the networks, and even then, I had to go to the bar every night and talk them into changing the channel to the Sox (that was a lot of consecutive weeknights at the bar, which understandably led to some marital discord). This year, with the slingbox hooked to Dad's cable box, I have watched probably 3/5 of the regular season games, Boston area Bernie & Phil and Jordan's Furniture commercials and all, in the comfort of my living room. Watching close to 100 games, at 3 hours apiece, while a new dad and med student, was taxing. I resisted the temptation to watch other TV, since we don't have a TV for a reason, but I still invested a lot of time into watching the Sox games. I even stayed up multiple times til the wee hours, only to see the Sox lose in the 13th inning, or watched the entire game in a double digit loss. I know our beloved Sox are the come-back kings, and I didn't want to miss it. But here I was, heartbroken after a respectable season capped with this disgraceful finish, and I just couldn't bear to witness how crushed and downtrodden the Fenway Faithful's faces were going to look after 9 innings.
As soon as I woke up this morning, I put on the coffee, set Max on his quilt, and clicked the Red Sox tab on firefox, just to see how bad it had actually ended up. Where I expected to see a sober picture of Francona or a defeated Ortiz, there was Youkilis with his fist raised in the air, his ridiculously bearded mouth gaping in a cheer. They pulled it off. They came back from a 7-0 deficit, the most amazing post-season comeback since 1929.
Of course they did. This is the same team that came back from being down 3 games to 1 against the Indian, and down 3 games to none against the Yankees. They've been trying to teach me a lesson all these years, a lesson about perserverance and hope even in the face of despair. It's not over til it's over. I'll never doubt them again.

In other news, Max is walking and talking. Not really, but today is his 6 month birthday, and so we gave him some rice gruel mixed with mama's milk. He made "gross" faces and spit it all out, but it was fun anyway. And he did start saying "dada" today. Well, more like "dadadadadadada" but still. And he can stand up while holding the file cabinet drawer handle with one hand and reaching for the key hole with the other. We had fun today. He let me sleep in for an extra hour before he yanked on my armpit hair to wake me up. Then we went to Keeneland for the UK day, so we got free chili dogs and free admission and we got to sit in the grandstands, which is so much better than standing down with the unwashed masses and trying to see the race from ground level through all the cigar smoke. In the grandstand you get to sit down and try to see the race through cigar smoke. We were 4/6 in our betting, and came out about $20 ahead even after factoring in a beer and program. It was a fun day all around.

Also, the Red Sox, especially the 2004 self-described "Idiots" with their cowboy up cheers and their beards and practical jokes and just all the fun they seemed to have, represent the forces of Good. And the Yankees represent the forces of Evil, especially with all their money and their slick uniforms and their steroids and their rules banning long hair and beards, and their all around hubris. So in 2004, but also in other years, including this one, but especially in 2004, the baseball story just plays out perfectly. The Sox, fun-loving, free-spirited, perennial-underdog jokesters, are about to be swept in the best of 7 ALCS by pure Evil. But Good doesn't get extinguished. Those jokers come back and win game 4. And 5. And then 6 and 7. Good triumphs over Evil. A Hollywood script writer couldn't write it any better. And still, the money and power of the Yanks lure some of the Sox over to the dark side, where they get their hair cut and shave, get fitted for a pin striped suit, and even taste some success. But ultimately, they fail, and they are damned eternally (yeah, you, Johnny Damon and especially Roger Clemens- man, what a pathetic loser Clemens turned out to be). Anyway, if I were Tampa Bay right now, I'd be worried that I was praying to a false god. That's all I'm saying.