How many of you have heard from relatives in the last 10 days, maybe a sibling you haven't spoken with in a while? And how many former New Englanders are watching their televisions in Colorado, Arizona, or Florida, remembering growing up with the mellow voice of Curt Gowdy pouring out of the porch radio into the humid night?
How many of you watched the thrilling comeback against the Yankees and thought of a parent or a spouse who has died? How many watched the first two games of the World Series and thought about how much more special this would be if Uncle Joe or Aunt Elizabeth had lived to see it?
Those who have adopted Boston share the family secrets. People around the globe who went to college in our town still carry a love of the Red Sox along with memories of that first beer in the Fenway bleachers. The Citgo sign beyond the left-field wall was the lighthouse that steered them back to their dorms on those first wobbly nights of undergrad freedom. The Sox connected them then and they connect them now.
The Red Sox have not always been good, or even popular. They have not been annually championship-driven nor well-run. They have at times been unlucky, inept, controversial, racist, and petty. The Boston ballplayers were not always fuzzy stuffed animals come-to-life as unbeatable, clutch, and gritty baseball talents. There have been times when the Red Sox truly were idiots and there was nothing lovable about them.
But always they have been there, as indigenous to our town as swan boats, clam chowder, Paul Revere, L Street Brownies, Sam Adams, and the golden dome of the State House.
Following the Red Sox has never been easy nor particularly rewarding. Red Sox Nation is many things but it offers no asylum for those in need of instant gratification. Believing the Sox can win requires an act of faith, not unlike one's commitment to a Higher Being. There are few lucid souls old enough to actually recall Boston's last World Series victory in 1918, so Sox fans believe in something they have never seen. They believe there is a Hardball Heaven even though they have never been there.
