On the Road to Choke-tober?
Last night, Mike Timlin almost killed me. I checked the score of the Sox game, saw it was 4-2 in the seventh with the Sox up, and returned to my Miller Lite relaxed.
Fast foward twenty minutes, and my friend Matty P is coming to tell me that the Sox are losing,5-4. He had that tone of "Uh oh, something horrible is happening, you better come quick," as though someone was in the hospital dying or something. I went over to the TV immediately - literally leaving behind a conversation mid-sentence - and it WAS like someone was in the hospital dying: Mike Timlin was killing the Red Sox.
If you ask me (and really, any Red Sox fan), the Red Sox are in critical condition. And, with ten games to go, it feels like they are thisclose to flatlining. (Which, by the way, makes me ready for cardiac arrest at any possible moment.)
Here's the thing: the Red Sox held first place for over two months while the Yankees floundered, giving hope to every Sox fan that for the first time in 10 years, they'd win the division. And it's strange to even write that, because compared to the 86 years between World Series, this 10 year "drought" seems irrelevant and unimportant. For a lot of Sox fans, it felt like some unwritten rule that we could not complain. After all, we had been able to witness something that so many others had not, and we should be grateful and satisfied for that.
You know what though? That's bullshit.
I hate to say it, but baseball, sports, life, whatever, it's all the "what have you done for me lately" game. It has to be. They don't rebroadcast the 2004 season, do they? No. They move on. The Red Sox moved on: they cut loose Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez (begrudgingly), Dave Roberts, Orlando Cabrera. If we were all supposed to be so nostalgic about this 2004 team, and if we were really supposed to count on the warm memory of the October wins to get us through the entire 2005 season, then all those guys would still be in Boston. Even Doug Mientkiewicz would be back. (Okay, so maybe he could go, but other than that, I think I'm right.) Obviously, this all sounds ridiculous. And it is, which is why the whole "let's not complain about anything for five years" rules are also ridiculous.
So, when the Red Sox - despite tons of issues on their team, from Schilling to Renteria to Foulke to Sveum (seriously, HOW does that guy still have a job?) - took first place in the division, people were excited. Sure, the Sox had won the Series, and sure, they had toppled the Yankees in the process, but THIS - a division win - would be the final nail in that Yankees coffin, and we were ready. (As a side note, in the beginning when the Sox took the lead in the division, nobody was saying anything about winning the division. Nobody was ready. It was like, "Yeah, we're in first place, but it's June." That's a Red Sox fan for you. It doesn't matter that the Sox won last year. That didn't change the paranoid/cautiously optimistic nature of the Red Sox fan.)
In August, they were five and a half (FIVE AND A HALF) games up on the Yankees. Two weeks ago, they played the Yankees and left 4 games up (FOUR GAMES!). Last night, they lost the lead. The Yankees are now on top in the division. Cleveland leads the wild card, but that's beside the point.
I know the Red Sox are only half a game behind, and had they not led at all this year, this would be encouraging news with ten games left, but I have this horrible sinking feeling. It's this awful, nagging feeling that I get sometimes when really bad things are happening or about to happen. For a while, I'll totally forget these bad things are going on, and then bam! when I least expect it, I'll remember: oh yeah, the Red Sox might not make the postseason. Never has second-place seemed so awful.
You can say that the Red Sox are still in it. And really, I hope they are. I've been trying to convince myself that if the Yankees lose tonight, and the division lead is tied (the Sox don't play, they are still very much alive. I figure, if fewer than 24 hours pass with the Sox in second, we can pretend like it never happened. Other than that, all bets are off.
Well... that's actually not true. With the Sox and Yankees ending the season with each other (what genius thought of this? Seriously, whoever makes the calendar must be sitting back, smoking a cigar thinking, "Wow, I am a GENIUS."), it's possible that all of this means absolutely nothing until Friday night. If that's the case, in a week, all bets are off on whether or not I'm breathing.
Here's what cannot happen: those last games CANNOT be meaningless (unless, of course, they are meaningless for the Yankees. That's fine.) With Cleveland cruising, I'm thinking that whoever ends up second in the division ends up out of the playoffs. This is horribly scary, when you're not prepared for the season to be over and suddenly it's like, one week away from doom.
And while I know that there's still ten games to play, and I know that being half a game back in the standings and just a game back in the wild card (OH MY GOD, YESTERDAY THE SOX WERE IN FIRST PLACE! YANKEE FANS HAD TO DEAL WITH THIS CRAP! GOD HELP ME!) isn't that big a deal (seriously, it hurts to swallow). But then why does it feel like the Sox have a huge fork in their back?
I thought I was paranoid about all this, but I came back to find that the Sox have "shut down" Keith Foulke for the rest of the season. Now, does that really matter? I mean, was anybody REALLY counting on Foulke to help them? (Umm, yes.) But it wasn't the actual implication of shutting down Keith Foulke as much as it is the fact of them shutting him down. It's like they're packing up the summer house to prepare for winter, when you just keep the ratty sheets and towels and clothes around because you're getting ready to leave. It's like that. It's like the Red Sox are giving up, even though that's probably me reading into it.
But I don't know.
The 2005 season has always been a big question mark. From the beginning, it was, "How will the Sox react after the big win?" "What about Johnny Damon - will he be distracted?" "Will David Wells really fit in?" "Umm, how big a mistake was Edgar Renteria?" "Is Schilling ever coming back?" "What's up with Keith Foulke?" "Is that really Kevin Millar's hair?" "Can the Sox keep going with half a rotation?" "Did Bronson Arroyo really believe that his CD would crack the billboard 100?"
And now, we have the one final question: "Will the Red Sox choke?"
The 2005 season will be remembered one of two ways: either as the post-championship season in which the Red Sox finally dethroned the Yankees and put that final nail in that long-time-coming coffin, or as the post-championship season in whch the Red Sox choked after holding the lead on the American League East for two months, when they didn't even make it to the postseason.
That's the only question right now.
(Well, besides whether I am going to spontaneously combust.)
I'm cautiously optimistic though.
(On both counts.)
... I think.
Fast foward twenty minutes, and my friend Matty P is coming to tell me that the Sox are losing,5-4. He had that tone of "Uh oh, something horrible is happening, you better come quick," as though someone was in the hospital dying or something. I went over to the TV immediately - literally leaving behind a conversation mid-sentence - and it WAS like someone was in the hospital dying: Mike Timlin was killing the Red Sox.
If you ask me (and really, any Red Sox fan), the Red Sox are in critical condition. And, with ten games to go, it feels like they are thisclose to flatlining. (Which, by the way, makes me ready for cardiac arrest at any possible moment.)
Here's the thing: the Red Sox held first place for over two months while the Yankees floundered, giving hope to every Sox fan that for the first time in 10 years, they'd win the division. And it's strange to even write that, because compared to the 86 years between World Series, this 10 year "drought" seems irrelevant and unimportant. For a lot of Sox fans, it felt like some unwritten rule that we could not complain. After all, we had been able to witness something that so many others had not, and we should be grateful and satisfied for that.
You know what though? That's bullshit.
I hate to say it, but baseball, sports, life, whatever, it's all the "what have you done for me lately" game. It has to be. They don't rebroadcast the 2004 season, do they? No. They move on. The Red Sox moved on: they cut loose Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez (begrudgingly), Dave Roberts, Orlando Cabrera. If we were all supposed to be so nostalgic about this 2004 team, and if we were really supposed to count on the warm memory of the October wins to get us through the entire 2005 season, then all those guys would still be in Boston. Even Doug Mientkiewicz would be back. (Okay, so maybe he could go, but other than that, I think I'm right.) Obviously, this all sounds ridiculous. And it is, which is why the whole "let's not complain about anything for five years" rules are also ridiculous.
So, when the Red Sox - despite tons of issues on their team, from Schilling to Renteria to Foulke to Sveum (seriously, HOW does that guy still have a job?) - took first place in the division, people were excited. Sure, the Sox had won the Series, and sure, they had toppled the Yankees in the process, but THIS - a division win - would be the final nail in that Yankees coffin, and we were ready. (As a side note, in the beginning when the Sox took the lead in the division, nobody was saying anything about winning the division. Nobody was ready. It was like, "Yeah, we're in first place, but it's June." That's a Red Sox fan for you. It doesn't matter that the Sox won last year. That didn't change the paranoid/cautiously optimistic nature of the Red Sox fan.)
In August, they were five and a half (FIVE AND A HALF) games up on the Yankees. Two weeks ago, they played the Yankees and left 4 games up (FOUR GAMES!). Last night, they lost the lead. The Yankees are now on top in the division. Cleveland leads the wild card, but that's beside the point.
I know the Red Sox are only half a game behind, and had they not led at all this year, this would be encouraging news with ten games left, but I have this horrible sinking feeling. It's this awful, nagging feeling that I get sometimes when really bad things are happening or about to happen. For a while, I'll totally forget these bad things are going on, and then bam! when I least expect it, I'll remember: oh yeah, the Red Sox might not make the postseason. Never has second-place seemed so awful.
You can say that the Red Sox are still in it. And really, I hope they are. I've been trying to convince myself that if the Yankees lose tonight, and the division lead is tied (the Sox don't play, they are still very much alive. I figure, if fewer than 24 hours pass with the Sox in second, we can pretend like it never happened. Other than that, all bets are off.
Well... that's actually not true. With the Sox and Yankees ending the season with each other (what genius thought of this? Seriously, whoever makes the calendar must be sitting back, smoking a cigar thinking, "Wow, I am a GENIUS."), it's possible that all of this means absolutely nothing until Friday night. If that's the case, in a week, all bets are off on whether or not I'm breathing.
Here's what cannot happen: those last games CANNOT be meaningless (unless, of course, they are meaningless for the Yankees. That's fine.) With Cleveland cruising, I'm thinking that whoever ends up second in the division ends up out of the playoffs. This is horribly scary, when you're not prepared for the season to be over and suddenly it's like, one week away from doom.
And while I know that there's still ten games to play, and I know that being half a game back in the standings and just a game back in the wild card (OH MY GOD, YESTERDAY THE SOX WERE IN FIRST PLACE! YANKEE FANS HAD TO DEAL WITH THIS CRAP! GOD HELP ME!) isn't that big a deal (seriously, it hurts to swallow). But then why does it feel like the Sox have a huge fork in their back?
I thought I was paranoid about all this, but I came back to find that the Sox have "shut down" Keith Foulke for the rest of the season. Now, does that really matter? I mean, was anybody REALLY counting on Foulke to help them? (Umm, yes.) But it wasn't the actual implication of shutting down Keith Foulke as much as it is the fact of them shutting him down. It's like they're packing up the summer house to prepare for winter, when you just keep the ratty sheets and towels and clothes around because you're getting ready to leave. It's like that. It's like the Red Sox are giving up, even though that's probably me reading into it.
But I don't know.
The 2005 season has always been a big question mark. From the beginning, it was, "How will the Sox react after the big win?" "What about Johnny Damon - will he be distracted?" "Will David Wells really fit in?" "Umm, how big a mistake was Edgar Renteria?" "Is Schilling ever coming back?" "What's up with Keith Foulke?" "Is that really Kevin Millar's hair?" "Can the Sox keep going with half a rotation?" "Did Bronson Arroyo really believe that his CD would crack the billboard 100?"
And now, we have the one final question: "Will the Red Sox choke?"
The 2005 season will be remembered one of two ways: either as the post-championship season in which the Red Sox finally dethroned the Yankees and put that final nail in that long-time-coming coffin, or as the post-championship season in whch the Red Sox choked after holding the lead on the American League East for two months, when they didn't even make it to the postseason.
That's the only question right now.
(Well, besides whether I am going to spontaneously combust.)
I'm cautiously optimistic though.
(On both counts.)
... I think.
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