Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 8:20am
Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 8:20am
In what seems like their favorite point along the southern shoreline of Farm Pond the two parental swans are holding morning council with their full-sized yet still-brown signet who lingers a few meters offshore. Soon we pull into Framingham Station and just like yesterday we roll to a stop in near-perfect synchronization with today’s outbound train – the nose of that other locomotive rumbling to a stop at my dingy window poised for careful inspection. For the moment I notice only purple and yellow paint brushed copiously onto its welded steel edifice.
My Red Sox flu is still with me eased somewhat by yet another improbable victory against the collapsing Cardinals who last night ran into painful outs ending two promising rallies. For the Sox there is but one last game to win before the hopeless hopes held by three long-suffering generations are fulfilled – not quite in the same league as the second coming of Christ, but in this part of the country a close second.
With four tries to win and with obvious lessons in mind taught recently to the once-arrogant Yankees on the topic of over-confidence in the face of almost certain victory, these Red Sox are likely to win the series. Yet baseball is perhaps the least predictable of sports, and until the last out is recorded sealing the win, I won’t be losing my flu symptoms no matter the overwhelming likelihood.
The image of Bobby Ore frozen-framed as he flies horizontally before the net containing his winning Stanley Cup hockey championship goal does not matter. Nor does it matter that Bill Russell and Bob Cousy and John Havlicek and Larry Bird have draped an attic-full of championship banners among the rafters of their barn. And it doesn’t even matter how Adam Vinatieri won two footfall Super Bowls in last-second field goals for a team that until recent years was nearly as loss-afflicted as the Red Sox. Such are mere foreshadowings of victory compared to what may happen tonight under the eclipsing red moon – consumed by the very shadow of the Earth.
The Red Sox of Ted Williams in 1946 and Red Sox of the 1967 “Impossible Dream Team” also faced the Cardinals in the World Series, and both times were defeated in their seventh games. But tonight or perhaps tomorrow night a genuine dream may finally come true for Red Sox fans everywhere as the final chapter is written in this baseball season beyond-belief.
All of the ghosts and demons of seasons past will be exorcised.
All of their wrongs will be undone and righted.
