Thursday, October 28, 2004, 9:00am
Thursday, October 28, 2004, 9:00am
Hell has frozen over and pigs can truly fly.
This morning as I ride the last commuter train out of Worcester the train isn’t full and I suspect many people are simply home by some excuse after a long night of celebration.
My World Series flu symptoms are fading – driven by a story unfolding beyond just this singular baseball season – rising to push last night’s events beyond my grasp for words. It is nonetheless just baseball I tell myself. But baseball is the closest thing we have to magic in this modern age because anything can still happen in a baseball game within the bounds of the rules and the laws of physics, and nobody can predict an outcome right down the very last moment of the game.
And if that isn’t magic, then nothing else is.
According to BBC Radio News (and other sources) last night the Boston Red Sox of the American Baseball League won the North American World Series championship over the St. Louis Cardinals with a score of three runs to nil. Also according to the news, once the game had been decided the owners of Busch Stadium in St. Louis granted free entry to Red Sox fans swarming at the gates so they could celebrate among team members and with Red Sox fans already inside.
Soon a large banner was unfurled and paraded through the seats reading “We Forgive You Bill Buckner” – in clear reference to those blaming him for the heartbreaking loss of 1986. It was never a fair assessment, yet it was one of many ghosts exorcised this night, justified or not. In all fairness we should now forget Aaron Boone from last year and Bucky Dent in 1978 for their painful late-inning home runs, and release any lingering grudge against Johnny Pesky for holding the ball too long in 1946. We can also forgive field managers for their shortsighted choices in critical games and even absolve the greatest blunder of them all – the employment contract of Babe Ruth sold to the New York Yankees nearly a century ago.
Until next year we’ll wait, yet this winter it will be as the World Champion Boston Red Sox, and I expect that during that time many graves will be visited bringing the news to those long suffering fans not living long enough to see this day.
With this comes the end to a distraction from the other events of my life. In two days it will be Jenny’s 19th birthday, and I realize how that has been layered and churned into my October flu. Whenever anything happens that would have been a great moment in her life, I feel a loss for what this could have been for her. Sometimes I feel relief for the same reason – she never had to see the 9/11 attacks or other events that would have pained her. In the end, though, it is not an emotional equation that balances since I’d rather she’d had the chance to deal with life however it might have unfolded.
For a moment through open woods where green leaves once blocked my view I see the Charles River meandering in its valley trough. And just as this recognition settles, our train crisscrosses under the Mass Pike – frame-cutting my view to where I am now shown a river of painted steel inching cityward into a rising sun.
I’ve brought my electronic camera today, and as we leave Back Bay Station I’ve seen no evidence of a Red Sox championship. But I’m powering up the camera just in case.
