Today's entry is about the Red Sox, because really, in the baseball world, what else is there that is worth writing about? Oh, sure, I'm going to mention the Cardinals, and the Yankees, and maybe even the Cubs, but right now, if you are a baseball fan, you are probably talking about the Red Sox nonstop.

How did we get to this point? Three wins up, and one away from winning their first World Series since 1918? Well, it's a very, very long story--just take a look at Glenn Stout's RED SOX CENTURY for a tome on the subject--so I'll just stick with the highlights of recent days. When we look back on 2004, whether the Red Sox win, or whether they find some even more painful and unbelievable way to break New England's heart, there are certain things that must be remembered. Here is my lineup:

• 1. Nomar is gone.
  You'd almost forgotten about him, didn't you? He was there for a moment on the broadcast last night, during game three, in a Gatorade commercial that is a tribute to Mia Hamm (in case you missed it--she's married to him). I don't ascribe to the theory that Nomar's sulking somehow dragged the team spirit down to the point that they couldn't win games midseason, which some sports writers do. But the fact remains that despite being a home-grown Red Sock, and a guy who was repeatedly described early in his career as one of the ten best players in the game, he was injured, and either not playing, or not playing up to speed when he was on the field. They say that timing is everything. Nomar's timing was the worst. He tore up the joint when the rest of the team wasn't that good--like in 1999, batting .417 in the ALDS with two home runs, and .400 against New York in the ALCS with another two dingers--but then last year struck out eight times and batted .241 with no homers when facing the Yankees in the postseason. Timing. He was on the bench on July 1st when the Sox and Yanks played a knock-down drag-out extra-innings battle during which Derek Jeter flew headlong into the stands to make a game-saving play. Bitter Sox fans accused Nomar of "jaking it" (a baseball term that means faking an injury to shirk duty). Want to know something funny? The term "jaking it" comes from Jake Stahl, who was a Red Sox player from 1908-1913. Although he was known as a hard-nosed, hustling type of player, one time he was asked to play first base instead of catching, and--so the story goes--he begged off for an injury. Bad timing, Jake: your name is forever synonymous with a baseball sin.

• 2. Self-proclaimed "idiots."
  Boston's history has been chock-full of players (and managers) who were too smart for their own good. Ted Williams wrote the book, literally, on hitting ("The Science of Hitting," and yes, it's still in print). Bill Lee wrote a book, too, though some would say he was more of a smart-ass than smart. These players, right up until this year, would eventually get caught up in the morass of negativity fomented by the Boston sports media, spar verbally with the sportwriters, tighten up when they were needed most, and get run out of town eventually. At least, so it appears in hindsight. The only kind of team that could be impervious to the "curse" talk and the pressure of 86-year-old generational expectations, is a bunch of guys so dumb, they can't be affected by it. Some of them are playing dumb (Johnny Damon, Tim Wakefield), while others have had air-head personas their whole career (Manny Ramirez). All summer, when the team was playing .500 ball, you heard fans whine and moan on sports talk radio that "these guys don't play with any urgency" and "don't they know this is a pennant race?" Fans would get incensed that while the team was losing a ballgame, say, the guys would be goofing around and laughing in the dugout. Well, guess what? That's exactly what New England has needed all along: TO LIGHTEN UP! Fans want the ballplayers to suffer with them. The ballplayers this year have finally broken that co-dependent dysfunction. They just want to go out and have fun. And get a ring. No apologies are made to the fans who will still suffer an inferiority complex because this Red Sox team is not as noble as the Yankees of the late '90s, or as aristocratic as other baseball dynasties. You may not like them, but if they win it all, you'll love them. Trust me.

• 3. Curt Schilling as martyr.
  It doesn't take any grand gesture of myth-making to tell the story of Schilling coming to Boston on a mission to bring a World Championship here. Theo Epstein spending Thanksgiving dinner with the Schilling family is just the first part of the lore, that ends with Schilling getting his skin sutured to his ankle flesh to prevent the damaged tendon from snapping around, and beating first the Yankees as part of the most unbelievable comeback in baseball history, and then the Cardinals as the Sox took a commanding lead in the World Series. Blood seeping through the fabric gives new meaning to the name Red Sox, doesn't it, now. This story looks good, provided #9 below does not come to pass.

• 4. Advertisers look like prophets, or at least like geniuses.
  All year we have been barraged with advertising which plays on the Sox/Yanks rivalry, or the Sox fruitless attempts to win a World Series. After what happened last year and the way things escalated, this is a safe bet for ad subject matter, because so many people are hooked on this story. We have been hearing a radio ad since the spring for Ford vehicles, in which the announcer says "So the next time you hear those New York fans chanting '19-18' you can chant '2004' right back at them." The implication being that Ford's cars and trucks are so great and the deals at Boston area Ford Dealers are so good in 2004 that it feels like victory to buy one. Well, now that the Sox are closing in on actually burying the '19-18' chant forever, the ad plays quite differently. Or how about the MasterCard commercial we've been seeing since March or so, in which they show various Sox fans saying what they would pay for to see the Red Sox in a World Series. And to win it? Priceless. My favorite, though, is the new Nike ad that debuted just for the World Series. It shows a family of four settling in to their seats right behind the Red Sox dugout in 1918. Then as the year-counter flips forward, you see them age, grow, and change, cheering and groaning as the years go by, until it gets to 2004, when the Nike slogan appears in small letters: just do it. Truer words never were spoken.

• 5. Bing-bwah! Bellhorn! Ding-dong! Damon!
  Terry Francona had a great line to the media the other day (back in the ALCS), when he was getting a lot of questions about whether they would take Bellhorn out of the lineup and put Pokey Reese--an out-making machine both on defense and offense--in his place. "Obviously we have a higher opinion of Mark Bellhorn than you guys do," Tito said. Bellhorn is the epitome of the "new school" player, in my opinion. He walks a lot, and strikes out a lot, and is not a defensive wizard. He strikes out not because he has a bad eye and doesn't recognize pitches, but because he is "too" discerning--looking for a pitch he can really do something with. Like that one he hit in Game Seven of the ALCS, to bury the Yankees, which hit the right field foul pole? Or the one in Game One of the World Series, perhaps, which hit the Pesky Pole, and was the game-winner? Damon, similar story. struggled against the Yankees, was decried as a flop by the media, calls to move him down in the batting order... and then hits two home runs in back to back at bats in Game Seven of the ALCS. If Francona had panicked and sat those guys, maybe the Yankees come to life and ice Game Seven.

• 6. Tito
  While we're on the subject, I think everyone can now shut up about whether Francona is a "good" manager or not. As Joe Torre has proved, a manager's number one job is to take pressure off his players, by talking to the media and by sticking up for them when they need it. When the Red Sox were playing .500 ball this summer, all I heard were complaints that he was too lenient with the players, too friendly, oh yeah, and too dependent on his computer-generated stats. As I said above, old school fans (and Boston's are as old school as you can get) like old school players, and they like old school managers, disciplinarians whose in-game brilliance involves sacrifice bunts. Francona is the new school, folks, and guess what? It's working... A manager's number two job is the actual in-game moves, and with the team on the edge of elimination in four straight games in the ALCS, he made every move right, from using Roberts to steal second to how he arranged his tired-out pitching staff. The one hiccup appeared to be putting Pedro in for an inning of work in Game Seven--why? why?--but as he planned to use Pedro in Game Three all along, that was a good inning for Pedro to stay fresh with. Now that Pedro has won Game Three, it looks like a great move, doesn't it?

• 7. Cardinals Collapse
  You know some kind of destiny is at work when the Red Sox make four errors in a game and it doesn't come back to haunt them. Meanwhile the Cardinals, who were touted as such a good defensive and base-running team, have been making blunders all over the place. Is it destiny that last night's game turned on the fact that Jeff Suppan thought the third base coach was yelling "no! no!" when he was yelling "go! go!" and not only failed to score, but got himself thrown out trying to get back to third? Two things about that. One, of course it was a Red Sock who last suffered this fate, but in reverse, thinking that he was being told "go! go!" when Don Zimmer was actually yelling "no! no!" in game six of the 1975 World Series. If Doyle had scored, the Sox would have won the game. Instead he was thrown out trying to score on a very short pop fly, and Carlton Fisk won it in the 12th with his body-english homer. Two, it was David Ortiz who threw Suppan out, Ortiz who was only making his 35th defensive appearance of the year and whose fielding was everyone's biggest concern before the game began. Nice throw, Papi. Honestly, the Cards must be a better team than this, but between injuries to some pitchers and the fact that the Sox have held their 3-4-5 hitters to one measly hit, it really looks like the Cardinals are in a daze. I don't think the Yankees choked--they got outplayed, outmanaged, outpitched, and outhit in four games straight. The Cardinals last night looked like they couldn't even muster a fight. Even corwin, who can't bring himself to root for the Sox, decided he couldn't really root for a team that looked that lame.

• 8. Conspiracy Theory
  So the Red Sox are one win away from winning the world title, and they beat the Yankees on the way to doing it. I'm sure now is not the time to talk about Bud Selig's hand in all this, is it? Sure it is. First, Selig engineered the sale of the Sox to John Henry's group, despite the fact that there were other bidders who were supposed to get a chance to beat Henry's offer. If not illegal, the actions were certainly illicit. Hmm, then there were the rules Selig bent in order to allow the Sox to sign Kevin Millar at half his market value and snatch him from the Japanese team who held the rights to him. How about all the illegal contract revisions that Curt Schilling was given in order to convince him to come to Boston? Or the suspicions that he was allowed to handpick Terry Francona as manager? Well, if that's what it takes to beat the Yankees, I'm betting most Red Sox fans will go along with it. (But don't expect George to put up with it much longer!)

• 9. The Curse
  So, despite all this good news, there is still an undercurrent of anxiety here in New England. Why? Because these fans have been down this road before. This team has taken them to euphoric peaks in the past, only to drop them like Wile E. Coyote off the cliff, ka-blam. There was plenty of talk in 1986 about that being "the year." If anything, being up 3-0 in the World Series ha the conspiracy theorists working overtime. They can imagine it happening this way: the Sox have become the first team ever to overcome a 3-0 deficit in a postseason series. Now, in a bitter twist of fate, the tables will be turned and they will lose four in a row. Lowe, such a hero in Game Seven, will come unraveled. Schilling's ankle won't take it anymore. Wakefield will hurt himself running the bases. Arroyo will panic. The Cardinals will finally solve Pedro... I know, it's so easy to imagine it happening after the heart-breaking collapses of the team in the past. My friend Scliff said last night, after Game Three, that he felt "either they win it all tomorrow, or if they lose, then they're going to lose the whole thing." In Red Sox Nation the glass is never half-full or half-empty. It's either overflowing onto the table, or smashed on the floor. I, for one, am ready for the Curse to be in the past. Will that take some of the steam out of the Yanks/Sox rivalry? Absolutely not. If anything, it goes up yet another notch.

  We'll find out tonight.

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  Copyright © 2004 Cecilia Tan