a lot of people go to college for seven years... i know - they're called doctors...
it really is extraordinary... people tell me they find baseball boring, especially in the middle of the regular season - even if they like it... ok, fine, i'll admit it - pretty much all regular season games, especially at this point of the year, aren't exactly frickin must see tv...
but i'm telling you, the sox and the yanks - they transcend everything... so many issues, storylines, plot twists and character flaws become exposed for all to see more frequently and more graphically when they play each other... maybe i should be used to it after this long, but i don't think that will ever happen...
for starters, it's the reactionary gene prevalent in all breathing members of red sox nation... this town is as reactionary as it gets as we all know, but when the yanks are on the docket, it's heightened, as if that's possible... shaughnessy writes a whole column about how they lost saturday's game because of a baserunning snafu, neglecting to mention the hideous starting pitching performance that put them in a 6-run hole, the almost home run by papi that would have changed things drastically, or the amount of men left on base... second-guessing to the nth degree...
it's the way the two teams play each other... every damn game has to be in some way out of the ordinary... thursday its schilling's triumphant/horrifying return, friday its a 17-1 beatdown, saturday it's fateful stuff (that ball papi hit went 420 goddamn feet and was an out!!!) and tonight was bad luck at the worst time (to go from bases loaded with no one out and two runs home against rivera to the game being over in the span of 2 pitches is quite a little mood swing, no?)... seemingly every game they've played the last three years have been like that... the red sox won't play say kansas city a game like any of these twice, EVER...
it's the atmosphere at fenway for a game... sox games i've been to at yankee stadium are always exciting, always packed, always more intense than any old game and always less magnetic by half than when the teams play here... thursday night, we saw the sox blow leads of 4-0, 5-2 and 6-5, watched sheffield and a-fraud play like the hall-of-famers they are, witnessed another go-ahead, late-inning homer by papi and even saw bellhorn strike out twice, all before the real shit started... when schilling walked out to the pen in the sixth, he got a standing o for the entire way... when he warmed up in the eighth, he got a huge round of applause... when he came in the game in the ninth with the score 6-6, i felt like i'd been teleported straight into the playoffs... fenway was shaking down to its roots... flashbulbs were going off as if it was the frickin oscars... it felt like john wayne or steve mcqueen or some other great american movie hero was returning home after a long mission... and then he took the mound, threw 7 pitches and was behind 8-6... in the span of three minutes, fenway went from the most ebullient i've ever seen it to a mausoleum... between grumblings that the great schilling-as-a-closer experiment was already a failure after one outing and others blaming the whole thing (and the kennedy assassination) on millar and bellhorn, you could hear a pindrop... think that shit ever happens, has happened or will happen against anyone else ever, especially in the middle of july? nope...
about the only thing not at a boiling point was the fenway faithful's reaction to yankee fans... i heard myself called a traitor a couple of times for being with the captain in all her yankee garbed-glory, was asked how i could possibly seen in public with someone in a yankee hat and shirt at least once and may have heard a couple people say "nice shirt!" or something else equally clever to her in passing... but it was otherwise civilized, a far cry even from just a year ago at this time... amazing what the greatest comeback/chokejob and a championship will do for the fans, eh?
i guess the point is it all just never ceases to floor me... i'll bet nothing i've written is even remotely surprising to anyone who has ever seen, heard or read anything about a sox-yanks game... but there i was, at least once during each game of the weekend, whether i was at fenway or in front of a tv, utterly stunned at what was happening before my eyes...
man, thank god they have the division rival d-rays coming in tomorrow...
quick sidenote: the t-shirt purveyors are finally starting to smarten up a touch... witness shirts recently spotted from both vantage points...
SOX - instead of the witty, imaginative 'jeter swallows,' we now have 'jeter drinks wine coolers'
YANKEES - (courtesy of the captain) on the front, in sox-style lettering, 'there was no curse,' and on the back, with the B logo smack in the middle, 'the red sox just sucked for 86 years'
not bad, eh?
but i'm telling you, the sox and the yanks - they transcend everything... so many issues, storylines, plot twists and character flaws become exposed for all to see more frequently and more graphically when they play each other... maybe i should be used to it after this long, but i don't think that will ever happen...
for starters, it's the reactionary gene prevalent in all breathing members of red sox nation... this town is as reactionary as it gets as we all know, but when the yanks are on the docket, it's heightened, as if that's possible... shaughnessy writes a whole column about how they lost saturday's game because of a baserunning snafu, neglecting to mention the hideous starting pitching performance that put them in a 6-run hole, the almost home run by papi that would have changed things drastically, or the amount of men left on base... second-guessing to the nth degree...
it's the way the two teams play each other... every damn game has to be in some way out of the ordinary... thursday its schilling's triumphant/horrifying return, friday its a 17-1 beatdown, saturday it's fateful stuff (that ball papi hit went 420 goddamn feet and was an out!!!) and tonight was bad luck at the worst time (to go from bases loaded with no one out and two runs home against rivera to the game being over in the span of 2 pitches is quite a little mood swing, no?)... seemingly every game they've played the last three years have been like that... the red sox won't play say kansas city a game like any of these twice, EVER...
it's the atmosphere at fenway for a game... sox games i've been to at yankee stadium are always exciting, always packed, always more intense than any old game and always less magnetic by half than when the teams play here... thursday night, we saw the sox blow leads of 4-0, 5-2 and 6-5, watched sheffield and a-fraud play like the hall-of-famers they are, witnessed another go-ahead, late-inning homer by papi and even saw bellhorn strike out twice, all before the real shit started... when schilling walked out to the pen in the sixth, he got a standing o for the entire way... when he warmed up in the eighth, he got a huge round of applause... when he came in the game in the ninth with the score 6-6, i felt like i'd been teleported straight into the playoffs... fenway was shaking down to its roots... flashbulbs were going off as if it was the frickin oscars... it felt like john wayne or steve mcqueen or some other great american movie hero was returning home after a long mission... and then he took the mound, threw 7 pitches and was behind 8-6... in the span of three minutes, fenway went from the most ebullient i've ever seen it to a mausoleum... between grumblings that the great schilling-as-a-closer experiment was already a failure after one outing and others blaming the whole thing (and the kennedy assassination) on millar and bellhorn, you could hear a pindrop... think that shit ever happens, has happened or will happen against anyone else ever, especially in the middle of july? nope...
about the only thing not at a boiling point was the fenway faithful's reaction to yankee fans... i heard myself called a traitor a couple of times for being with the captain in all her yankee garbed-glory, was asked how i could possibly seen in public with someone in a yankee hat and shirt at least once and may have heard a couple people say "nice shirt!" or something else equally clever to her in passing... but it was otherwise civilized, a far cry even from just a year ago at this time... amazing what the greatest comeback/chokejob and a championship will do for the fans, eh?
i guess the point is it all just never ceases to floor me... i'll bet nothing i've written is even remotely surprising to anyone who has ever seen, heard or read anything about a sox-yanks game... but there i was, at least once during each game of the weekend, whether i was at fenway or in front of a tv, utterly stunned at what was happening before my eyes...
man, thank god they have the division rival d-rays coming in tomorrow...
quick sidenote: the t-shirt purveyors are finally starting to smarten up a touch... witness shirts recently spotted from both vantage points...
SOX - instead of the witty, imaginative 'jeter swallows,' we now have 'jeter drinks wine coolers'
YANKEES - (courtesy of the captain) on the front, in sox-style lettering, 'there was no curse,' and on the back, with the B logo smack in the middle, 'the red sox just sucked for 86 years'
not bad, eh?
posted by jmg at 8:12 PM
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