There's a certain combination of letters that when you say them together, every Red Sox fan cringes:
4 8 15 16 23 42
No, wait, that's the number sequence on "Lost." What I meant to say was:
1918
While Red Sox Nation reacts to that date like Hurley does to the "Lost" numbers, there's no reason to fear it anymore. There's a new combination of numbers that spells out something much sweeter:
2004
The old number represented every painful loss, every painful chant by Damn Yankee fans. The new number represents the end to 86 years of futility, of pure joy, of renewed hope, no more "wait until next year" comments amongst one another during long winters.
In other words, as Bill Simmons' book is titled, "Now I Can Die in Peace."
Y'all may be looking forward to the new 2006 season. I, and the rest of Red Sox Nation, continue to bask in the glow of a World Series almost two years old. Now that's not to say that we didn't fret over the '05 playoff collapse, or worry with every pitch thrown from now until the end of October, but the stigma of "when will we lose, and how hideous will it be?" is over.
Simmons made his mark first as The Boston Sports Guy on Boston Digital City (where I found him to read about the Sox) before going big time on ESPN where he became The Sports Guy, the most popular writer on the site due to the way he combines a love of sports with pop culture anecdotes. Think Clerks but with sports geeks.
Obviously, I'm a big fan of the Simmons Era of sportswriting.
His columns are must-read material when I check the web, and are the pinnacle of Best Reading On The John. They're breezy, funny and uncomplicated. Unless, of course, you hate gambling and never heard of "The OC," "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" or whatever show his wife - naturally, dubbed The Sports Gal - supposedly requires him to watch like "The Bachelor." (Though we all know he gets a sneaky pleasure out of such shows.)
I thought I used random references on my blog and travelogues, but I couldn't come up with anything as remote as comparing Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz to "Fred Lynn and Jim Rice crossed with Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell." Wait, who? Oh, Landers and Rockwell is from Boogie Nights, a movie Simmons has referenced an almost disturbing number of times.
"Now I Can Die in Peace" is a collection of his columns from 1998 through Opening Day '05 about a love affair with the Red Sox, from his time as a kid in Boston until he moved to L.A. to write for the Jimmy Kimmel Show, where he watched 86 years of futility end.
(Extra points to me on this one, since I was with Dad in St. Louis. Not that this is a competition; I just like to point out that fact and brag. Of course, it's an example of either our devotion or foolishness that before the season even began we both took the week of the World Series off to be able to follow the team. Thankfully we didn't jinx the Sox with that bold move.)
Check out this bit from an Oct. 5, 1998 column:
Over the winter, fans couldn't believe that the Sox management didn't didn't give Francona a blank check and extend his contract several more years until this spring.
What makes the book set apart from Simmons' columns are the notes he adds to the side of the columns from the present looking back at the piece. It's like a DVD commentary to a movie. Simmons can look back at his columns and provide context, let us in on inside jokes and old pop culture references, and remind us just how deep love of the Red Sox can go. That, and he can curse, which apparently he's been longing to do but isn't allowed on ESPN.com.
The overriding theme is that Red Sox fans "are good fans - passionate, loyal, and perceptive almost to a fault - and we have an uncanny knack for blindly throwing ourselves behind our team and supporting them through thick and then. Few franchises could say the same about their fans. It's just that we expect the worst now, which won't change until this team finally wins a championship. ...
"I'm the first to admit that Sox fans are lunatics. Some find us annoying, others amusing, others exhausting. Thanks to an endless series of books, documentaries and TV features, we're probably in danger of becoming a cliche, if it hasn't happened already. ...
"There are thousands and thousands of diehards just like me - united by our experiences and memories. We wear Sox caps, we pack Fenway Park, we travel insane distances to support our team on the road. We always have each other. And some days are better than others."
I'm not even sure when I became the die-hard Red Sox fan I am today. As a kid I didn't really care either way about a single major team, which is a product of growing up in Memphis before the Grizzlies. We had then-Memphis State basketball and football, and that was it.
By high school, however, I started to care, and whatever programming Dad had been doing started to click. (Dad lived for a time in Rhode Island where his father was based in the Navy, where he fell for the Sox in the days of the Splendid Splinter in the outfield with Jackie Jensen and Jimmy Piersall.) When I went to baseball collectible stores I was looking for Boston cards, pored over Baseball Weekly for information in the days before the Internet was widespread, and I kept a journal of box scores with every single game. I was hooked.
Simmons: "Either you were born into the Red Sox, you were swept up by them, or you inherited them the same way people inherit baldness and high blood pressure. Inevitably, you passed them down to the next generation. You hoped everything would be worth it some day - even if all evidence pointed to the contrary. You hoped."
[As the game went into extra innings] "It was like seeing the Ghost of Eighty-Six. Suddenly, I knew they were going to lose. I grabbed my stuff and quickly bolted out of there, looking like a guy grabbing his clothes after a bad one-night stand. My friends were in disbelief - it was like Montecore the Tiger was dragging me off the stage [Siegfried & Roy reference]. I couldn't possibly explain it to them. Ten minutes later, I walked through my front door, sat down next to the Sports Gal (dutifully watching the entire game on the sofa), and watched Boone crush that Tim Wakefield knuckler into the stands. I had been home for about 45 seconds. No lie. ... As a sports fan, sometimes you know when bad things are going to happen. You recognize the depressing signs because you've been there before."
Going to Fenway Park was like visiting a shrine. Muslims throw stones at a fake devil, we chow down Fenway Franks and yell "Yankee suck!" even when playing someone else.
I was too young to be heartbroken in '86 (though now I can't stand to watch any replays of the Buckner ball), and no one expected much of the Sox in '88 or '90 so I guess you could say I lost my Red Sox innocence when Boston won the East in '95 and promptly got swept by the Indians in the playoffs. Whenever I see Albert Belle I get ill, thinking of him kissing his arms after launching a homer that tied the Sox in the 11th inning of game one. (Okay, to be fair, Belle was accused of having a corked bat. He's still an ass.)
From then on, the damn Yanks won the division with Boston second, losing as wild cards in '98, '99, and then the Grady Little Game Seven in 2003 was awful. Yet that didn't stop every one of us in Red Sox Nation from getting our hopes up in October of 2004.
I didn't buy that curse nonsense one bit. All of that twaddle was generated by Boston Globe curly-Q columnist Dan Shaughnessy to sell a book, and he should be hit with one of Babe Ruth's 36-inch bats repeatedly for it. Or, I'm going to declare 2005 the year of the Shaughnessy Curse for declaring in June that the Red Sox would win the East easily, when the damn Yanks promptly won fifty straight games and ended up tying the Sox for the division win with the tiebreaker and home-field advantage in the playoffs.
I can't even imagine how it felt for Dad when the Sox won the Series. As Simmons said about the over-50 crowd, "those are the people who passed a certain point in life and started wondering, "Wait a second, is this thing EVER going to happen?'"
That it happened with a comeback win down 3-0 in the ALCS over the damn Yanks, ten times the better.
Simmons: "So now that we're winners again, let's keep a low profile and stop trying to revive this one-sided Sox-Yankees feud. Take solace in the fact that budding Yankee fans follow the team simply because they're winning and lack the creativity to buck the bandwagon. Better yet, bear in mind that the typical Yankees fan is obnoxious, condescending, and exceptionally arrogant - and those are his better qualities."
Simmons printed an email later that said it perfectly: "Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in Blackjack."
So be the bigger fan. I mean, they haven't won a World Series since the last century, so the pain is real. Wow, they really do suck.
A running theme of Simmons' columns is how fast things can change, especially player and public sentiment towards one another. Being a Red Sox fan is like being addicted to "Days of Our Lives." You could go away and not pay attention for a couple of weeks, return and it seems all the plots are the same, but you get the feeling you missed something big, like Marlena getting possessed by demons or the kids aged ten years overnight. (That's my analogy; Simmons wouldn't admit he watches soaps, though he works at home and has a baby daughter. You figure it out.)
A sidenote example:
"By the way, I have to question any Red Sox fan who would marry a Yankee fan. Unless you have never been laid before and this is legitimately your only chance to have regular sex, it's simply unacceptable. Would you marry someone from Al-Qaeda?" We'll always remember Nomar Garciaparra clapping in the dugout during the final inning, trying anything to keep his team alive, never giving up hope ... and when it was over, stepping out of the dugout and applauding the Fenway Faithful. After everything he gave us this year - the clutch hits, the breathtaking plays in the field, the smiles, and the hope - the last thing we would have expected was for him to applaud us. But he did. [Emphasis his.]
Not six years later, Nomar was sulking on the bench during an exciting extra-innings game in New York, practically begging to be traded. He was at the end of July, '04, and the Red Sox turned it into Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz to win the Series. As Simmons put it July 2, '04: And there was Nomar, the fading superstar who helped his team blow two games in Yankee Stadium, then showed little interest in even watching the third one. He's been declining steadily for three seasons now - his body breaking down, his defense slipping, his lack of plate discipline a bigger problem than ever. He always seemed to enjoy himself on the field, almost like a little kid, but even that's a distant memory. Maybe his spirit was shattered by the rumored deal to Chicago last winter. Only he knows the answer to that one. For his sake, I hope he's getting traded this month. After last night's display, there's no going back.
In a July 1, 2004 column, Simmons was ripping new Red Sox manager Terry Francona's "lack of aggression," calling him "shaky." At the time, so was I. The Sox came to Atlanta a few days later and I went off on Tito for the same reason, ignoring the basics of small ball, especially his lack of laying down bunts to move runners over. My quote: Francona "couldn't manage a hot-dog eating contest, let alone a baseball team." Let's just say the atmosphere by Sox fans at this point was Openly Hostile.
I have the 12-disc DVD set of the seven-game set with the damn Yanks and the four World Series games, plus a disc of extras. I have the official World Series DVD, another done by NESN, the home network of the Sox, plus a World Series blanket, four jerseys, and ordered the MLB Extra Innings package specifically to watch the Sox. I even liked Fever Pitch, and one of my favorite parts of winning the Series was standing in the cold rain outside a sports bar just to eventually get near the trophy.
The pain of the Grady Little Game in 2003:
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