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Red Sox Inferno
October 10, 2008
Sweet Mother of Massachusetts; let’s play some baseball already!
The more level headed fans I know have been reminding me that our boys need their rest. They’re reminded me of the long flights and short visits with family. Sensible Sawxheads have said to me, “Mar—relax. Do you want them to be completely exhausted before reaching the World Series?”
To that my answer is, let’s get through the ALCS first. It feels like it’s taken an eternity to even get to this Tampa Bay series anyway, right? From many of the blogs I’ve read lately, it seems many of you would agree that three days off plus today’s eight and a half hours has been the Sox fan’s equivalent of travelling through layers of hell. Allow me to grab my pitchfork and cape and recap our recent baseball-less misery.
Monday, October 6: The crowd’s cheers rip the air to shreds at the walkoff wonder hit by a struggling shortstop. Lowrie has saved the day; Boston is in ecstasy; Sh*t is about to get retarded.
Tuesday, October 7: ABANDON ALL HOPE FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS, YOU WHO ENTER TUESDAY, reads the gate. Welcome to Limbo, Sox fans. You’re in no man’s land--stranded in between the rapture of the ALDS and the unknown of the AL Championship Series. You sleepwalk through your job, alternating between joyful recapping of Game Four and trash talking Tampa Bay while at the water cooler. Once you finally return home you take your place on your favorite recliner or sofa and turn on the TV when it hits you like a dirty sucker punch from James Shields: No Red Sox tonight. All around the Nation there’s an ache in the pit of our stomachs, and it has nothing to do with crappy Chinese takeout.
Wednesday, October 8: You wake to enter the ring of hell designed for the lustful Sox fan. For 162 games we had them when we wanted them. Less important things (i.e. laundry, dishes, mowing the lawn, birthday parties for your children, family weddings) were cancelled or scheduled around game days and nights, so right now you're feeling like a junkie with withdrawal. It’s Wednesday night and the only thing on that’s even slightly relevant is the Ugueth Urbina story on ESPN360, so you watch it…again. You find yourself fantasizing about Saturday’s Kazmir-Beckett matchup while lying in bed, praying for sleep.
But sleep won’t come.
Thursday, October 9: It wasn’t until your lunch break, when you bawled out the guy at the deli for fifteen minutes because there weren’t enough sesame seeds on the crust of your bread, that you realized how darn cranky you are. The event that likely pushed you over the edge was when your DVD player started smoking in protest of the seventh time you tried to watch “Rooters: The Birth of Red Sox Nation.” Thankfully, the NLCS is on tonight. In an odd twist of logic however, watching the Phillies play the Dodgers for the NL crown only sinks you further into the desperate desire to watch Boston baseball and you start randomly cutting onions at 11 PM so nobody will notice that you’re actually crying.
Friday, October 10: You’ve sufficiently caught up on the sleep lost during the ALDS and have written a letter of apology to the sandwich guy that you spazed out on yesterday. Instead of checking your watch at work for little-hand-on-five, big-hand-on-twelve, you have Boston.com minimized on the bottom of your screen to keep up with their Countdown to First Pitch (0 days: 5 hours: 0 mins: 56…55…54 secs, as I write this now). The texting inbox on your cell is no longer filled with “GOD HELP MEEEE”s, but “Where we goin’? Baseball Tavern? McGreevy’s?”, “LGRS!!!” and “5 more hrs I’m FREAKIN’ OUT DUUUDEEE. O ya, ur turn 2 buy beer” messages.
There may be light at the end of this tunnel after all, Sawxheads. As it's been hard on us all, I'm interested to hear what the the past few days have been like for the rest of you.
Do tell.
-sportsgal
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