The Game 5 Comeback at Fenway turned into a Toga Party-by baseball standards it was debauchy-and now anything goes for the the rest of the ALCS. Yes, Tampa, we still want to show you our cucumber! It wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, and now the tough get going back to the turquoise haze of cowbell park. Nothing is over until we say it is! Where were you for Game 5, in 2008? Most of us had settled in for a long winter’s nap, but as the years go by people will say they watched the Red Sox do what they improbably did do. Toga Party? Toga Party!
Boston sports fans and scribes have long held the rep to be knowledgeable and wise, even “smartest”. It was a hard earned distinction borne from the agony of defeat, which then lead to careful, reasoned off-season scrutiny by MIT seamheads, among other local geniuses-also know as “Hot Stove”. Yet two recent World Series wins have created an entitled, slightly inebrieted class of obnoxious new fans and scribes that howl at the moon after every loss, demand that this and that player/manager be shipped out regardless of yesterday’s heroics; they behave, frankly, like entitled Yankee fans. Stocks don’t always go up. That’s a free market for ya, and you can’t buy or demand championships, because it’s just a game. To quote the great Dominican philosopher Aristedes, “It’s not the end of the world.” So stay loose, and stay on the ball.
“Baseball is war by other means”. No one ever said this, and currently there are actual military and economic wars occuring-perhaps one in the same-but the voting public will mostly pay attention in the next several weeks to a simmering rivalry and playoff series between the upstart Rays and the new world order of the Red Sox. A lot is at stake, out in the real world, but Sox & Rays fans will express themselves through sport; hoping, praying, yelling, screaming, crying, drinking, getting their hair cut into green stripes, in short, putting their time, money and mouth where the baseball is!
Mercenary heroes... The Johnny Damon affair is a sad reminder of the dishonor and bad behavior that is the flip side of big money sports teams like the Red Sox. Yes, Boston won two World Series titles, ending an 86 year curse, but perhaps without the lasting honor that even the losers of ‘86, ‘75 & ‘68 retain. The Sox won with acquired big contract players like Damon, Manny Ramirez, Curt Schilling & Josh Beckett, among others-fans of their departed teams were brokenhearted-(Oakland, Cleveland, Philadelphia/Arizona & Florida). But Damon & Ramirez would eventually sell-out the Red Sox just as the Sox had out-bid their previous teams and community of fans.
Damon was booed brutally for several years at Fenway Park when he played for the Yankees. Okay, he makes a lot of money and can take it, but guess what, he’s a human being after all, and now does not want to return to a previous “home”. In fact, nice guy Damon is badly booed everywhere but New York and Detroit.
It has all the hallmarks of a financial divorce. A lasting lifelong scar driven by individual pursuits that trump the honor of the common good. (0)