Game One

I have a bit of a confession.

For the past two years or so (a time that incidentally coincided with Bobby Valentine's reign of...terror?  error?  insanity?) I have been...shall we say...disheartened with my beloved Red Sox team.  Not wanting to sound like a fair weather fan, or worse, a "pink hat" I kept these feelings to myself initially.  I experienced feelings of doubt on occasion throughout the summers of 2011 and 2012, wondering internally why I didn't care that I was missing such and such important ball game or why I didn't know the ins and outs of every single Sox player in the line up like I used to. Were the Sox and I breaking up?  How had we lost that spark, that chemistry that initially pulled us together?

I worried people might be quick to dismiss these thoughts with a snide "getting a little greedy with those World Series titles, are we?" But I moved to Boston in the Fall of 1997, long before the 86 year old World Series drought had come to a close.  While a freshman at BU, my fellow terriers and I bonded a bit over baseball during our formative college years. How could we not when Fenway Park was virtually on our campus? I have a very distinct memory of participating in a "power hour" (with an actual cassette tape marking each minute!) my Junior year of college while the Sox played the Yankees just down the street from the apartment my friends and I were in.  I think, if I were to pinpoint a moment when I first started to truly identify myself as a Red Sox fan rather than a Phillies fan as I'd been in my childhood, I'd cite that night. Blame it on the beer haze but I can clearly remember the feeling of getting sucked into the game and that home team of ours.  A team that had been, for years, the legendary underdog.

When I moved back to Boston as an adult and started working in the city, I once again found myself mere blocks away from Fenway.  One of my best friends and I would sneak over to Fenway on our lunch break, hoping to score tickets to that nights game...back when tickets purchased the day of were easy to come by and ridiculously affordable given today's standards.  I have always joked that there's something in the water up here, that with few exceptions, if you live here long enough you can't help but become an avid Sox fan.  I love this town, this team, this ball park.  So you can understand my confusion and frustration when, over the last two years, I simply have not cared.  Win or lose, trades or no, fried chicken in the clubhouse or not, I was just...uninterested.  Last summer I finally shared this confession with one of my good friend's husbands.  The three of us were sitting out on their back deck, enjoying a beer, when he casually mentioned how unenthused he had been about the BoSox as of late.  I swear, in that moment, it was like I'd walked into a support group I didn't even know I needed.  I wasn't alone in all of this!  Maybe my lack of enthusiasm didn't make me the worst fan ever after all!

Let's be honest.  Even this season  didn't start off on the best note.  There's a reason people are saying "from worst to first."  But something finally clicked when we needed it to this year.  After a terrifying and upsetting April, I like to think something shifted in all of us - Bostonians, the Red Sox, and the fact that "this is our fucking city."

Yesterday morning I woke up like a little kid on Christmas.  I was grinning from ear to ear as I hit my alarm clock, smiling to myself throughout the day when I stopped to think about baseball, game one, the World Series.  As I left the office last night, I passed men and women, young and old, almost all of them donning some sort of Red Sox gear - a jacket, a hat - their pride taking over even the most somber business attire.  I wasn't even near the hallowed ground of Fenway Park and yet the excitement was palpable throughout the entire city....all of us hurrying to get to our various game watching locations, all of us seemingly echoing the same thought over and over: We're back! We're back! We're back!

 Go Sox!