If you've been reading my columns, you know that I like to tell stories about people. For the most part those stories are about people I know. Like my foreign friend Karim who tragically cannot vote for John Kerry this Tuesday. Or my baseball watching friend who was driven completely insane by his "Sex and the City" watching roommate.
But today I will tell you a story about someone I do not personally know and who I have ostensibly made up for the purpose of this column. This someone is little Billy Mucklinbergerstein of Natick, Massachusetts. On Saturday the 30th of October 2004, little eight year old Billy sat in the window of his father's second story office at the Suffolk University School of Law on Tremont Street with his little eight year old face pressed against the glass, mucus from his red nose smeared all over it. Billy was there for the Red Sox parade. And as he kneeled on the window sill and sipped from the McDonald's coke his father bought him on the drive in, spilling a great deal of it on his brand new David Ortiz t-shirt, he strained his eyes to look through a hail of flittering confetti paper and intermittent drizzle down towards Boylston Street. Billy was waiting. Waiting to catch the first glimpse of his heroes.
For those of you, and you know who you are, who are thinking, "Oh no, not another Red Sox column," I have this to say to you: Shut up, this column is not for you. This column is for all the men and women of this world who were once little Billy Mucklinbergersteins themselves. All of those sniffling, mucus faced, New England little leaguers who threw a tennis ball against their garage for hours every day of the year, weaving their fastball and changeup in and out of a duct tape strikezone like Tiant, Oil Can, Clemens, or even Pedro. Every single person who grew up past the age of eight going to bed hungry every October, betrayed by the optimism of their Julys. This column is for them.
It's for Jeff Larson, Alex Parachini, and Jay Verrill. The three guys with whom, through a haze of sunflower seeds, malt liquor, and ticket scalping, I managed to experience three playoff games in the last two years.
For Jeff, whose incredible heckling abilities single-handedly led to the combined 7 for 53 performance of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Gary Sheffield in games four through seven.
For Alex, who said, before the pitch that David Ortiz slammed for his twelfth inning walk-off homerun in game four, "Hey Sheffield, this one's going over your head."
For Jay, who was harassed by a security guard to throw out his Yankees Suck t-shirt as we entered the park for the last regular season home game with C-U-R-T spelled out on our chests in the red house paint we bought forty-five minutes earlier at Tag's hardware. The effects of the 'T' remain on my chest, whether left by rash, suntan, or patterns of missing chest hair.
For Matan Chorev and Dan Blaney, with whom I sat through every game of the 2003 playoffs engaging in ridiculous superstitions involving a diet coke bottle and various rally cap permutations. Especially for Matan who put a bottle of champagne in the freezer right before Pedro Martinez went out for the eighth inning in Game 7. After the game I was too emotionally drained to kill him for it.
For Joel Wertheimer, who found me at a party just after the 19-8 loss, and quite drunkenly and emotionally explained to me that our chances of going to the World Series were "6 f**king percent."
For Jacob George, who went to Game 1 of the World Series, an ugly game that had all the makings of another Red Sox heartbreak, and who had tickets to Game 7. Jacob, in the six inning of the eventual 3-0 Sox win in Game 4 had the courage to order the Bambino Ale at Boston Beerworks just so he could say after the game, "I am now pissing out the Bambino."
For Ian Cheney, a converted Braves fan who jumped head first into the Nation. Every conversation Ian and I have had in the last two years, and there have been many whether on the Patriots, Red Sox, or other, has ended with "Go Sox." Nowadays I can't wait to talk to Ian. I'll be able to end the conversation with "Go World Champs."
For me, and yes that's selfish. For having to explain to employers or graduate schools why exactly my grades dipped in the fall semesters of my last two years of college. For having the courage/audacity/insolence to wear my Red Sox little league jersey, precariously numbered #3, under my lucky Pedro Martinez shirt for the World Series. Exorcism or idiocy, but it worked.
And for all of the others I am forgetting. I'm writing this after a night of only four hours of sleep, charged from watching the Red Sox strut through Boston earlier today, kings of the city. As the Park Street Church bell rang wildly at 11:22 am on a Saturday, echoing only the religion of Red Sox, little Billy Mucklinbergerstein saw his heroes emerge from a sea of orange coated police officers. A string of seventeen duck boats crept down Tremont Street. To their right was Billy staring at the men he absolutely worshipped, a Polaroid of the generations of Billies that came before him. To their left lay the Freedom Trail, the very route Paul Revere navigated 230 years earlier. "The Red Sox are coming," I said to my friends over the tolling of the Park Church bell. "One-eth by land, Two-eth by Sea, and Three-eth by Duckboat."
