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10-28-2004, 04:53 PM
Link (http://www.indystar.com/articles/0/189979-5150-036.html)

Long-suffering fans finally can celebrate

By Mike Downey
Chicago Tribune
October 28, 2004

ST. LOUIS -- The earth is upside down.

Russia is our ally but France won't fight by our side. States elect wrestlers and bodybuilders as governors. America can't win in basketball at an Olympics but dominates European bicycle races.

Penn State and Nebraska get humiliated in college football while Boise State and Utah get nationwide acclaim. The NFL's worst teams include the Dolphins and 49ers and the most disappointing pro team in Boston is the Celtics.

Oh, and the Red Sox are the champions of baseball.

Something definitely is wrong with this picture. If it makes you feel like Rip Van Winkle, as if you fell asleep for 20 years and awoke to find nothing the same as when you left it, you are not alone.

There were certain things one could count on in this life. Death, taxes and the failure of the Boston Red Sox, to name three. To watch them win a World Series is tantamount to watching a Volkswagen outrun a Ferrari or a mouse catch a cat.

If you live long enough, however, you might see sights you never have seen before. Comets and lunar eclipses. Televised games of poker and women entered in men's golf tournaments. Tampa Bay victorious in Super Bowls and Stanley Cup hockey.

But even the most passionate followers of the Red Sox were unwilling to speculate they would see this hapless team of theirs triumph in their lifetimes. They spoke of ancestors who didn't live long enough to witness it and of kinfolk who desired nothing more before they left this world.

So when the unthinkable happened Wednesday night in St. Louis, courtesy of a 3-0 victory that concluded a four-game sweep of the Cardinals, not a soul cared that it was a humdrum World Series devoid of inspired play or classic moments. Or that it was not electrifying baseball in any way, shape or form.

For a fan of the Red Sox, each game could have had errors galore and dragged on interminably for all anyone cared. No one was in need of additional chills and thrills by this point. It was enough to behold what they feared their eyes would never see.

So this one is for them. For the faithful millions who flocked to the same neighborhood of Boston from 1918 to the present, to the same bandbox ballpark with the limited seating capacity and the fortress-tall outfield fence.

This is for all those from Red Sox Nation who traveled to Missouri in person or sat in front of television sets in New England and believed, doubted or prayed until the very last out.

For those who are thankful for small favors at long last, while simultaneously wondering whether it was worth it to lose the bad-luck charm that gave the Red Sox their very identity.

"One of the most engaging peculiarities of Boston," wrote Mark Twain, the bard of the Mississippi River, on a visit to that city 135 years ago, "is her reverence for her traditions, her relics, her antiquities."

For 86 years, a city perpetually described as "long-suffering" also had to take a kind of perverse pride and pleasure in its care and sentiment for a stray puppy of a baseball team that never could quite keep up with the other big dogs.

But finally there came 2004, a year America underwent a few changes of its own. It lost the actors who played the Gipper, the Godfather and Superman and the voices of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash. It went through a variety of Democratic presidential candidates and saw a gracious-living expert go to prison.

Red Sox Nation sustained losses as well. There was the chef Julia Child, a devoted fan of the team. There was the elderly John Kelly the Elder, who ran in the Boston Marathon 61 times. There was the son of Ted Williams, a young man who had his father's body sent to a cryogenics lab only to end up there himself.

So this one is for them.

Just as it is for the members of the 1967 Red Sox who could not defeat St. Louis in a World Series and gain the immortality this year's team did. So many gone now: Tony Conigliaro, the pitchers John Wyatt, Don McMahon and Ken Brett, catchers Bob Tillman and Elston Howard, infielders Joe Foy and Jerry Adair, not a one of whom lived to see his 65th birthday.

And this one is for old-timers from the Red Sox of the 1940s such as Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio, who tossed out a 2004 World Series ceremonial first pitch together.

Oh, and naturally this one is for the Bambino, the great Babe Ruth, the man and myth who was blamed for the curse that kept Boston fans from winning a World Series once he was no longer theirs to cheer.

The earth is definitely upside down.