Word: sox
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...THIS time last year, I was shuttling between agony and ecstasy. I remain a loyal New Yorker and Yankee fan, but 20 adult years in the shadow of Fenway park have engendered a strong affection for the Sox. The Mets, as an expansion team, are nothing to me because rooting is forged in the fires of youth, and the Mets didn't exist during my stickball days in Queens. So I cast my lot with my adopted Boston and died with the Sox. I will never ever in all the rest of my life be able to think about Game...
This October, I found myself in an exactly opposite predicament. While the Series was in progress, I couldn't bring myself to care. Moreover, the entire season had been one long, progressive benumbment, as circumstances snatched interest from me, piece by progressive piece. The Sox were out of it before we began--what with Clemens' holdout, Gedman's erasure, and Boyd's injury. So I followed the Yanks, who stayed on top far longer than they deserved (on almost no pitching worth mentioning) but eventually, and inevitably, faded. Then I swallowed my pride of last October and followed the Mets...
...SEPTEMBER 28, 1986, the Red Sox defeated the Blue Jays 10-3 to clinch the American League East. On September 28, 1987, they lost to the hated New York Yankees 9-7, giving up six runs in the bottom of the ninth--two of which came on home run hit off a pitch from...Calvin Schiraldi. The loss dropped their record to 74-82 and left the Sox 21.5 games behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays. For Sox fans, last year's fabulous October, when we set our schedules by the date and time of the next game, seems...
This Sunday, as I wolf down Fenway Franks and unshelled peanuts, slurp watered-down beer, sing "Take Me Out to The Ballgame," and enjoy the last Red Sox game of the year, I'll be as full of hope as I was seven months ago in Kissimmee. The Red Sox have a large crop of fine rookies: Sam.Horn (14 home runs in only 130 at bats), Mike Greenwell (87 runs batted in in 120 games), Ellis Burks(20 home runs, 26 stolen bases). With Oil Can returning, Rice rediscovering his home run swing, Schiraldi finding new life in the starting...
...wrote that baseball is about joy, a feeling that can send "a grown man or woman to dancing with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball." It is also about hope, a necessity for disappointed fans. Especially for long-frustrated Red Sox fans, who after a tough season now cry out, with complete faith, "wait 'til next year...