the spheres align!

and the red sox win the fucking world series!

un-fucking-believable. i had to ask myself if it was real even after the team began piling on top of each other. part of me thought i would never see it happen. "they'll break your heart," i was told repeatedly as a kid, "every time."

well, not this time.

and what a sweet, sweet way to go. an 8-game blaze of glory. pulling the rug from under the yanks and sweeping the cards under it. somehow the strange symmetry makes the symbolism that much better, that much more redeeming.

the image of that ball trickling through billy buck's legs will never haunt me in the same way again. it's affective power now diminished by a truly triumphant achievement. i was ten years old when the sox broke my heart for the first time: a baseball fanatic, a card collector, an impressionable kid. that upset in '86 has been mine--and most of my peers'--lived experience of the curse. it didn't matter that the celtics won that year; it didn't matter that the patriots were spanked in the superbowl. that series was crushing.

now the curse is broken. there is a new series to remember, and a new team to celebrate. this win fundamentally transforms the red sox--and by extension, the city of boston. the curse has been our collective albatross, an ontological imperative to live in dread. even with two outs in the ninth, i was cautious, nervous. not a call made to friends and family. no premature celebrating, or even relaxing. now, things are different. apparently, sometimes we can win. for all the special status red sox fans have accrued over the years, i think i can speak for us all when i say i am happy to toss tradition aside and enjoy the feeling of sweet victory.

thanks to the 2004 sox for being a great club, for beating the odds, and most importantly, for not choking again, you bastards.



(go cubs!)