The Boston Red Sox' nail-biting victory over the Oakland Athletics on Monday night moves professional baseball one step closer to the Dream Series: the Red Sox versus the Chicago Cubs. With all due respect to our New York readership — Yankee fans among them — to George Steinbrenner and to the Yankees themselves, we find it hard to resist the emotional tug and symmetrical possibilities of a series between teams that seem to have been put on earth to tantalize and then crush their zealous fans. Together they account for 180 years of futility. The Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908. The Red Sox have not won one since 1918, a little more than a year before they shipped Babe Ruth to the Yankees, a famously bizarre transaction that ushered in the era of Yankee domination.
For the matchup to occur, each team must jump one more hurdle. For Chicago, it is the Florida Marlins, a team for which it is hard to muster much enthusiasm if you're a baseball traditionalist. The Marlins, a major league team only since 1993, were essentially an artificial construct. The team's original owner, Wayne Huizenga, dismantled it after it won a championship in 1997 because the team was too expensive, then sold it in 1999. Improbably, the team finds itself knocking on the door again with a cast of largely low-paid youngsters.
For the Red Sox, the obstacles are twofold. One is the Yankees, whose lineup and pitching staff are rivaled only by the Cubs'. The other is the Red Sox, plagued by demons that ruin things whenever the team comes close. The Red Sox have reached the playoffs or the Series nine times since that triumph in 1918, and have failed every time. The Yankees tend to close things out, advancing to the World Series five times in the last seven years and winning four of them. Cold reality favors the Yankees; warm sentiment, which is at the heart of baseball and to which we are always susceptible, favors one or the other of baseball's most reliable losers.
2003 WORLD SERIES(like I said it would be all along)
You know, I have to wonder if the Times, after that whole "unreliability" thing earlier this year, is just going for the full heel turn to become the evil news paper in New York. Go Red Sox in a New York paper? You've gotta be nuts.
Daily News is gonna kick your ass for this, New York Times.
Kane gets flustered that he didn't get to do something silly this week. Ho hum.
The Times and Globe are running columns from each others' paper during the series, in a talent-swapping maneuver not seen since Riker was second-in-command on that Klingon ship.
What I'm upset about is those bastards at SI (based in New York, mind you) putting Pedro on the cover this week. Maybe the SI Cover curse and the Curse of the Bambino will cancel each other out.
(edited by Big Bad on 10.10.03 2149) "When this bogus term alternative rock was being thrown at every '70s retro rehash folk group, we were challenging people to new sonic ideas. If some little snotty anarchist with an Apple Mac and an attitude thinks he invented dance music and the big rock group is coming into his territory, [that's] ridiculous." - Bono, 1997
Originally posted by Big BadMaybe it's reverse psychology.
What I'm upset about is those bastards at SI (based in New York, mind you) putting Pedro on the cover this week. Maybe the SI Cover curse and the Curse of the Bambino will cancel each other out.
(edited by Big Bad on 10.10.03 2149)
The Pedro cover is only for the northeast and southern part of the country. Out in the midwest and west, Kerry Wood is on the cover.
There was an article in the Boston Herald earlier this week that mentioned this. It also pointed out that the SI cover curse might keep both the Cubs and Sox out of the World Series.
(edited by Keeper on 10.10.03 2325) Murphy's Law "The odds of the bread landing buttered side down are directly proportional to the price of the carpet."
Originally posted by Big BadMaybe it's reverse psychology.
What I'm upset about is those bastards at SI (based in New York, mind you) putting Pedro on the cover this week. Maybe the SI Cover curse and the Curse of the Bambino will cancel each other out.
(edited by Big Bad on 10.10.03 2149)
The Pedro cover is only for the northeast and southern part of the country. Out in the midwest and west, Kerry Wood is on the cover.
There was an article in the Boston Herald earlier this week that mentioned this. It also pointed out that the SI cover curse might keep both the Cubs and Sox out of the World Series.
(edited by Keeper on 10.10.03 2325)
Look what the SI cover did to Mia Hamm and the Oregon football team recently. Not a good sign.
Where's the spaceship? The Mayor promised a spaceship if we beat the A's, and I want my spaceship.
Mo: I'm a big Woody Williams fan. I had the guy autograph my softball glove for me... I take that glove to every game and I look at Woody's autograph and remember that day every time I take it out... He is not Cy Young material. He never will be.