Bambino's Curse

Something in the Air

Well it's that time of year again. No, I'm not referring to the situation where "the Red Sox have officially reached the home stretch of the season," but rather the time of pollen and seasonal allergy. I'm among the millions afflicted every September and October and if it wasn't for a certain miracle product that shall remain nameless I probably wouldn't even be blogging daily. Right now even with the medicinal effects of the unnamed allergy product I can still feel that the allergens are there inside me. I'm no longer debilitated like in the past, but the histamine presence is felt in a puffiness about the eyes and a weird, not quite right feeling in the throat.

So what's up with not saying the name of the product that has quite literally changed my life the in the two years I've been reaching for it daily during the pollen period? Well, what I'm thinking is if celebrities can be paid to mention particular products when they are making the talk show circuit, why can't bloggers get a piece of the action?

Consequently, if you're in the marketing department of a certain pharmaceutical company in Kenilworth, NJ 07033 USA you know how to reach me. Let's talk.

Meanwhile, for poor Ben Affleck it isn't enough that he has to deal with a Curse over his and our beloved Red Sox, he's also got more problems of a mystical nature:

A visit to her spiritual guide could have prompted Jennifer Lopez's last minute postponement of her third trip down the aisle. …

In recent months, Lopez has become close to Merle Gonzalez, a follower of the Caribbean quasi-religion Santeria, who lives in a ramshackle wooden house in a run-down Los Angeles suburb.

Her influence over the actress, whom she calls her "goddaughter", is immense (Poole, Telegraph)

That's awesome. Regular readers to this site will recall my occasional references to Obatala and Babalú Ayé. (It comes with the territory when you have a site called "Bambino's Curse.")

Do you think Ben Affleck has convinced J-Lo to ask the brujeria for spiritual help with the Red Sox?

Speaking of Ben Affleck and curses, I got an email yesterday from Shaun Kelly who attended the Boston premiere of the HBO documentary "The Curse of the Bambino" on Tuesday and this is some of what he had to say:

In the end, the fifty-seven minute documentary is nothing less than a public service announcement for the Fenway Faithful; as one Yankee fan who saw it told me afterwards, "Jesus, now I know what it truly means to be a Sox fan. We might have the championships but we can't touch your fan base."

… After a prolonged segment on how Red Sox Nation reacted to the tenth inning of Game 6 (this segment alone makes this a classic film), director George Roy turns the tables and asks, "Why are you then a Red Sox fan?" By the end of the segment, some in the audience had tears in their eyes. As one of the fans states near the end of the segment, "Because I believe in the virtue of loyalty. Because 'wait until next year,' is the sweetest phrase in the English language. Because my Dad is alive again each and every time I turn on a Sox game."

That's just a short piece of Shawn's email that honestly gave me goose bumps when I read it.

I've got the indispensable TiVo (and by indispensable I mean the most superfluous and least satisfactory technological purchase I've made this century) set up to record the HBO premiere on this coming Tuesday the 16th. It's on a 10:00pm so it shouldn't conflict with the game against Tampa Bay earlier in the evening.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let's get through this weekend with Chicago, the only team with a winning record the Red Sox will face for the remainder of the season.

America's Plot

I don't think one could ask for a better time to find Pedro Martinez getting stronger with each start.

Martinez … allowed only three hits and two walks while striking out nine. He allowed only three batters to advance past first base and held the Orioles hitless in five at-bats with runners in scoring position, which lowered his league-leading road ERA to 1.73 (Horrigan, Herald).

And, as it goes, people are starting to believe in the Red Sox. Thomas Boswell of the Post writes,

Every year is the Red Sox' year. Until it turns out not to be. This refrain of broken hopes has held true since 1918. Some think it will hold true forever.

But I don't. I actually think this is the year the Red Sox will win the World Series. My editors, told of this, have already suggested a suitable "employee drug rehabilitation program." But I have my sober reasons. …

Boswell, of course, is a self-confessed Red Sox fan, so caveat lector. However, even ESPN's Jason Stark is picking the Red Sox to go all the way.

Why the Red Sox? Because this is baseball's best lineup since the '95 Indians -- and they can run Pedro out there twice in a short series.…

"If I had to pick one team, I'd pick them," says one GM. "And the only reason is, I think Pedro (Martinez), (Derek) Lowe and (Tim) Wakefield give them a chance to get the game to the seventh inning. Which is what they need, because their bullpen scares the hell out of me. But they've got the best offense in baseball, which makes them the least likely team to get shut down by good pitching."

It's weird, though, to read this stuff. Part of me fears jinx and part of my just can't comprehend how the Red Sox are viewed as a powerhouse by others. I'm not quite that confident yet considering all that has happened this year (not to mention previous years). But I am starting to walk around thinking, "If they can just make the playoffs, who knows? I like their chances."

Over at Salon this morning I'm quoted in a King Kaufman column where he wonders, "Where are the football bloggers?" On the one hand, being quoted in Salon, the original online mag and nostalgic reminder of those whirling early days of the web when hearing acronyms like HTML and URL sounded so fresh and cool, is a huge feather in my ego cap.

On the other hand, and not to sound like Johnny Depp, but my comments as they appear in Salon are out of context. I didn't intend to say that baseball blogs are "literature." My quote was part of a larger thread that you'll recognize from last week where I compared football and baseball and quoted Bob Thompson's metaphor:

Baseball is a fat Victorian novel, replete with colorful minor characters and discursive subplots, into which a fan can disappear for months; football is a series of quick-cutting TV cop shows.

So following this comparison, there's just more to discuss on so many different levels regarding a novel than there is a basic TV cop drama. An equally fitting metaphor is the one Frank Deford made on NPR yesterday: "Football is sex; baseball is marriage."

And what gets discussed more in books, magazines, TV, even blogs, the sex act or relationships? For every Dr. Ruth or MTV Love Docter there are a dozen Dr. Phil's, Jerry Springers, and Ricky Lakes making a living out of the "he said she said" thing. The same for books on the shelf: for every Joy of Sex or Kinsey Report there are far more pages devoted to the Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Venus theme.

Baseball, like relationships, lends itself to endless discussion in a way that football, or sex for that matter, does not. That was the point I wanted to make.

Last but certainly not least, today is the anniversarry of 9/11/01. I'm one of those sorts for whom everything did change that day, so I wanted to find a way to acknowledge the tragedy and mark my own resolve in fighting to the end the war that began that morning two years ago. But everything I thought of seemed trite and cheesy. Maybe even what I'm writing now sounds that way?

So as a way of marking the solemnity of this day, I'm just going to repeat the quote from Giamatti that I posted in my first post 9/11 blog entry two years ago.

To know baseball is to continue to aspire to the condition of freedom, individually and as a people, for baseball is grounded in America in a way unique to our games. Baseball is part of America's plot, part of America's mysterious, underlying design -- the plot in which we all conspire and collude, the plot of the story of our national life. Our national plot is to be free enough to consent to an order that will enhance and compound -- as it constrains -- our freedom. That is our grounding, our national story, the tale America tells the world. Indeed, it is the story we tell ourselves.

Two years later, we still are playing baseball games and aspiring to the condition of freedom. What a wonderful thing it is.

In Betweeners

This post is currently at Fox Sports New England.

http://www.fsnnewengland.com/

The full content of column will be available here at Bambino's Curse on September 15, 2003, ie, 5 days after original publication date per the arrangement I have with FSNE.

You may comment on this post here at anytime.

Red Sox Teabagged in Baltimore

As Memama says in Baltimore native son John Waters' film Pecker, "Sometimes there's things more important than pit beef."

The Orioles, it seems, are taking that notion to heart:

It was the Orioles' fifth win in their last six games, as the Red Sox joined the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners as playoff contenders who have witnessed first-hand during this homestand the devastation a starless, scrappy team with a vulnerable manager is capable of inflicting (Sheinin, WaPo).

The Red Sox meanwhile appear to be trying to audition for a role in Waters' classic "gutter film" Mondo Trasho:

They made an error for every home run they hit, took two ejections and had more fundamental breakdowns than the Patriots secondary. The Red Sox stunk last night, and they stunk bad (Massarotti, Herald).

This, of course, is what I feared when I saw the season finished off in September with a predominance of "easy." The Red Sox would lead up to it by playing very well against the contenders only to get teabagged by the fudge clubbers.

As Simmons writes, that is the rub.

Even when things are going well, Boston fans fear the worst. If we won the lottery, we would immediately assume that 20 other people had the same number. That's just us. We're rarely happy. We're also insane. It's a tough combination (ESPN).

Tough indeed. And Thomas Boswell writing in yesterday's Washington Post adds,

The Red Sox think that every event is full of patterns and omens.… They and their fans, like the late commissioner Bart Giamatti, experience the game as though it were another of the humanities, like history or literature.

Well said. I'd love to teach a survey course called "English 1918: The Red Sox as Tragic Hero." A sample essay question on the midterm might be: "Which of the following literary characters best exemplifies the Red Sox fan experience. Odysseus from Homer's The Odyssey; Joe Christmas from Faulkner's A Light in August; Ned in Cheever's short story The Swimmer."

No More Yankees. Time to Clean the Cellar.

So it was too much to hope for to take 'em all from the Yanks. Considering what the Red Sox have done in the past week, I'm not complaining at all about dropping yesterday. Although Dave Pinto points to a potential rain cloud on the horizon:

… with a 3-1 victory [ the Yankees have] a 2 1/2 lead over the Red Sox, and gives them the tie-breaker if both teams finish with the same record, and one would be the wild card. Yankees magic number down to 18 (Baseball Musings).

But as Howard Bryant concludes, it's not about the Yankees anymore.

So after a wonderful summer rivalry between the Sox and Yankees, could it be that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Baltimore Orioles will decide who wins the AL East?

"Absolutely," Ortiz said. "When we play like this, we can play with anyone, but Baltimore plays well against us, so we have to be aggressive. We have to play everyone like we play the Yankees" (Herald).

And in order for the Red Sox to win the division "they must win four more games than the Yankees against clubs that haven't seen the daylight of a winning record in a long, long time" (Bryant).

I'm not going to get my hopes up on winning the division, but I still stand by my assertion that the Red Sox will make the playoffs.

Meanwhile, I'm so glad I was able to use Friday and Saturday's games as a pick me up, for I had one of those weekends that, in the words of Tony Soprano, I was like "King Midas in reverse" where everything I touched turned to crap rather than gold…

First Blogger started rejecting my password on Friday morning (hence the posts sans permalinks). Then when I got home on Friday the laser printer I ordered was waiting for me. I set it up, loaded the drivers, printed an initial test page and "KaChunk Whhhrrreeeee Thud Screeee" the thing sounded like it was crushing stones. Called tech support but, of course, they only work 9-5 M-F.

So it's back in the box to take back to the store the next day, where I get called a "stupid effin' idiot" by an irate woman who claims I took her parking spot. (She was way wrong. Who backs into a parking spot? See she'd already gone by this spot when the car occupying began to back out. Hey, once you pass by the spot, it's over. You can't reverse. Jeez.) Actually, getting called a stupid idiot was one of the high points of the day because it really gave me a chuckle.

On Sunday I set up my new TiVo. Oh, joy. You know I try to live be the credo that, free time being my most precious possession, any device that takes longer than 15 minutes to set up probably isn't worth the time lost in what it gives me back. And I'm telling you the TiVo took quite a bit longer than 15 minutes to install.

Was it worth it? I dunno because I've yet to watch anything I've recorded. You see, last night just as Bush was about to give his speech, the audio on my home theatre system died. Now I don't think there is any causal connection between the addition of the TiVo and the loss of my receiver's audio, just as I don't think there is a connection between Frazee selling Ruth and our current situation. However, with that said, I still don't have any sound in my home theatre system nor have the Red Sox won a World Series since 1918. (Discuss amongst yourselves.)

At least my situation is an easy fix. I just need to shell out the benjamins and all is well. If only it'd be that easy for the Red Sox, eh?

[Postscript: After writing the above at home, I get to work this morning to find I'd lost my keys to the building and had to sit out on the sidewalk for half and hour waiting for someone to arrive and let me in. I hope the Red Sox have better luck in Baltimore than I am having in general.]

"Like, ohmigod, I totally dreamed the Red Sox whipped the Yankees again!"

Ohmigod, no way!

Way.

After falling to Roger Clemens last Sunday in his final regular-season appearance at Fenway, the Sox got revenge by pounding him for seven runs in only 3 1/3 innings en route to a stunning 11-0 rout.

The pasting evened the season series at 9 with one game remaining and cut the Yankees' ever-dwindling lead in the American League East to 1 1/2 games(Horrigan, Herald).

Are you believing this?

And leave it to Shaughnessy (and when he of the seeming bipolar writing disorder is in a good mood can leave you smiling) to crank out the appropriate historicity:

New England church bells are ringing, the skies are crisp and blue, and all the water tastes like wine. It is early September and the Red Sox have the Yankees on the run.…

The symmetry is downright scary. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first day of the four-game Boston Massacre of 1978. On that fateful weekend, the Yankees came to Fenway trailing the Red Sox by four games in the American League East. Four days later, after sweeping by an aggregate count of 42-9, the Yanks left Boston tied for first. It was the centerpiece of the cataclysmic Sox collapse of '78, the colossal fall against which all others are measured (Shaughnessy, Globe).

And Horrigan notes another verifiable bit from the past that'll put a little more blue in your sky:

The Sox are 5-0 in September, which is a feat they last accomplished in 1995 and '86. They went on to win their division each time (Notebook).

Even the NY writers are pointing to a possible cosmic shift.

In the past, the Yanks could count on the Red Sox, at this time of year, remembering they are the Red Sox. But this Boston team may just prove it is not only better in body, but tougher in mind than these Yankees.… we may be witnessing The New York Blackout - when a power surge from Boston wiped out the last of the Yanks' flickering energy (Sherman, NY Post).

Do you think the baseball gods will deem me greedy and worthy of a smackdown if I dare dream of Boston doing it again today? And what about the game after that? And the game after that? Please don't let this be another instance of bringing us to the gates of paradise only to cast us away in the end.