It's hard to explain what sports mean to me. Mrs Finndego certainly doesn't understand it after 11 years. I've been a sports fan for as long as I can remember and a lot of my earliest memories have something to do with a sporting event. Whether it's going to Fenway Park with the old man and sitting in a different seat every inning while he had a few beers up in the Standing Room Only stand or watching softball with my grandfather at Kendrick Park. He died in 1976 when I was seven but these are things that can be connected by something. In his case, I can tie that memory of him with the help of a trigger. Sports. I've probably had way more meaningful moments with him but they don't have an "event" that triggers that memory for me. Sports does that. I think it's perfectly normal for kids from 8 to 18 to become obsessed with sports. Sports can be everything for a kid and it was for me. As we get older, we put sports in it's place, wherever that may be. Women, work, kids, mortgages all become more important but usually, if sports had a place in a kids life, they keep a place within it when they get older. Of course, the wife , the kids the job and the mortgage are all more important to me right now but sports are and always will be important to me. The Sporting Life will be a series of posts that will try to explain how this came about and in some regards how sports have shaped some of what I am.
It all starts with the Red Sox - For me, everything starts and ends with the Boston Red Sox. They have managed to define how I live with sports and all the emotions that go with it. I'm not going to try and explain what it means to have been a Red Sox fan pre-2004. Nick Hornby does a much better job of explaining this obsession in his book "Fever Pitch". The analogy from Arsenal to the Red Sox works very well. Unfortunately, Hollywood executives thought the same thing and adapted the book into the totally forgettable movie "Perfect Match".
For me, it all starts right here. I certainly wasn't actually awake at the time it actually happened, but I was already drinking the Red Sox Kool-Aid during this series. My dad(he'd been drinking the Kool-Aid back since 1967) has recapped the game itself for me a hundred times. He always reminds me that Fisk never would have got the chance if it wasn't for Bernie Carbo and that everyone forgets that. It was the greatest moment in Red Sox history from 1918 to 2004. Robin Williams and Matt Damon do a much better job explaining the emotion around this game than I could. Unfortunately, I'm Damon in this scene. Damn you Robin Williams, damn you!!!!!!!!
I actually miss the pre-2004 Red Sox fanness. Suddenly, everything hasn't become life or death and when the Red Sox have the bases loaded with no outs I'm not busy thinking how we can screw it up. Strike out, double play was always the obvious one. Now, I know we'll do something and that we'll be alright. Subconsciously, 2004 creeps in and negates the negativity. The problem with that is that I've already been hard wired to expect the worse to happen and I need to channel that somehow. For example, the Red Sox played today against the Anaheim Angels in the playoffs and lost to go down 2-0 in the series. I'm bummed out, but any fan would be but it's not the end of the world. Actually, it was almost expected but you know we could come back and win the series. We've done it before in 2004 and 2007 and that gives us hope. The problem is that I don't know how to deal with hope. That's not how I was brought up. This is how I learned about the game. As great as the Red Sox winning the World Series was in 2004 they have changed things irrevocably and this was the moment it happened. This is the moment that that karma changed forever. The really fucked up thing about the whole thing is that the Red Sox ran out of ways to break my heart by losing that they had to go and do it by winning! Damn you Red Sox damn you!!!!!
P.S. For those who know, you may have noticed that I didn't even mention this. For those who don't, just nevermind. It's still too painful.
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