Heartbroken? Or Just Fatalistically Depressed?
Posted on October 21st, 2009 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
In Seacoast Online (got me), Carl Pepin argues that too many Red Sox fans are exaggerating their emotions about the pathetic end to the Red Sox season.
There’s no reason to be heartbroken, he points out. If you think 2009 was heartbreaking, you’ve got a short memory.
Unless you experienced the TRUE heartbreak of the 1967 Series (loss in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals), the 1975 Series (loss in seven games to the Cincinnati Reds), the 1978 one-game playoff loss to Bucky Dent and his pinstriped pals, and the tragic loss of game 6 in the 1986 Series (to the New York Mets) and the ultimate loss in game seven of that fall classic, you have absolutely no idea about what devastation feels like.
I welcome the return of Red Sox gloom, of course. It fits the team better than the cocky preening of recent years. And I enjoy Pepin’s assertion that you’re not really a true Red Sox fan if you haven’t known pain.
It’s all good.
(Oh boy, are the gods of baseball going to punish me….)
3 Responses
10/21/2009 7:57 pm
I am speaking only for myself here.
I went to Game 3 of the Divisional series with a high school classmate. It was a perfect afternoon, weather-wise. Looked like we were going to win. We didn’t. So it goes.
We walked out with smiles on our faces. This is the Red Sox we have known and loved our whole lives. That other team, the one from ’04 and ’07, that was some alien group. An Impostor. That woman in front of us who literally sat and could not bear to look while Papelbon was blowing the save, she had it completely backwards. That was me in ’04, not daring to believe what I was witnessing when Dave Henderson stole second. No, this was good, bracing stuff. It will toughen the young, give them that leathery emotional skin and gnarled aspirational limbs the next time they dare reach for the stars. Our puritan forebears (well, somebody’s puritan forebears) never could have made it through that first horrible New England winter if they thought dreams would actually come true. Seriously-I and my buddy enjoyed the game, and then went home and had a good stiff drink and got a good night’s sleep.
10/22/2009 6:29 am
Spoken like a true Sox fan, Harry. All these latecomers walking the streets of Manhattan in their brand-new Sox gear…bleh.
10/22/2009 3:39 pm
For once, I agree with you, Richard. But let’s not forget Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.