I still can’t really . . .

Because the Red Sox . . .

Whereas the Yankees . . .

Yeah, I don’t know. I still feel like I shouldn’t admit the Red Sox won, like I can still jinx it. I mean, you can do the math and tell yourself it’s not as remarkable as it appears. Nobody said it was unheard-of when the Yankees took three in a row from the Red Sox. Why would it be unheard-of for the Red Sox to take three in a row from the Yankees? And then it’s Game 7, and that can go either way, right? I mean, it’s not like it took divine intervention. It’s four games. The Red Sox can win four games from the Yankees, just like the Yankees could have won four from the Red Sox — and almost did.

It’s interesting, too — if what happened to the Yankees had happened to the Red Sox, you can bet your ass everyone would have talked about how it was the curse, the whammy, classic Red Sox play — get up three games and then drop four, break the fans on the wheel, utter torment. It’s how you know the curse thing is kind of bullshit. I mean, it’s not, but it is. It’s true that the Red Sox, as I said yesterday, sometimes appear to be intentionally torturing the people who love them the most. But it’s also true that everyone sometimes feels tortured by a team. Ask a Vikings fan who watched them in that horrible game last year. You know, that one. The Red Sox have been doing it longer, I think, and perhaps more spectacularly, but they’ve also turned it into their Thing. It’s like Jackie Kennedy and the pillbox hat — the Red Sox “thing” is being tortured by the Yankees.

Which is why it was so unbelievably awesome to see them take that game. I was at the pub quiz (see pub quiz entry below), which was probably good, because I don’t know if I could have taken it, watching that game unfold. They brought in score updates from time to time, and as we learned that the Red Sox were up 2-0, and then 6-0, and then 8-1, it began to occur to me that perhaps, they were going to win.

And then on the way home, I could juuuust barely get the game to come in on AM radio, and it was breaking up the entire time. I was about two miles from my apartment when the Matsui double came, and I was pulling into the lot when Bernie Williams matched it. God. I had been cursing the announcers all the way home for putting the whammy on the game by talking — in the middle of the SEVENTH, for fuck’s sake — about how the Yankees had lost, the Red Sox had won, how amazing it was. I was like . . . I mean, have these people ever watched baseball before? It was 8-1 at that point. Seven runs. You think the Yankees can’t score seven runs in three innings? Are you kidding me? SHUT UP!

To me, the most amazing part was hearing the Yankee fans chanting “Who’s your daddy” to Pedro Martinez. When they were down 8-1. I mean . . . yeah, he didn’t pitch great. They got a couple of runs off him. But the guy went in up SEVEN RUNS. He pitched on ONE DAY of rest. When your team is down by seven runs, it’s a good idea not to be too pleased with yourselves. Because you really do sound like idiots. And they did. I don’t blame them for the hate — Pedro Martinez is as big of a wanker as anybody the Yankees have on their team. (Except for maybe Jeter.) But the Yankees, of all people, should appreciate the fact that you’ve got to be able to back that shit up, and when your team is right in the middle of showing that they don’t, you risk kind of . . . well, like I said, looking like idiots. I’d rather be on the team that has to admit that their dipwad pitcher is off his game than on the team that has just finished dropping three games in a row and it seven runs down in another one, you know? As brainless as “Yankees suck” is, that’s about how smart “who’s your daddy?” is, when directed at any member of a team that’s currently, not to put too fine a point on it, kicking your ass.

I was still sure, listening to those doubles in the seventh, that the Red Sox were going to find a way to give it away. It just seemed . . . my father would have said it was classic. Barely even surprising, really. Just the way it goes with these teams.

And then . . . they didn’t. Got out of the seventh, got into the eighth. Scored a run in the eighth. Scored a run in the ninth. Chip, chip, chip. Going into the bottom of the ninth 10-3, I thought, “Is 10-3 enough of a lead to take into the bottom of the ninth?” And then I thought, “Nope.” It certainly wasn’t enough to make me relax. Especially when Matsui had that fat single.

Shooooooot.

I’m telling you, it’s inherited. Even when they got to two outs, I thought, “This is going to be the greatest seven-run come-from-behind two-out rally in baseball history.” And then it wasn’t. And champagne was popping, and they were talking about the World Series in Boston, and my father is out of town and I CAN’T CALL HIM. And my friend Dan from law school, the only Red Sox fan I know who can possibly match my father for sheer intensity, was traveling, too. I certainly hope he was near a TV. I’m sure he was.

And I kept thinking . . . they won four games in a row from the Yankees. Four games in a row. Yeah, it’s not as impossible as it sounds. But find me somebody who thought that was going to happen. I certainly didn’t.

I don’t know. All I can tell you is that for those of us who have felt like we never got to have any fun because the Yankees hogged it all, it was pretty fun. No pinstripes at the World Series? I can get behind that.