Do No Harm

Tonight we watched episode 20 which finishes disc 5, leaving only 4 episodes of Season 1 left. Off island in flashbacks, Jack gets married to a women he saved after a car accident and on island Jack tries to save a Lostie who is injured badly in a plane crash that wasn’t Flight 815. Definitely a 4 hankie episode; the wedding, a new romance blossoms, Boone dies & a baby is born.

If you follow sports even in the slightest you know what happened last night. If you don’t, a quick recap, The FRS were losing last nights ALCS game seven to nothing in the seventh inning with two outs (meaning they only had seven outs left) and they pulled it out winning 8-7 on a two out single in the bottom of the ninth. It was the second largest run deficit overcome in a playoff game. The other one didn’t really count because it happened nearly 80 years ago, so the only people who knew about were baseball statisticians and they had to look it up (and the only reason they looked it was because of this game.)

As I said last night I figured the FRS were out of it in the first inning when they were trailing 2 zip. I handed the remote to my wife in the 4th with them losing five to nothing. I checked just before my pre-bedtime shower and Tampa’s lead was up to seven. After the shower the Red Sox had broken through for 4 runs thanks in the most part to Big Papi’s 3 run homer. It was after 11:00 o’clock and even though my wife asked if I wanted to stay up to watch the end of the game, based on they way they had played tonight and in the series so far, I went to bed. I figured stick a fork in ’em, they’re done.

Today the sports world was all ga-ga over the comeback. There was tons of second guessing of the Rays manager; he should have left the starter in longer or he should have brought in so ‘n’ so to face that batter or whatever. He played it how he played it to get the team to where they are, one victory away from the first World Series in the team’s short and up ’til now, dismal, history. Pretty easy to second guess on the morning after isn’t. And just how many Major League Baseball games have you managed?

There was also plenty of negativity hurled at the fans at the stadium who were leaving after the middle of the seventh. The same went for the folks at home who turned off their TVs and radios (like me.) We were told we need to get off the bandwagon, turn in our Red Sox Nation membership cards and should never be allowed into Fenway Park again. Screw you. I’ll root for the team in the manner that got me here, watching them win and turning off the game if I think they are going to lose.

I wasn’t always able to turn away, but something happened in 2004, against all odds the Red Sox won a World Series. And to do it, they had to come from a 3 games to none deficit to the MFY in the League Championship Series. The fate of the world no longer rested on a victory in a playoff game or series, they had done it and I had reached a zen like level of fandom. If a game ran late I could just go to bed and find out the score in the morning. If they blew a lead and lost there was no more tossing and turning replaying the failure, as my head hit the pillow I was asleep. To quote the Great Guru of Baseball, “(If) It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”