Wow! (aka The Boston Red Sox)
Something about me you might not know, unless you are my mom, is that I like to sing. So every Thursday, shortly after The Office ends, I head over to my campus church to sing in its choir. Tonight wasn’t any different than last Thursday, or the one before that, or the one before that.
I watched as much baseball as I could before I left, but honestly I had lost hope for the Red Sox. I mean, they were down 3 games to 1 and it looked like Tampa Bay had a pretty tight grip on Game 5 and therefore the AL penant. It was 5-0 Rays, the Sawx bats looked beleaguered and completely ineffective, and I thought I’d spare myself the torture of watching them get spanked - again - and just leave for choir.
So I missed all the good stuff, up until Kevin Youkilis was up to bat for Boston in the bottom of the 9th. It was 7-0, Tampa Bay at one point?? Are you kidding me?? And…those sleepy Boston bats woke up, all at the same time? WHAT?!?!?!? One of the greatest single-game comebacks in MLB playoff history…and I wasn’t there. Immediately, two items showed up in my Google reader with the simple title Unbelievable. And those were written by people who saw it happen. And, for good measure, here’s more immediate-postgame reaction.
The main headline at redsox.com called this win “magical.” It had to have been, following a week in which Tampa Bay has put more dents in the Green Monster than there are shoes in my closet, and legendary pieces of Fenway lore started setting themselves on fire. I mean…yikes. It was a glum time for Red Sox fans. (Not that I am one of those, but I have enough Sawx fan friends that I can feel pain when things are going badly. And things certainly were bad this week.
But now….will it be bad again? Was this one game enough to propel the Red Sox into another of their historic October comebacks, or was it just delaying heartbreak by two more days? Game 6 is Saturday at Tropicana Field. Hopefully I won’t do anything stupid like join a Saturday choir.