I Cross Something Off My List
Oct. 27th, 2007 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68You know how you have a list? A list of the amazing, astonishing things that, if you were leading an ideal life, you would get to do? Well, on a lovely, crisp, autumn Thursday, I crossed something off that list.
I went to a World Series game at Fenway.
I went to a World Series game at Fenway.
It was such an abrupt decision on my part, but all of a sudden I could not understand why I did not have World Series tickets. Why I had not moved heaven and earth to find World Series tickets. I called April, who immediately bought a train ticket and said she was coming to Boston and we would go. And then I started a day-long quest for tickets. It was the most frustrating day of my life. I had tickets bought several times, only to have other people swoop in at the last minute and out-bid me (not on eBay, mind, but in other places, and therefore a lot of people made my other list of People EarlGreyTea Dislikes Intensely, a very, very threatening list, to be sure). By 5 p.m., as April's train was pulling into Back Bay Station, I still had no tickets, and I was sitting in my office feeling downtrodden and dejected. jlrpuck who, along with arctacuda, was subjected to minute-by-minute updates on my ticket status, suggested I just wasn't meant to go, which was a conclusion I was just coming to myself, and I was resigning myself to it, convincing myself it would be just as much fun to watch it from a bar, that I did not need to go to the game, that I had never imagined I'd actually go to a World Series game ever anyway, so it was ridiculous to be so disappointed. When I talked to April and told her I was leaving work, she said I sounded so awful that she felt bad for telling me to try to get the tickets in the first place. And then, leaving work, on the phone with my mother, a cop made an ambiguous gesture that I thought was directed at me but apparently was directed at a car instead and I nearly got myself killed stepping out into the street.
That was the low point of the day.
I emerged from the T (okay, the T, crowded with Fenway-goers, hyper with World Series enthusiasm, drenched in Red Sox gear, may have been the true low point of the day) to my phone ringing. April. With a ticket opportunity. "Buy them," I said, and did not even feel joy, just felt...relief that it was done and we had them and I didn't have to think about it anymore. Being a Red Sox fan is the strangest and most exhausting fandom I belong to. I think I've said it before, and I'll say it again. (When Patrick heard this story, he said, "You spent the entire day in Boston trying to buy tickets, your friend stepped off a train in Copley and bought them immediately. That says something about your friend. And you." "Like what?" I said. "Well," he hedged, "it says really good things about your friend. And let's just leave it at that.")
April was off-the-walls hyper. Her adrenaline was still in full flow, from the rush of buying the tickets. She was so scattered she couldn't even figure out how to show her bag to be inspected on the way into Fenway. And then we got in. And they were giving away yellow towels (no one in Fenway actually used these towels, because what is up with those towels anyway, but I still took a few for souvenirs), and we popped into the souvenir shop and got giddy over all the awesome things we could spend even MORE money on, and we went into the park and trudged up many, many, many steps to our bleacher seats, tucked almost under the JumboTron, and we looked out over the field, and there were more people on the sidelines than I've ever seen at a baseball game ever before in my life, and I realized suddenly, abruptly, I WAS AT THE WORLD SERIES, and I looked at April, and I said, "We could leave, right now, never even see the game, and it would still have been worth every penny." And she grinned and replied, "Absolutely." (This is partly my problem. I an insane person surrounded by other insane people who do not talk me out of my insanity.) (And that is the thing about reading signs, really. I'd been sitting in my office deciding that the elusiveness of the tickets was a sign that I wasn't meant to go, but April said she interpreted all the difficulty as a test of our true devotion as Red Sox fans, and we were rewarded for not giving up. After all, nothing worthwhile comes easily.)
The thing about all of this is that you have to understand that it wasn't all the long ago I was convinced the Red Sox would never play in the World Series. And now, I've not only seen them win one, I've not only seen them play in two, I'VE BEEN IN FENWAY PARK FOR ONE OF THE GAMES. Had you told me this would happen, just four or five years ago, I would have said, "Yes, and I'll also be married to the fictional Josh Lyman and he'll be the person I go to the game with, right?" (Because I think he was the obsession at that time.) The entire night I was thinking of that part at the end of the original "Willy Wonka," about the person who gets everything he always wanted living happily ever after. Actually attending any World Series game, never mind one at Fenway, was in the realm of winning the lottery for me. As my father said, "If you don't go, you'll regret it the rest of your life. And if you do go, years from now when you're talking about how you spent Game Two of the World Series at Fenway Park, you'll never say, 'And I wish I hadn't gone.'"
The game itself was absolutely spectacular. Here's the thing about Curt Schilling: He has more heart than any pitcher in the world, I think. Beckett is something. Beckett is my love. Beckett makes it look like the fact that anyone ever gets a hit off of him is a miracle. But Schilling is the one with the heart, in the end. He has none of that overpowering talent left to rely on anymore. Every out Curt Schilling got in that game was hard-won. He pitched with everything he had, left everything out on the field, and in the end he managed to outduel a pitcher with apparently some of the best stuff in Major League Baseball. ONE RUN when all was said and done, for a pitcher who was not overpowering all night. ONE RUN. And the feeling in Fenway (and I know. Because I was there) was that he had carried us through on sheer strength of will, the same way he pitched with a bloody sock in the impossible moments of 2004. Curt Schilling was not the best pitcher on that field at Fenway that night. But he figured out a way to be. And that made him so much more. When he walked off the field, and we gave him a standing ovation, and he tipped his cap, I was suddenly thinking, That's it. I may have just seen, in person, Curt Schilling's last start in a Red Sox uniform. And there's a way in which Schilling, more than anyone else, was 2004, the outsider who swooped in and promised us we'd win a World Series, and we laughed, and then, all of a sudden, we had. For which we know, and you could hear it in the ovation that night, we could never thank Curt Schilling enough. That ovation was as much for the fact that there's no longer a curse hanging over Fenway as it was for Game Two.
I actually did not think we were going to win the game. You could tell that Schilling was fighting for every out, and we weren't really hitting, and there is literally no hole on the Colorado infield. I'd been hearing about their spectacular defense, but, seeing it in person, it's astonishing. I think it is virtually impossible to get a hit up the middle against that team. Also, Colorado apparently has 22 pitchers on its roster, because I have never seen a team cycle through pitchers with such aplomb, especially after being routed the night before.
Then Okajima came out, and I'll tell you what: I decided we were winning this game. Okajima is tremendous. There's a calm that settles over the park when he's pitching.
And then there was Paplebon. I have never in my life seen an entrance like a Papelbon entrance. First Francona marches out to the mound to take out Okajima, and the crowd rises to its feet, and you can hear the whisper of Papelbon's name, and the palpable anticipation as it grows, as we strain to look into the bullpen, where the man himself is jumping in place to keep himself loose. And then the first note of "Wild Thing" kicks in, and the crowd goes wild, and Papelbon slowly jogs in. And when "Wild Thing" finishes, they play "I'm Shipping Up to Boston." This song has quickly become Papelbon's signature, more than "Wild Thing," due mostly to the ridiculous Irish step-dancing jig that he insists on performing to it. And the crowd sings it like it's "Sweet Caroline:" "I'm shipping up to Boston," sing the Dropkick Murphys, and "Whoooooaaaaaaaaa!" shouts the crowd at Fenway. The park ROCKS. I have never experienced anything like it. You do not sit. You just stand and wait for Papelbon to do his thing. He gave up a hit to the first batter, and quick as a flash, before you could even register we had someone in base, HE'D PICKED HIM OFF. He is JUST THAT AWESOME. Until you see Papelbon pitch in person, at Fenway, you cannot imagine the frenzy he inspires. And, until you see him pitch in person at Fenway in October, well...
(Trust me, that's Papelbon pitching...)
"Sweet Caroline" was loud and raucous that night. Because of the long Fox commercial breaks (Patrick: I'm mostly jealous that, in being at the game, you didn't have to listen to Tim McCarver. Me: Yes, that thought did cross my mind.), we got to sing the entire song, start to finish, and I was at Fenway Park at a game where you could feel we were going to win, because we had Papelbon out there for the ninth, and Papelbon is Papelbon, and when we won, when we won, the crowd did not move (April has video of this moment, which I need to upload as soon as she sends it to me). We stayed right where we were, celebrating, until they'd finished playing "Dirty Water" and "Tessie," savoring the "RED SOX WIN" flashing on the JumboTron and the idea that we'd just seen THAT. The crowd stood and shouted to a bit to "Tessie" ("One, two, three, four!") but it was "Dirty Water" that really got the focus, shouting it into the night and wondering if they could hear it in Colorado over the Fox Post-Game: Love that dirty water, oh, Boston, you're my home...
jlrpuck who, along with arctacuda, was subjected to minute-by-minute updates on my ticket status, suggested I just wasn't meant to go, which was a conclusion I was just coming to myself, and I was resigning myself to it, convincing myself it would be just as much fun to watch it from a bar, that I did not need to go to the game, that I had never imagined I'd actually go to a World Series game ever anyway, so it was ridiculous to be so disappointed. When I talked to April and told her I was leaving work, she said I sounded so awful that she felt bad for telling me to try to get the tickets in the first place. And then, leaving work, on the phone with my mother, a cop made an ambiguous gesture that I thought was directed at me but apparently was directed at a car instead and I nearly got myself killed stepping out into the street. That was the low point of the day.
I emerged from the T (okay, the T, crowded with Fenway-goers, hyper with World Series enthusiasm, drenched in Red Sox gear, may have been the true low point of the day) to my phone ringing. April. With a ticket opportunity. "Buy them," I said, and did not even feel joy, just felt...relief that it was done and we had them and I didn't have to think about it anymore. Being a Red Sox fan is the strangest and most exhausting fandom I belong to. I think I've said it before, and I'll say it again. (When Patrick heard this story, he said, "You spent the entire day in Boston trying to buy tickets, your friend stepped off a train in Copley and bought them immediately. That says something about your friend. And you." "Like what?" I said. "Well," he hedged, "it says really good things about your friend. And let's just leave it at that.")
April was off-the-walls hyper. Her adrenaline was still in full flow, from the rush of buying the tickets. She was so scattered she couldn't even figure out how to show her bag to be inspected on the way into Fenway. And then we got in. And they were giving away yellow towels (no one in Fenway actually used these towels, because what is up with those towels anyway, but I still took a few for souvenirs), and we popped into the souvenir shop and got giddy over all the awesome things we could spend even MORE money on, and we went into the park and trudged up many, many, many steps to our bleacher seats, tucked almost under the JumboTron, and we looked out over the field, and there were more people on the sidelines than I've ever seen at a baseball game ever before in my life, and I realized suddenly, abruptly, I WAS AT THE WORLD SERIES, and I looked at April, and I said, "We could leave, right now, never even see the game, and it would still have been worth every penny." And she grinned and replied, "Absolutely." (This is partly my problem. I an insane person surrounded by other insane people who do not talk me out of my insanity.) (And that is the thing about reading signs, really. I'd been sitting in my office deciding that the elusiveness of the tickets was a sign that I wasn't meant to go, but April said she interpreted all the difficulty as a test of our true devotion as Red Sox fans, and we were rewarded for not giving up. After all, nothing worthwhile comes easily.)
The thing about all of this is that you have to understand that it wasn't all the long ago I was convinced the Red Sox would never play in the World Series. And now, I've not only seen them win one, I've not only seen them play in two, I'VE BEEN IN FENWAY PARK FOR ONE OF THE GAMES. Had you told me this would happen, just four or five years ago, I would have said, "Yes, and I'll also be married to the fictional Josh Lyman and he'll be the person I go to the game with, right?" (Because I think he was the obsession at that time.) The entire night I was thinking of that part at the end of the original "Willy Wonka," about the person who gets everything he always wanted living happily ever after. Actually attending any World Series game, never mind one at Fenway, was in the realm of winning the lottery for me. As my father said, "If you don't go, you'll regret it the rest of your life. And if you do go, years from now when you're talking about how you spent Game Two of the World Series at Fenway Park, you'll never say, 'And I wish I hadn't gone.'"
The game itself was absolutely spectacular. Here's the thing about Curt Schilling: He has more heart than any pitcher in the world, I think. Beckett is something. Beckett is my love. Beckett makes it look like the fact that anyone ever gets a hit off of him is a miracle. But Schilling is the one with the heart, in the end. He has none of that overpowering talent left to rely on anymore. Every out Curt Schilling got in that game was hard-won. He pitched with everything he had, left everything out on the field, and in the end he managed to outduel a pitcher with apparently some of the best stuff in Major League Baseball. ONE RUN when all was said and done, for a pitcher who was not overpowering all night. ONE RUN. And the feeling in Fenway (and I know. Because I was there) was that he had carried us through on sheer strength of will, the same way he pitched with a bloody sock in the impossible moments of 2004. Curt Schilling was not the best pitcher on that field at Fenway that night. But he figured out a way to be. And that made him so much more. When he walked off the field, and we gave him a standing ovation, and he tipped his cap, I was suddenly thinking, That's it. I may have just seen, in person, Curt Schilling's last start in a Red Sox uniform. And there's a way in which Schilling, more than anyone else, was 2004, the outsider who swooped in and promised us we'd win a World Series, and we laughed, and then, all of a sudden, we had. For which we know, and you could hear it in the ovation that night, we could never thank Curt Schilling enough. That ovation was as much for the fact that there's no longer a curse hanging over Fenway as it was for Game Two.
I actually did not think we were going to win the game. You could tell that Schilling was fighting for every out, and we weren't really hitting, and there is literally no hole on the Colorado infield. I'd been hearing about their spectacular defense, but, seeing it in person, it's astonishing. I think it is virtually impossible to get a hit up the middle against that team. Also, Colorado apparently has 22 pitchers on its roster, because I have never seen a team cycle through pitchers with such aplomb, especially after being routed the night before.
Then Okajima came out, and I'll tell you what: I decided we were winning this game. Okajima is tremendous. There's a calm that settles over the park when he's pitching.
And then there was Paplebon. I have never in my life seen an entrance like a Papelbon entrance. First Francona marches out to the mound to take out Okajima, and the crowd rises to its feet, and you can hear the whisper of Papelbon's name, and the palpable anticipation as it grows, as we strain to look into the bullpen, where the man himself is jumping in place to keep himself loose. And then the first note of "Wild Thing" kicks in, and the crowd goes wild, and Papelbon slowly jogs in. And when "Wild Thing" finishes, they play "I'm Shipping Up to Boston." This song has quickly become Papelbon's signature, more than "Wild Thing," due mostly to the ridiculous Irish step-dancing jig that he insists on performing to it. And the crowd sings it like it's "Sweet Caroline:" "I'm shipping up to Boston," sing the Dropkick Murphys, and "Whoooooaaaaaaaaa!" shouts the crowd at Fenway. The park ROCKS. I have never experienced anything like it. You do not sit. You just stand and wait for Papelbon to do his thing. He gave up a hit to the first batter, and quick as a flash, before you could even register we had someone in base, HE'D PICKED HIM OFF. He is JUST THAT AWESOME. Until you see Papelbon pitch in person, at Fenway, you cannot imagine the frenzy he inspires. And, until you see him pitch in person at Fenway in October, well...
(Trust me, that's Papelbon pitching...)
"Sweet Caroline" was loud and raucous that night. Because of the long Fox commercial breaks (Patrick: I'm mostly jealous that, in being at the game, you didn't have to listen to Tim McCarver. Me: Yes, that thought did cross my mind.), we got to sing the entire song, start to finish, and I was at Fenway Park at a game where you could feel we were going to win, because we had Papelbon out there for the ninth, and Papelbon is Papelbon, and when we won, when we won, the crowd did not move (April has video of this moment, which I need to upload as soon as she sends it to me). We stayed right where we were, celebrating, until they'd finished playing "Dirty Water" and "Tessie," savoring the "RED SOX WIN" flashing on the JumboTron and the idea that we'd just seen THAT. The crowd stood and shouted to a bit to "Tessie" ("One, two, three, four!") but it was "Dirty Water" that really got the focus, shouting it into the night and wondering if they could hear it in Colorado over the Fox Post-Game: Love that dirty water, oh, Boston, you're my home...
