They hadn't won a world series in 86 years!
The legendary "curse of the bambino" - Babe Ruth - had haunted the Boston Red Sox baseball team since 1919, after their then owner, Harry Frazee, sold their star player to the New York Yankees for a m
easly $100,000. All so that his missus could finance a Broadway musical; a musical that ended up being a complete flop anyway. When Ruth was sold, against his will, he "cursed" the Red Sox, saying that they'd never win another World Series without him. He was right. His last year at Boston - 1918 - was their last championship while he was alive. He ended his days a New York Yankee, who went on to become the dominant force in baseball for the rest of the century.
This was pretty much one of the first things I learned when I became part of the "Red Sox Nation" back in 2001. I have been a fan of North American sports since I was 5 or 6 years old. I am now a mad-daft fan of baseball, ice hockey, American football and basketball. I came to each one at a totally different time in my life and each in their own unique set of circumstances.
My love of baseball started when I was living on the island of Paros, Greece, in 1998. That was the year that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire captured the imagination of baseball fans everywhere by slugging it out to see who could get the most home runs in a season. The record was definitely going to go... the only two questions on everyones lips were by how many runs was the record going to be smashed by and which of these two amazing players was going to win out?
To be fair, I'd never really noticed baseball before, but the bar I frequented was owned by a Greek-American called Costas, who had relocated there from Los Angeles, to get back to his roots and to escape the madness that is California life. He had the TV on everyday, tuned into some sports network that showed the games. I spent a lot of days there drinking free beer and watching the games with him. He became my unofficial baseball tutor.
That was where my love of the game began, but when I got back to London that winter, it disappeared from my life after the World Series had ended - not that anyone really noticed it happening. Apart from the fans of the teams taking part in the post-season, the rest of us were totally absorbed in the "slug-fest" and couldn't have cared less about what entire teams were doing. It was the most compelling, gladiatorial struggle between two professional sportsmen since Borg and MacEnroe.
Anyway, that was where it all started. I still didn't follow a team, but when I started university in 2001, one was chosen for me. I met a really nice young girl from Boston with a typically Boston-Irish name, called Shannon and we became good friends. She was a Red Sox fan and spent many an afternoon extolling the virtues of her city and her team. The truth wasn't sugar-coated though - she warned me about the inherited pain of becoming a Red Sox fan, the fact that we never win and the fact that we hadn't won since 1918. I was well-warned about the heartache of so many lost World Series; like the gut-wrenching, emotional rollercoaster of the '86 WS, when the Red Sox lost to the New York Mets in dramatic fashion at Shea Stadium in New York.
I had been a Hibernian fan for many years and figured that this made me the ideal candidate to join the ranks of the Red Sox Nation. My Edinburgh football team hadn't won the league since 1952 and their last Scottish FA Cup win was 50 years before that - I was used to disappointment. But the dogged determination to follow each of these teams til we die is what makes us some of the best sports fans in the world. I can't help wondering if the Irish connection to both teams has something to do with the obstinate dedication to the cause - no matter how hopeless it might seem.
When the chance came up in 2004 for a 10-day holiday to Boston and then onto Niagara Falls, I started making instant plans for a trip to Fenway Park to see my beloved Red Sox. There are loads of games a season to go and watch and they're very well varied between road and home games. The team were playing a 3-game home series against the Detroit Tigers and after a quick look at the schedule, I chose the game that had my favourite pitcher on the mound, Pedro Martinez.
My missus, Fawzia, had been told by some American colleagues that in order to get tickets, it was best to get down to F
enway early. Since the game was starting in the early evening, we got down there for around lunchtime and managed to get a spot that was only around 30 or 40 people from the front of the queue. The weather was hot, humid and mixed with the grimy air from interstate-90, which is right over the other side of the small row of buildings opposite the stadium. The Lansdowne Street side of Fenway Park is all part of the iconic "Green Monster" - a 37-foot-high green wall that forms the left field boundary and contains and old-fashioned manual scoreboard. The queue we were in was the other side of the Green Monster and I couldn't stop looking up at it, thinking: "I can't believe I'm actually here!"
I already had a Red Sox baseball cap, that had seen better days, but Fawzia didn't look like much of a fan, so I tempted her into going into one of the Red Sox stores strategically placed across from the ticket office. We asked some of the lovely people in line to keep our place while we went to the store and they agreed, but I got the impression that it wouldn't have mattered if we hadn't. I got myself a new cap and Fawzia got herself a Red Sox vest top. She got a huge cheer from those around us in the queue for managing to change into it under her other t-shirt.
After waiting a couple of hours for the ticket office to open, we filed in and got our tickets. Everyone else just seemed to be staying inside the stadium, so we did the same. There were plenty of little food and drink stalls tucked away underneath the stands, so we got ourselves some of both and wandered around, drinking in the atmosphere of this oldest of ball parks. It is a well-known fact amongst my friends that I have no sense of smell whatsoever, but I got the distinct impression that, for once, I was really missing out on something. Fenway Park looks like it should smell of baseball, in the venerable sense.
We found our seats, on the lower tier, way out in the right field, just past the famous "Pesky's Pole" (the right field foul pole named after Johnny Pesky - a Red Sox player in the '40s and '50s). We had a pretty good view of the field and a great view of the Green Monster and the bull pen (where the pitchers warm up during the game). The teams came out to warm up and I got a close up view of Pedro warming up with teammates and occasionally tossing a baseball to one of the hollering kids hanging over the small perimeter wall around the field.
Everytime I have visited the United States I have felt the same sense of awe borne out of the fact that we here in the UK only ever see the US on television or in the cinema, and so it has always felt like wandering around on the world's biggest movie set to me. This was no different. Once the ballpark began to fill up and the noises got more intense as game time approached, the sense of being a part of something intensified. I had been to see Arsenal versus Manchester United at Highbury some years before and, like that night, there are certain events, in certain places that just cannot be replicated or equalled. Fenway was one of those times. The feeling that I was being included in the American national past time was overwhelming.
It was hot and sticky, but made bearable by the army of vendors walking around amongst the fans selling beers and hot dogs. The sun still shone over the top of the main stand as the players came out to take the field. The game itself was amazing, but I won't bore you with a play-by-play account... suffice it to say that the Red Sox came out victorious 5-1 and the difference between a televised game and the real thing was immeasurable. One thing I never knew until we went there was that in the US, simply because of the distances involved, they have no idea of the concept of "away fans" and this meant that unless the team was up against it, then there was very little in the way of chanting. This, of course, was entirely alien to me. Since I had decided to "represent" that day, I had gone to the match wearing my
Arsenal shirt and during the three and a half hours of the game whenever I got a little bit bored (and after a few beers) I would stand up and start singing "ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AAAALL!" This went down quite well with the Red Sox fans nearby, who blatantly hadn't a clue what this crazy Brit was shouting about, but who always welcome something a little out of the ordinary, in much the same way as a streaker always gets a cheer at a football match here in the UK.
I knew the Red Sox were having a good season and some of our players were hitting their top form at the best time of the year, since there were only around 30+ games left of the regular season. We finished second in the American League that year and made it into the post-season in the "wild card" slot, those damned Yankees having pipped us to the league pennant by just three games. While the whole of the Red Sox Nation was overjoyed to see the team get to the post-season at all, it was, of course, met with the same feelings of dread that the team would only go ahead and do the same thing they had been doing to Red Sox fans since 1918 - get tantalisingly close and then blow it. Again. Just to keep us all topped-up with heartache.
It would be very easy to sit here and say that I knew something was different now that I know the outcome of the whole thing, but with the players we had, there was definitely a buzz around the online chatrooms and in the media. Would this end up being one of those years where they took us to the very brink and then didn't win it? A curse is a curse, after all.
Then the team ma
nager, Terry Francona, and the boys really started messing with our heads properly. To get to the American League Championship Series (which is a semi-final for the World Series - which , in turn, is always played against the winners of the National League Championship Series) we had to get through the Anaheim Angels... which we did in stunning form, winning that best-of-five series 3-0.
And who should be waiting for us in the ALCS... it just had to be the bloody New York Yankees and because they had finished above us in our division they had four of the seven possible games at home. Yankee Stadium remains the most hostile place for the Red Sox to visit and the prospects were not looking good. To cut this part short, we won an amazing ALCS 4-3, having been 3-0 down and are the only team to have ever come from 3-0 down in the post-season to win.
Once the Yankees were out of the way, the rest was agonising. We came up against the St. Louis Cardinals, who had finished the season with the best record in baseball, with 105 wins and only 57 losses.
The Boston Red Sox team of 2004 blew them away four-zip and won their first World Series in 86 years and, finally, laying to rest the curse of the bambino.
I know that I had nothing personally to do with their success and I wasn't even there for any of their momentous post-season matches, but I have always been left with a sense of having been a part of it. I had been a part of that season.
I still like to think that it was damned nice of them to wait until I'd been to see them play before they went ahead and won it.
With the curse broken, they only went ahead and won it again in 2007. Strangely enough, the Yankees won it in 2000 - the actual last year of the twentieth century - and haven't won it since.
There is some justice in the universe after all.
The legendary "curse of the bambino" - Babe Ruth - had haunted the Boston Red Sox baseball team since 1919, after their then owner, Harry Frazee, sold their star player to the New York Yankees for a m
easly $100,000. All so that his missus could finance a Broadway musical; a musical that ended up being a complete flop anyway. When Ruth was sold, against his will, he "cursed" the Red Sox, saying that they'd never win another World Series without him. He was right. His last year at Boston - 1918 - was their last championship while he was alive. He ended his days a New York Yankee, who went on to become the dominant force in baseball for the rest of the century.This was pretty much one of the first things I learned when I became part of the "Red Sox Nation" back in 2001. I have been a fan of North American sports since I was 5 or 6 years old. I am now a mad-daft fan of baseball, ice hockey, American football and basketball. I came to each one at a totally different time in my life and each in their own unique set of circumstances.
My love of baseball started when I was living on the island of Paros, Greece, in 1998. That was the year that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire captured the imagination of baseball fans everywhere by slugging it out to see who could get the most home runs in a season. The record was definitely going to go... the only two questions on everyones lips were by how many runs was the record going to be smashed by and which of these two amazing players was going to win out?
To be fair, I'd never really noticed baseball before, but the bar I frequented was owned by a Greek-American called Costas, who had relocated there from Los Angeles, to get back to his roots and to escape the madness that is California life. He had the TV on everyday, tuned into some sports network that showed the games. I spent a lot of days there drinking free beer and watching the games with him. He became my unofficial baseball tutor.
That was where my love of the game began, but when I got back to London that winter, it disappeared from my life after the World Series had ended - not that anyone really noticed it happening. Apart from the fans of the teams taking part in the post-season, the rest of us were totally absorbed in the "slug-fest" and couldn't have cared less about what entire teams were doing. It was the most compelling, gladiatorial struggle between two professional sportsmen since Borg and MacEnroe.
Anyway, that was where it all started. I still didn't follow a team, but when I started university in 2001, one was chosen for me. I met a really nice young girl from Boston with a typically Boston-Irish name, called Shannon and we became good friends. She was a Red Sox fan and spent many an afternoon extolling the virtues of her city and her team. The truth wasn't sugar-coated though - she warned me about the inherited pain of becoming a Red Sox fan, the fact that we never win and the fact that we hadn't won since 1918. I was well-warned about the heartache of so many lost World Series; like the gut-wrenching, emotional rollercoaster of the '86 WS, when the Red Sox lost to the New York Mets in dramatic fashion at Shea Stadium in New York.
I had been a Hibernian fan for many years and figured that this made me the ideal candidate to join the ranks of the Red Sox Nation. My Edinburgh football team hadn't won the league since 1952 and their last Scottish FA Cup win was 50 years before that - I was used to disappointment. But the dogged determination to follow each of these teams til we die is what makes us some of the best sports fans in the world. I can't help wondering if the Irish connection to both teams has something to do with the obstinate dedication to the cause - no matter how hopeless it might seem.
When the chance came up in 2004 for a 10-day holiday to Boston and then onto Niagara Falls, I started making instant plans for a trip to Fenway Park to see my beloved Red Sox. There are loads of games a season to go and watch and they're very well varied between road and home games. The team were playing a 3-game home series against the Detroit Tigers and after a quick look at the schedule, I chose the game that had my favourite pitcher on the mound, Pedro Martinez.
My missus, Fawzia, had been told by some American colleagues that in order to get tickets, it was best to get down to F
enway early. Since the game was starting in the early evening, we got down there for around lunchtime and managed to get a spot that was only around 30 or 40 people from the front of the queue. The weather was hot, humid and mixed with the grimy air from interstate-90, which is right over the other side of the small row of buildings opposite the stadium. The Lansdowne Street side of Fenway Park is all part of the iconic "Green Monster" - a 37-foot-high green wall that forms the left field boundary and contains and old-fashioned manual scoreboard. The queue we were in was the other side of the Green Monster and I couldn't stop looking up at it, thinking: "I can't believe I'm actually here!"
I already had a Red Sox baseball cap, that had seen better days, but Fawzia didn't look like much of a fan, so I tempted her into going into one of the Red Sox stores strategically placed across from the ticket office. We asked some of the lovely people in line to keep our place while we went to the store and they agreed, but I got the impression that it wouldn't have mattered if we hadn't. I got myself a new cap and Fawzia got herself a Red Sox vest top. She got a huge cheer from those around us in the queue for managing to change into it under her other t-shirt.
After waiting a couple of hours for the ticket office to open, we filed in and got our tickets. Everyone else just seemed to be staying inside the stadium, so we did the same. There were plenty of little food and drink stalls tucked away underneath the stands, so we got ourselves some of both and wandered around, drinking in the atmosphere of this oldest of ball parks. It is a well-known fact amongst my friends that I have no sense of smell whatsoever, but I got the distinct impression that, for once, I was really missing out on something. Fenway Park looks like it should smell of baseball, in the venerable sense.
We found our seats, on the lower tier, way out in the right field, just past the famous "Pesky's Pole" (the right field foul pole named after Johnny Pesky - a Red Sox player in the '40s and '50s). We had a pretty good view of the field and a great view of the Green Monster and the bull pen (where the pitchers warm up during the game). The teams came out to warm up and I got a close up view of Pedro warming up with teammates and occasionally tossing a baseball to one of the hollering kids hanging over the small perimeter wall around the field.
Everytime I have visited the United States I have felt the same sense of awe borne out of the fact that we here in the UK only ever see the US on television or in the cinema, and so it has always felt like wandering around on the world's biggest movie set to me. This was no different. Once the ballpark began to fill up and the noises got more intense as game time approached, the sense of being a part of something intensified. I had been to see Arsenal versus Manchester United at Highbury some years before and, like that night, there are certain events, in certain places that just cannot be replicated or equalled. Fenway was one of those times. The feeling that I was being included in the American national past time was overwhelming.
It was hot and sticky, but made bearable by the army of vendors walking around amongst the fans selling beers and hot dogs. The sun still shone over the top of the main stand as the players came out to take the field. The game itself was amazing, but I won't bore you with a play-by-play account... suffice it to say that the Red Sox came out victorious 5-1 and the difference between a televised game and the real thing was immeasurable. One thing I never knew until we went there was that in the US, simply because of the distances involved, they have no idea of the concept of "away fans" and this meant that unless the team was up against it, then there was very little in the way of chanting. This, of course, was entirely alien to me. Since I had decided to "represent" that day, I had gone to the match wearing my
Arsenal shirt and during the three and a half hours of the game whenever I got a little bit bored (and after a few beers) I would stand up and start singing "ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AAAALL!" This went down quite well with the Red Sox fans nearby, who blatantly hadn't a clue what this crazy Brit was shouting about, but who always welcome something a little out of the ordinary, in much the same way as a streaker always gets a cheer at a football match here in the UK.I knew the Red Sox were having a good season and some of our players were hitting their top form at the best time of the year, since there were only around 30+ games left of the regular season. We finished second in the American League that year and made it into the post-season in the "wild card" slot, those damned Yankees having pipped us to the league pennant by just three games. While the whole of the Red Sox Nation was overjoyed to see the team get to the post-season at all, it was, of course, met with the same feelings of dread that the team would only go ahead and do the same thing they had been doing to Red Sox fans since 1918 - get tantalisingly close and then blow it. Again. Just to keep us all topped-up with heartache.
It would be very easy to sit here and say that I knew something was different now that I know the outcome of the whole thing, but with the players we had, there was definitely a buzz around the online chatrooms and in the media. Would this end up being one of those years where they took us to the very brink and then didn't win it? A curse is a curse, after all.
Then the team ma
nager, Terry Francona, and the boys really started messing with our heads properly. To get to the American League Championship Series (which is a semi-final for the World Series - which , in turn, is always played against the winners of the National League Championship Series) we had to get through the Anaheim Angels... which we did in stunning form, winning that best-of-five series 3-0.And who should be waiting for us in the ALCS... it just had to be the bloody New York Yankees and because they had finished above us in our division they had four of the seven possible games at home. Yankee Stadium remains the most hostile place for the Red Sox to visit and the prospects were not looking good. To cut this part short, we won an amazing ALCS 4-3, having been 3-0 down and are the only team to have ever come from 3-0 down in the post-season to win.
Once the Yankees were out of the way, the rest was agonising. We came up against the St. Louis Cardinals, who had finished the season with the best record in baseball, with 105 wins and only 57 losses.
The Boston Red Sox team of 2004 blew them away four-zip and won their first World Series in 86 years and, finally, laying to rest the curse of the bambino.
I know that I had nothing personally to do with their success and I wasn't even there for any of their momentous post-season matches, but I have always been left with a sense of having been a part of it. I had been a part of that season.
I still like to think that it was damned nice of them to wait until I'd been to see them play before they went ahead and won it.
With the curse broken, they only went ahead and won it again in 2007. Strangely enough, the Yankees won it in 2000 - the actual last year of the twentieth century - and haven't won it since.
There is some justice in the universe after all.
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