Why The Red Sox Make Everything Better.

I have a confession to make….. I am not simply a Red Sox fan, I think it goes beyond that now. Fanaticism bordering on obsession is probably a better description of my situation. I follow the Red Sox for a bunch of reasons. I think I like to believe that to some extent the once long suffering status of a Red Sox fan finally relieved in my presence (yes I was at Busch Stadium in St. Louis that fateful night) makes me believe in the great possibility of what seems futile bearing fruit. Maybe it is that the Sox provide me endless hours of entertainment. Perhaps it is the suspense wrapped up in the events that occur every time a certain team from the Bronx tries to win in Fenway. I don’t know. In the end it is something long engrained something that becomes a part of who you are.
If you are a Catholic from New England like me you grow up with your parents taking you to Church, (in the case of Rhode Island) drinking Dell’s Lemonade, and taking you from a young age to Fenway Park to see the beloved Red Sox. It becomes a little religion unto itself sometimes with observances like wearing lucky jerseys. It is a little sort moral observance that bears certain words to be foul language (i.e. Buckner, Boone, and Bucky (bleepin’) Dent). There is a sense of pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Red Sox Nation in the Fens, and if you can’t make it there, there are parish churches in Portland, Lowell, Pawtucket, and Ft. Meyers which are nowhere near as glorious, but still satisfying. There are also the great saints, by the names of Williams, Yastrzemski, Fisk, Petrocelli, and Pesky. Along with those saints there are also the fallen in Ruth, Clemens, and Damon (Strangely close to Demon, no?) Finally, of course there is a cosmic struggle of Good verses Evil, Steinbrenner vs. Henry.
So now that I have quasi-heretically put my fandom in Catholic terms, what’s the point? Well I think the point is this, we all have certain things in our lives which, put in proper perspective bear a certain sacramentality to them. In truth, I love the Sox, but not so much for who they are but for what they mean to me. To me the Sox are a sacramental because they remind me of the sacred. Boiled down more specifically, they remind me of the love of my father (earthly) for my brother and I over the years, and now my sister as well. (As we try to initiate the precious 9 year old into our little dose of insanity) That love, which manifested itself every summer in hot dogs and “Spohts Bahhs” (as my father says to this day) along the first baseline of Fenway park, and in the constant morning declaration of “Sawx Win, Sawx Win” over the morning paper as we got ready to go to school, is a sure sign of God’s presence, God’s care, and I think in the real and genuine delight which God takes in the things of this world put into proper perspective, heck he did “see that it was good” after making it all. So I cheer for the Sox, but more because my heart warms when I think of all of the good memories and same heart is filled with gratitude for my father whenever I check the box scores………