The Series: 30 Years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 21 out of 30

       In October of 2004, the baseball playoffs felt like déjà vu. The Sox had lost to the Yankees the year before. Now the Boston Red Sox were once again playing their rivals, and the New York Yankees were about to once again claim the American league title. The Sox were down 3-0, and I told myself that I couldn't watch game 4, I couldn't deal with the heart break.  At the very end of game 4, though, I went to watch some baseball, to see the very bitter end of the season.  Of course all Red Sox fans remember the end of that game. Kevin Millar walks, Dave Roberts steals and scores, David Ortiz hits a walk off in extra innings, and the Sox win, and they went on to win the AL in 7 games, completing the greatest comeback in the history of baseball and one of the best, if not the best, comeback in the history of sports. The Red Sox showed up in St. Louis a week later, bound and determined to brush off the St. Louis Cardinals and win the World Series for the first time in 86 years.  Anyone who follows baseball knows the outcome of that World Series, the Sox swept and were world champs for the first time in my life, my dad's life, and even my grandfather's life. In the last moments before they won, I muttered under my breath: "They'll screw it up, they are going to find a way to screw it up," because they always had. Then it happened, Keith Foulke throws,Edgar Renteria hits a dribbler back to the mound, Foulke fields it, underhand tosses it gently to Doug Mientkiewicz at first. The Sox WIN. I remember watching the last out of the series jumping around madly, and then calling my Dad. On the other end of the phone I heard: "WOOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!" I yelled into the phone, "DAD I don't know what to do!!!!"  That night at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, as I stood there just beyond the dugout with my friend Ben, I basked in the glow of a moment that the entire region of New England (maybe not southwest Connecticut) had waited for for 86 years. The Patriots had won recently, and the Celtics are still the most storied team in Basketball history, but the Red Sox, that was truly the stuff of passion.  We stood there until they kicked us out of the Stadium though, the good people of St. Louis being who they are, they gave us a good long time to celebrate before that happened. When I left the stadium a St. Louis fan, seeing me in my Red Sox hat, shooted off an expletive at me, but then quickly turned around and said "But Congratulations, you guys deserve it." 

             We went around to where the players were getting on their bus to go back to the airport, we saw Manny leave (Carrying a Louis Vutton Purse of his own no less) and get into his own ride. We also saw the rest of the team walk out of the stadium, and Mike Meyers, a little known reliever, carrying out the trophy. Terry Francona was signing autographs, Johnny Damon was a little drunk, Curt Schilling walked out on crutches, and as the bus pulled away I knew that I had seen something that only about 40 other people (the others who found the exit) could ever claim to have seen.  The Sox went on to win again in 2007, and the ballpark was full all of the time. The truth is, it just wasn't the same, until this year. The truth is that this year the team started to lose, and I think that we were all a little better for it. The pink hats and the people who couldn't tell you the name of our shortstop disappeared, and we were better for it. The truth is that we became more than a little arrogant, and we always expected success.  The other problem, of course, is that when we did succeed we didn't really feel the joy in it. I was there with my brother for game seven of the ALCS championship in 2007, and it was a great night, and I loved being with my brother, but was it as special? They asked the owner of the Red Sox that question and he gave some trite answer like "They are all special in their own right..." The truth is what any Red Sox fan who was there the night they won it in 2004 will tell you... No it wasn't.  Truth be told because I had lived my whole life as a fan in the shadow of the curse of the bambino, 2004 was incomparably special, and when things are good all the time, we lose our sense of what that being good really is. St. John of the Cross described the realty behind this well in The Dark Night of the Soul. The truth is that sometimes our lives we need to go through dry spells to understand what how good something, be it a baseball team, a relationship, even our prayer life, actually is. Sometimes we need the dry spells, and we can't run from them because in them we can find a truer meaning of what those more fecund times mean.  I would, sometime just after that, go into a pretty long dry spell in my prayer life. Although I was faithful to my practice of prayer, I would have only occasional showers to wet the soil of my soul and remind me who God was, and who I was in relationship to God. Fortunately, the spring rains came in just enough time in my prayer life.

        That Series, that wonderful experience of joy, was amazing on so many levels. The truth is, however, that I know that I understood it better because of the many years in my life prior where we didn't even dare to dream that it would be the year.. we just hoped. Last year, a minor dry spell gave us reason to hope again at Fenway park, just as the dry spell that was coming in my life made me realize how good God had been to me, and also gave me new eyes to look for the rain when it came again.