When the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series I was a sappy, giggling idiot. So, not much different from how I am normally. But the win, especially coming a year after another epic loss, was a moment that lifted me out of my studio-apartmented, law-studented routine. It was wond'rous.
And it was something I'd been hoping for pretty hard, evidently, for months. When the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the ALCS my friend sent me an email chastising fans for celebrating the triumphs of millionaires while civilians were dying in Iraq. I viscerally lectured him on how real and true and meaningful and important the event was for "true fans." He wasn't wrong, exactly, but how dare he try to take baseball away from people who cared about it.
FOX's entire broadcast for the past week sought to reduce this contest to black vs. white, good vs. evil. (as an aside, their announcers then went on to cheer for the team they'd labeled "evil")perhaps in doing so they won a few more viewers, but true fans who care deeply about both teams also watched. if not for these fans and the stories they carry, FOX would have no basis for its exploitative, over-hyped, production.
A few weeks earlier, at the end of the regular season, I had gotten all weepy-eyed when Bill Simmons wrote an 8-page article about returning to Fenway for the final weekend. I remember feeling like it was the finest expression I'd ever read of what it meant to be a Red Sox fan. I remember nodding along as The Sports Guy explained why he wasn't emotionally ready for the playoffs:
Maybe enough time hasn't passed yet. I still remember everything about last October, those twelve playoff games unfolding like rounds in a classic boxing match, so many twists and turns that even Harold Lederman couldn't have scored it. I still remember the minutes and hours after that fateful Game 7 in the Bronx, when I called Dad just to make sure he was still breathing. I still remember the following afternoon, when everything hit me at once -- the residual emotions of the past three weeks swelling up like a killer wave, knocking me right on my back -- and I actually had to leave work early. It was too much. Baseball shouldn't mean this much.
So true, I thought, so true. Then they won and Bill put all his columns in a book and annotated them. This was the paragraph I was most excited to read. No sentence summed-up feelings of pride, joy, exhaustion, and plain ridiculousness for having those feelings be so strong better than, "Baseball shouldn't mean this much." I saved the article to my hard drive, lest the Internet erase my sentimentality.
That sentence is not in the book. Nor is there any annotation from Bill explaining why he took it out.
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Yesterday we learned that Manny Ramirez tested positive for a banned substance, and Bill Simmons has a new column.
We look at the 2004 banner again. I always thought that, for the rest of my life, I would look at that banner and think only good thoughts. Now, there's a mental asterisk that won't go away. I wish I could take a pill to shake it from my brain. I see 2004 and 2007, and think of Manny and Papi first and foremost. The modern-day Ruth and Gehrig. One of the great one-two punches in sports history. Were they cheating the whole time? Was Pedro cheating, too? That 2004 banner makes me think of these things now. I wish it didn't, but it does. This makes me sad. This makes me profoundly sad.
Well. I understand. But this news does not make me profoundly sad. And the fact that it makes Bill Simmons profoundly sad makes me wonder again whether baseball should mean this much. Manny testing positive does not cheapen my feelings about the 2004 title. Maybe that just means I'm not (or no longer) among the true fans I praised five years ago.
Or maybe baseball just shouldn't mean this much. Maybe the bargain we strike should be one where we are entitled to our meaningful experiences, good and bad, but we are not entitled to re-evaluate those experiences. Much more than celebrating a moment when it happens, maybe it's constantly re-evaluating our celebration that gives a moment undeserved importance. We get to have strong feelings during a particular game or a particular season; questioning them after the fact is just self-flagellating and myopic. Baseball shouldn't mean that much.
I'd like to see Bill add that sentence to this article if it finds its way into another book. He can make room by getting rid of this sentence:
I wish I could take a pill to shake it from my brain.
Because isn't that how we got here in the first place?
