The Day Hell Stood Still

The dust has settled in Boston. After a trillion years (if you measure years by misfortune, pain, cruelty, and shattered dreams), the curse is broken. Truly broken. Across the alarming surface of the world, the message traveled through the air, the ground and under water, over mountains and through valleys, across deserts and farmlands, through the fast food takeouts of the world, the beer stores and the couch athletes parked in front a legion of television screens. And the message was: The Bo Sox Bucked The Babe’s Blight.

But I’m not going to get into the play-by-play and the players and the coaches and the games. I’ll leave those for the 27 episode epic movie that surely to God someone is already planning. I’ll just say…they did a good job. A great job.

Fact is though, the players were not, and have never been, the true heroes in the comeback of baseball in Boston. The true heroes have always been, and will always be, the Boston fans from Nunavut to Timbuktu. Never in the world of sports have so many suffered so much for so little return and still remained loyal to “their” team, whether they be from Boston or Shanghai.

I write these words with the wisdom of a man who really doesn’t give a rat’s ass who wins the pennant.

But you have to respect a stubborn horde of fans that can stay that fanatically focused for nearly a century (or a trillion years in the terms listed above) and never lose faith. They’re like the husband who said when his wife told him she’d been sleeping with every guy on the block since 1918: “That’s OK, dear. We’ll do better next season.”

And yes, the players did well too.

And yes, even I feel good about hell finally freezing over.

Way to go Boston.