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Broken up in Boston

To think I was just writing a lesson plan for my students to write a poem about Ortiz.  People were shocked I didn’t see this coming, but I can’t see these things coming, because it ruins baseball. Where have all of the role models gone? Were they ever really there, is maybe the bigger question.

I’ve had my heart broken by sport plenty of times.  Game seven galore this year.  But I will never forget having to take my Mo Vaughn poster down when I was a kid because he got another DUI. That was the first real heartbreak. When Wake has a bad game I don’t blame him. Sure, I yell at the TV screen a good bit. But players make errors; it’s why sports are so interesting. If athletes played perfectly they’re would be no hail marys, no underdogs, no curses to overcome. It would be like anything else on TV.

This is my plea to professional athletes everywhere. Shapen up. I’m serious. We love home runs, especailly game winning three run homers, but only when our heroes hit them.  And lately, it feels like everyone’s a Yankee.

Rice brings Sunshine to Mudville

Watching Jim Rice last night I became jealous for the years of baseball I missed.  Watching highlights, watching his grace, watching Nomar’s reaction, I wished for an era of baseball not so full of pettiness. It seems the more we pay a player the more they complain. Or the more they have no choice but to do steroids.

Maybe it’s just the heat.  Maybe it’s being behind the Yankees when it counts, but I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for America’s past time. For weeks I’ve been looking through old papers trying to find a Casey, trying to find a Mudville.  Trying to find when baseball still meant everything, not just to the fans.  Watching Rice last night, it was like I finally found that.

So lets tip our hats to the man.  Lets tip our hats to a generation. Filled with sport. And lets forget about the Mannys and the Dice-Ks for a while.

With break in baseball we can get back to other important aspects of life...

Like hockey and basketball.  I sat through class unable to listen to a word just picturing the line I knew was forming outside of the garden. Would I even get a chance at a lucky ticket?  I brushed over the details on the Internet. For some reason I thought it was only for Bruins tickets (selective hearing) so you can imagine my surprise stepping onto a train full of KG jerseys.  I quickly found a Bruins fan to stand by.

As soon as I exited the train I saw a sea of Bostonians, in suits, Bruins jerseys, Celtic t-shirts, and one odd teenager in a Penguins jersey and a Mets hat…there’s always one.  I couldn’t see where the end of the line stretched, so I pushed aside all my learned manners, walked on the street and used my rugby skills to find windows.  It kept going…

When it finally stopped I felt like I had finished the freedom trail, I found my spot in line.  It was long, but not 19,000 people long.  With no water, no food, and no friends, I realized it was going to be a long ass wait, for a crappy chocolate bar that may or may not have a golden ticket.  Quickly the line became a bar with no TV, well, and no booze.

The girl beside me in line and I became fast friends.  What are the chances of standing right behind another girl on her own, who has dedicated her entire day to a vague promise from the “TD” Garden.  After an hour and a half of waiting a man in a suit with a walkie-talkie, informed us there was a good chance they would run out of chocolate bars before we got to the end.  No one moved.

All it takes is a few days off baseball for Boston to became obsessive with hockey and basketball again.  We waited it out.  It drizzled, people in cars and offices made fun of us, but we stayed. After 2 and ½ hours we walked into the garden, which felt more like a grade school party, full of balloons, and bad music.  Everyone was smiling.

We were literally joyous as we received our two chocolate bars, and quickly took them to the ‘unwrapping zone’.  Nothing.  One man screamed with excitement discovering he had won two tickets to Disney on Ice.

I left still smiling oddly enough.  My new friend and I had a beer and discussed what could have been.

Boston isn’t always a friendly city.  But when we talk sports, we’re all like old war buddies, especially when losing is a possibility again.

Nomah returns...

Finally in Boston we can take a MJ break.  Not to talk about the political status of Honduras but to talk of the return of Nomah. Boston is full of the most loyal and yet harshest fans.  I remember the first time I ever saw Dice-K, he dropped the puck at a Bruins game when we were still figuring out how to say his name correctly.  Everyone in the Garden stood, only expecting greatness, from a pitcher we truly didn’t know much about.  Last same I saw him, he was on the mound at Fenway, and he got booed like a Yankee. Before 2004 the medias only job in Boston was to boo.  You read the sports page now and it’s a whole new thing, full of bunnies and flowers, and maybe the occasional Manny bashing (even with him all the way in LA).  Before it was all a bashing.

Tonight lets not just focus on our break-up with Nomar. Lets focus on the man, the player. He was a go to guy while he was in the city.  Kids playing peewee mimicked his superstitions at bat.  For a while, he was Boston. He embraced the butchery of his name.  Think back to a shortstop Nomah caliber, who has stayed long enough for you to invest in a jersey…

The trade ended up working.  But without Nomah, even just his promise, that season would we have made it to the Series?  I cried when he was traded. I went to Wrigley that season in my jersey and Cubs fans bought me beers, because we got each other.  We understood the misery of curses, we had an excuse to be massholes, we had every right to drink a few too many, and boo at our own players.

But now we have six players going to the All-Star game, about time, Wakey! We have two rings, and Cubs fans hate us.  Boston sports writers are smiling, guest starring on PTI and Around the Horn.  It’s been raining all summer, and we are in better moods than five years ago.  We’re in first place. 

So I’m standing for Nomah.  Lets show an old hero how far we have come.  And then lets stand for who will hopefully become a Fenway hero, Smoltz…