More baseball - if you don't like it, you can kiss off. The Sox have taken Game 1 of the World Series with the Saint Louis Cardinals. It was a terribly ugly game, with four errors by the Sox - two by Manny Ramirez, who is rumored to still out in left field shagging fly balls. Still, the Sox showed terrific resilience, coming back after giving up a 5-run lead and other late-inning leads, with (the improbable) Mark Bellhorn providing the game-winning home run off Peskie's Pole in the eighth.
If you haven't heard, I didn't even pick the Sox to MAKE the Series. I picked the Yankees against the Sox in five games. As is now obvious, I could not have been more wrong about these Red Sox. They are the grittiest, yet most relaxed team I've ever seen. They can scrap for a run, they can mash, they can pitch in a tough situation. They can pitch with their backs against the wall, they can pitch when it counts in a Game 1.
While I hesitate to pick anyone, given my previous record, I would have to say my gut is with the Sox in five games. I'm not sure the Cards will allow it to be that much of a blowout, thinking that they might take two in St. Louis, and take it to at least six. But with the way the Sox are playing, it's hard to see how they might lose again. Game 1 of the WS was about as poorly played as possible, yet they still pulled it out...
Finally, I would like to make clear: there is no curse. There wasn't a curse before the Sox beat the Yankees, there isn't a remnant of a curse after the ALCS but before the Sox win the Series. There has never been a curse. There has been a rash of BAD Red Sox teams. There has been an arrogance by Yankees fans. There has been a grasping attempt by Boston natives (especially Shaunessy, who coined the phrase, "Curse of the Bambino" in the '80s) to explain why the Sox have not won it all since 1918. There may have even been an attitude of self-defeatism by Sox players that bought into the fraud of the curse. The fact is that THERE IS NO CURSE. There has never been a curse. There is no such thing as a curse. At the same time, we (the Sox) need to defeat the curse. We need to completely subjugate all appearances of a curse. We need to shut down the Yankee "spin" machine from latching onto any false semblance of a curse. We have started on that laudable goal - we are three games away from erasing 86 years of history and superstition.
GO SOX!
Posted by pcg at October 23, 2004 10:59 PM