The Jester’s Quart: Waking Up from the Impossible Dream

by Greg Wyshynski
Columnist, SportsFanMagazine.com

Oct. 29, 2004

The Red Sox are world champions. The curse is broken. Columnist Greg Wyshynski asks the question on every Boston baseball fan's mind: Where do they go from here? That, plus World Series random thoughts on the Cardinals' collapse, Jimmy Fallon, Sox vs. Yankees and FOX in the locker room.all in the latest 'JQ.' Greg Wyshynski
Columnist, SportsFanMagazine.com "Where do we go from here? The battle's done And we kinda won So we sound our victory cheer Where do we go From here?" -- "Once More With Feeling," Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This has not been the best of weeks for myself and Patriot Fan.

PT, my pseudo-Bostonian officemate who proudly wears his fanatical heart on his sleeve, entered the newsroom on Monday morning with his beloved Red Sox leading the suddenly hapless Cardinals 2-0 in the World Series. When he reached his cubical, he saw a note on his computer that read simply:

"Remember Buckner."

He began laughing mockingly (and a bit maniacally), and made a beeline for my desk. I'm a New York sports fan, so he and I have had our battles.mainly when it came to the AFC East and my Jets against his Patriots. During the baseball postseason, I was pulling hard against his Red Sox, hoping the joy that was the Curse would continue and actually reach the century mark one day.

So he assumed that I had placed the sign on his desk; he assumed incorrectly, as another sports guy was actually the culprit. Nevertheless, he gave it two me with both barrels: About the Jets' failure, about the 20-some-odd game Patriots' winning streak, about the two Super Bowls, about the Red Sox glorious postseason run, about the ascension of the ballclub to America's Team status in the World Series.

I should have just shut my mouth, but like the ass that I am, I came back with my best Tuck Rule material. ("It's a good thing you won that second ring because we all smelled the taint on the first one." "Your own quarterback was laughing about getting away with one after the game.") Relations were strained, negotiations broke down, and we decided to call it a morning before the debate raged out of hand.

Later that day, I couldn't help but goad him again. (Hell, he was a Boston fan having a good day. When would I ever have that opportunity again?) So I asked him: What about the Red Sox will be memorable or unique should they win and break the 86-year curse?

He shot back with some comments about Boston being a Top 3 baseball town, about Ted Williams, and about a bunch of other stuff that didn't really address the point. And that point is: Where do they go from here?

Will Red Sox Nation follow the team with the same intensity? What if this is a one-and-done sort of team? It wouldn't be the first time a baseball team captivated the nation, won the whole enchilada and then slipped off into obscurity.

Or am I the only one who doesn't think about the '79 Pirates, '84 Tigers or the '88 Dodgers on a daily basis?

It's gotta be a strange time for Red Sox fans. The euphoria of winning, followed closely by an overwhelming lack of purpose. There's no next season to wait for. You've reached the summit of Everest; climbing it again will never offer the same thrill.

I don't think I read a more telling passage from the post-Series coverage than this, from The Boston Globe:

Paul Donahue, a 44-year-old Xerox manager from Boston who watched the game outside the ''Cheers'' bar at Quincy Market, also wondered about the new status of the Red Sox. He went to 30 Red Sox games this season, but he doubts he'll be at Fenway as often next year. ''I don't think they'll have the same emotional attachment for me,'' he said.

And that's just it. Red Sox fans are now Star Wars fans in May 2005. The saga is complete. Sure, the memories and the legacy are going to satisfy you more than, say, a "Chronicles of Riddick" fanboy. But now you've seen every episode, you've lived and breathed it for decades. Whether "Revenge of the Sith" is like the ACLS or (gasp!) the World Series, it signals the end of a journey millions of fans have taken together.

The Red Sox story had been told.

Where do they go from here?

RANDOM (WORLD SERIES) THOUGHTS

I feel for those poor bastards in St. Louis for two reasons.

First, because even before their team became the laughingstock of postseason baseball (and an embarrassment of Bucknerian proportions), the Cardinals were basically treated like a sacrificial lamb by FOX and ESPN. I think FOX told us what conditioner Johnny Damon uses in his hair before it actually set the starting lineup for the Cardinals in Game 1. And ESPN.look, we all know Bill Simmons is a Red Sox guy, and its nearly impossible to be headquartered in Bristol and not get caught up in Sox Mania. But one team does not a World Series make, and ESPN treated the Cardinals like they were the NHL.

I also feel for Cardinals fans because.well, because their team didn't just bring a knife to a gunfight; it brought a butter spreader to the Battle of the Bulge. Scott Rolen whiffed so much, the National Weather Service issued a hurricane warning. You know your starting pitching sucks when I start feeling better about life as a Mets fan.

I said before the series that Houston could beat the Red Sox, and I stick to that. The Astros had better Fenway hitters, and three pitchers (Clemens, Oswalt, and Lidge) who you could confidently expect a solid performance from no matter the venue. Could you say the same about Jason Marquis and Matt Morris?

Speaking of Marquis, he had this to say after Game 4: "We're disappointed the season didn't turn out the way we wanted, but on the other hand we had a great season and have nothing to hang our heads about."

Sure, pumpkin. Nothing to hang your head about. Except for wasting our time for three games with some of the most embarrassingly inept and emotionless play in recent postseason history. Except for participating in the biggest World Series flop since the '90 Oakland A's. (Say, who managed them again?) Except for being so damn bad, you actually lost to a team that had an 86-year voodoo futility hex placed on it.

Your faces should be as red as your ball caps.

To the nice young lady working for FOX who decided to quiz Red Sox management about free agency during a celebration 86 years in the making: Back to the kitchen.

I'm sure you, like I, were absolutely flabbergasted when the FOX cameras cut to former SNLer Jimmy Fallon on the field smooching a woman during the Red Sox revelry. Well, the woman turned out to be Drew Barrymore, and the smooch turned out to be a scene from the Farrelly Bros. adaptation of Nick Hornby's "Fever Pitch." Which makes me wonder what's more painful:

1. That the minds behind "Me, Myself & Irene" and "Stuck on You" are adapting a Nick Hornby novel. 2. That adaptations of Nick Hornby novels have proceeded down a slippery slope from John Cusack ("High Fidelity") to Hugh Grant ("About a Boy") to Jimmy F-ing Fallon. 3. That a book about an obsessed Arsenal fan has been turned into a movie about an obsessed Boston fan. Remember the last movie about an obsessed Boston fan called "Celtic Pride?" Yeah neither does Damon Wayans. 4. That somewhere in Boston Wednesday night, there was an 85 year-old man battling liver failure, whose only wish was to be on the field when the Sox finally won the World Series. And then he saw Jimmy F-ing Fallon on his hospital television and flatlined.

And why Fallon?

What, did Affleck get his card pulled after "Gigli?"

So Saturday's parade ends this historic baseball postseason for the Boston Red Sox. Although I approached every moment of it with a biting cynicism and an undying desire for continued misery for Sox fans, I can't help but feel a little happy for the team and its fans.

I will not, however, buy the line being sold by FOX and most of the sports media that this is some scrappy group of players that overcame the odds and did the impossible. Just because some of them have funny hair and most of them appear to be on Britney Spears' shower schedule doesn't make them the factious bunch of "idiots" the media makes them out to be.

Look: The team is basically the slightly less-Evil Empire. They have the second highest payroll in baseball. They were thisclose to getting A-Rod before the season. But what makes this team differ from the Yankees is the fact that there isn't a Jeter, Posada, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera or Andy Pettitte on this team; the homegrown stars that formed the heart of the Empire. Manny, Oritz, Damon, Millar, Mueller, Bellhorn and even Kapler were established players with their old teams before joining the Red Sox. Schilling, Pedro, Wakefield, Timlin and Foulke were all hired guns. The homegrown Red Sox are basically Trot Nixon.and Trot Nixon.

But portraying the Red Sox as a collection of mercenaries just didn't fit the script.

That being said, Boston did something very special this season. While it's always more impressive to win with players developed within your own system, Boston's victory is an indication that Terry Francona and Theo Epstein did something nearly as impressive: Develop chemistry on a rotisserie team.

Finally, to my friends in Boston.

Look what happened to the Celtics while you were distracted:

"Oh the times, they are a change-in."

Published on the web and www.SportsFanMagazine.com since 1997, "The Jester's Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail.com.

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