I always wondered what it would feel like if the Red Sox ever won a World Series in my lifetime. How would I react? Would I cry? How old would I be? Where would I be when it finally, inevitably, happened?

Turns out I was in Oakton, VA. And the tears finally came around 1:10 am, almost an hour and a half after the game ended. Unexpected, actually. I thought I had safely reached a tear-free zone. Not quite. An hour and a half after Megan poured a mini-bottle of champagne over my head, and had long since gone to bed, I sat in front of the computer listening to the tail-end of the Red Sox radio broadcast on WEEI online, courtesy of mlb.com. Joe Castiglione's parting words brought back a lot of...memories; I thought of all the disappointing ends to seasons past, but more importantly - all the good times.

In the words of Joe Castiglione:

"And now it's time to say goodbye for another season with a big smile, and a tear or two along the way, that's for sure. as this great world championship starts to set in, and we'd like to recall the words of our late great partner Ken Coleman, that he read every year, written by the former commssioner of baseball and president of Yale University, A. Bartlett Giamotti. And his words are always fitting no matter how a season ends. Bart wrote:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings. And then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops to leave you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it, to buffer the passage of time. To keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive. And just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

And summer is gone.

This year, summer will continue throughout the winter. It will indeed be a very warm winter in New England with the memories of the 2004 Red Sox. For the first time in 86 years, the Boston Red Sox are baseball's champions."

Good night.

Comments

[brad]

great stuff. thanks, chris. g'night right back atcha.

[mattS]

No broken hearts this year.

If I could have posted on SoSH's "Win it for" thread, I'd have asked them to win it for you, man.

[ckelly]

wait a second, i thought you were only allowed to mention dead people on the "Win it for" thread?

[mattS]

You were clinically dead after game 3 of the ALCS, so I figured that was good enough.

[DK]

Unbelievable!

A lot of people in Boston are still in some kind of happy stupor, waiting for it to really sink in.

The busiest people in Boston today were the newspaper vendors. There were long lines everywhere waiting to buy the Globe and Herald!