ALIVE!

I'll admit it... I gave up.

I listened to the score run up to 5-0 and I waved the white flag in my head.
I rationalized that it was better to have your brains beaten in than to have a Wild Pitch/Bill Buckner/Grady Little/Aaron Boone moment frozen in time.

I ate a nice meal with my brother and my wife and tucked my kids into bed...
But I guess there was one tiny part of me holding out because I hit record on the DVR when I took my boys upstairs.

Maybe it was a small part of me that remembered Dave Roberts and thought "Maybe... just maybe."

When I finished Where The Wild Things Are, I flipped the tivo and saw Ortiz's homer.

I thought "too little too late... but at least they aren't going to let themselves be embarassed."

Fast forwarding through the Rays at bats and careful not to hit the wrong button again on my remote I got to the Drew homer... and then some part of me clicked.

It was that new strand in my DNA, call it the 2004 helix, that has changed my perspective on the world.

Any knucklehead who thinks that Red Sox fans long for the Curse and their old identity of losing doesn't understand that we Sox fans are now different animals on the sub-atomic level.

That sense of doom that used to come about when the Red Sox were doing well has been replaced with a feeling of confidence that even a 7-0 lead isn't enough to stop us.

And when Coco fouled off 9,921 pitches... I didn't have a sense of dread.
Rather I kept picturing something wonderful.

And it happened.


And I got a great experience of watching it with my brother.
Ted has moved away from baseball but watching him get excited with me made me feel like we were 6 and 7 years old again in Weston Massachusetts.

The biggest difference was we were watching the Red Sox WIN!

Everything clicked... Pena hitting into a double play, Longoria throwing that ball into the stands...and finally Drew.

When that ball bounced into the bullpen, is there a Red Sox fan alive who didn't suddenly think "We're going to win this series"?

And now Terry Francona is adding to his legend and possibly a Hall of Fame resume.

The man is 8-1 in post season elimination games as a manager.
And he is two wins in Tampa Bay... two games started by Josh Beckett and Jon Lester... from pulling off his third come back from a 3-1 hole in five seasons.

I like this change in my DNA

I'm sorry everyone who hates us Red Sox fans...
WE'RE ALIVE!