Hold the nervous breakdown

Bill Simmons captures the feeling exactly. For non-sports fans who can't understand or have never experienced it, this is what it felt like for the last three nights.

That's what the baseball playoffs feel like. Every pitch matters. Every decision has ramifications that could last for the next 50 years. When cameras zoom in for close-ups of the players, you can see their nose hairs and the little white pimples you get from shaving too many times in the same week. No game lasts less than three hours. You can't relax for a second. Your stomach churns. Your heart pounds. You're totally helpless. You can't breath. You don't want the season to end.

And that's the happy part ... my season didn't end. Derek Lowe came through. After Hernandez bunted the runners over and Grady moved the infield in (just so any grounder could get through for the winning run), Lowe whiffed the backup catcher on an unhittable sinker. He pitched around Singleton to load the bases, Grady moved the outfield back toward the fence so any single would win the game, then Lowe whiffed the always-atrocious Terrence Long on that same nasty sinker. Piece of cake. Never a doubt.

(Note: The preceding paragraph was infinitely more dramatic when it happened, even causing me to see those little white dots at one point. I wish I were kidding.)

We won. Well, I think we won... I could barely see straight. Hench and I exchanged an awkward beach hug and about 35 high-fives. Our cellphones started ringing off the hook. The Sox mobbed one another, then headed back to the locker room before visiting Johnny D in the hospital. A confused Grady Little tried to pinch-run the clubhouse attendant for an A's security guard. And Hench and I headed out to get some chicken... two punch-drunk Red Sox fans who had just been through hell and back. What a game.

Part of me wants to win the title so we never have to hear about the stupid curse again, and so the Yankees fans can shut the hell up, and Dan Shaughnessy won't have anything to write about, and I can watch a grounder roll down the first base line in the ninth inning of a pivotal playoff game -- which happened Monday night, by the way -- without a condescending announcer eagerly dropping Bill Buckner's name five or six more times (as if we were too stupid to get the reference).

The other part -- the happier part -- wants to be in Boston when we win, just to hear what the city sounds like. I want to hug my Dad, see the look on his face. I want to get drunk with Red Sox fans that night, just like New Orleans and the Pats all over again. I want to call my friends who suffered through all the ups and downs. I want to accept congratulations from everybody I know. I just want to win. I don't feel sorry for myself, and I don't care about the past, and I don't think I deserve these things any more than Cubs fans, Astros fans, Indians fans or anyone else. I just want to win. And I think every Sox fan feels that way.

That's why people shouldn't argue things like "Deep down, Sox fans would be disappointed if they won the World Series" and "The whole region would lose its identity." What a load of crap. No true Sox fan feels that way. We want to win the World Series, and we want to go through the Yankees to do it. There's no other way. And if we're going to war with a shaky manager and a rollercoaster ride of a bullpen, so be it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go throw up.

Amen.