an icepick through the keyhole

YES.

Do I really want to watch this tonight?

My fingernails have barely grown back from last year.

From "One Day at Fenway", by Steve Kettner:

Red Sox fans who talk about the decades of pain and disappointment they have suffered are really talking about something else. They are talking about the luxury of caring about something deeply. Nowhere has a deep and abiding attachment to a team been passed from generation to generation the way it has been in Boston. Most sports fans aren't so lucky. Passion like that has become rare in American life, where allegiances tend to last weeks or months. People move from state to state, picking up new teams and new loyalties and leaving others behind. Fans outfit themselves head to toe in the loud colors of their new team and scream their lungs out -- on cue -- at state-of-the-art stadiums and arenas. They celebrate their new teams' victories like a personal entitlement. But do they really know anything about passion without living through bleak times that test their loyalty? New England fans do. Oh how they do.

Kettman gets it. It's what I've been saying all the time. It's why I'm a Red Sox fan, it's why I'm an Arsenal fan. It's easy to back a team that wins all the time. Supporting the Yankees, supporting Manchester United - it's a no brainer. I want drama in my sports. I want suspense. Arsenal has disappointed in the past as much as it as elated me, and it will do so again and again. The Red Sox will bring its fans to the brink of heaven and have them see it cruelly snatched away, and they will do so again.

But they're good enough to let us hope, let us think, "Maybe this time," and one day, yes, one day, it will be ours. Because nothing worth having is easily won.

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.

Yay, Jason Varitek!

The Yankees are out of the playoffs.

I suddenly don't mind as much that the Angels beat out the Red Sox now.

Excellent Red Sox article, pointed out to be by autographedcat:

Red Sox just didn't have it this year

Since it's late-September, you know what that means ... that's right, it's time for my annual Red Sox eulogy! As a die-hard Sox fan, sitting down to write this piece always feels like stretching out on Dr. Melfi's sofa. It's almost a cathartic experience, a chance to gather all the accumulated pain and agony from the six-month season, then inflict it on you, the unsuspecting reader. Isn't that why they created sports columns in the first place?

Looking back, Boston's 2002 baseball season was weirder than most, a year when the Sox trotted out seven All-Stars, including two 20-game winners, a potential batting champion and a shortstop on pace for 200 hits and 120 RBI ... and yet they weren't even one of the best five teams in their own league. How does that make sense? Usually, when a baseball team falls short, you can always latch onto something -- shaky managing, injuries, shaky chemistry or whatever else. Not this year.

As usual, my dad summed it up best. About six weeks ago, we were talking on the phone for the first time in days, gabbing away about anything and everything. As the phone call wound down, I wondered, "Hey, we aren't even gonna talk about the Red Sox?"

Dead silence on the other end.

Finally: "Nahhhh. They don't have it this year."

Best piece of analysis I heard all season.

To make it to the playoffs, the Red Sox need to win the last six games of the season and the Anaheim Angels need to lose all those six games.

I'm sorry to say this, but I did a spit take when I read this and laughed out loud. Bitterly, of course.

But still, the Angels have lost their last 2 games, we've won our last 4, and as Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over till it's over..." so, just maybe...

Dare I hope, and let my heart be crushed? One might say that with the Red Sox, it's an occupational hazard.

I really wish I could bring myself to pay for this Red Sox Home Jersey and cap. Why does official merchandise need to be so goddamn expensive?

Sudesh said to me last Thursday at the Comics Mart, "You're so American."

I guess that's true. I grew up on American as well as British pop culture, and despite having lived three years in England, loving Shakespeare and London, and supporting English football, my regular trips to the United States, the number of people I know and love in the U.S. and the way I keep bitching about U.S. politics and stuff - not to mention my love affair recently with the Civil War and the South - it's safe to say I do have a jones for America. And it's really no secret I am really, really looking forward to spend an extended time in a country I've grown to adore next year.

The latest manifestation of my fetish is now a desire to learn about baseball. I picked up Ken Burns' 9-part documentary history on the game, and after going through nearly a century of baseball history, I'm beginning to understand the appeal the game has for Americans. It's an incredibly intellectual game, with many subtleties, and literally anything can happen from moment to moment. It's the duel between batter and pitcher, the precision with which the pitcher throws the ball, the decision to swing, or not to, the judgment of the runner whether to attempt to steal the next base, the numbers being crunched in the head of spectators and players to try to predict the probable outcomes. Emotionally, of course, English football fans and American baseball fans, if they knew of each others' histories, can equally relate. Team loyalty, team history, classic moments, the passing of the torch through generations, the near losses, the heartbreak of that stupid last-minute fumble, all that I'm familiar with. So I'm going into the game more with an appreciation for the mechanics and for its history and how it's been intertwined with American culture over the decades.

I haven't decided whether I'm going to support a baseball team yet, but I'm kind of warming towards the Boston Red Sox. They're the kind of almost-champions, stumbling at that last hurdle, that remind me of my own beloved Arsenal FC. Except that while the poor Red Sox haven't won a World's Series since 1919 (when they traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, which some say has jinxed the team since then) Arsenal at least wins once in a while.

The Red Sox are playing the Toronto Blue Jays today at the Sky Dome at 1:05 EDT. Might stay up to watch the results come in over the ESPN web site.