I think every reasonable person with the slightest sense of history will tell you–with conviction and a certainty–that the ALCS will be Yankees in six. I mean, the Sox will choke. You just KNOW they’ll choke.
So naturally I’ll say Sox in five. Why? Because it would be so nice just to see Red Sox fans shut the hëll up about the Bambino and curses, real or imagined.
(Although the dream World Series match-up remains Cubs vs. Red Sox. The resolution? It goes to seven games, with the final game going into extra innnings, and when the score remains tied at 30 innings the Commissioner declares them both winners because no one can take it anymore.)
PAD
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Peter, just wanted to say as a Red Sox fan, the general populace doesn’t believe in the fictional “curse.” We believe every year we are going to win, which is why it hurts all the more when it doesn’t happen (i.e. last year’s game 7 heartbreak). The “curse” came into general use thanks to Dan Shaughnessy’s marketing for his book “the Curse of the Bambino.” Now, other than Shaughnessy, only the national media choose (enjoy?) to use the “curse” talk just to piss us off, get national ratings, and make the average ‘Sox look like an idiot. It’s bad enough we have to listen to Tim McCarver for the next 4-7 games, but every night we are going to be taunted with Bucky Dent, Mookie Wilson, and Aaron Boone.
>> Because it would be so nice just to see
>> Red Sox fans shut the hëll up about the
>> Bambino and curses, real or imagined.
Um… the thing is, it’s not us who won’t
shut up about it. Sports writers, broadcasters,
and fans of other teams incessantly bring it up.
Living in Boston, I can tell ya… the only time
it gets mentioned is when we ridicule Fox sports
for running the word into the ground.
You won’t here the word ‘curse’ outta me, but you
might hear some curse words… 🙂
“I think every reasonable person with the slightest sense of history will tell you–with conviction and a certainty–that the ALCS will be Yankees in six. I mean, the Sox will choke. You just KNOW they’ll choke.”
Oh? How many innings is History going to pitch tonight? Or is he just batting? Which position is History playing tonight?
When History goes 20-2, 2.55 ERA over the course of a season, then maybe people should pay attention to what History did. Otherwise, just maybe, people should ACTUALLY FOCUS ON THE TEAMS PLAYING.
I’m rooting for the Red Sox as well. The sooner they get the “curse” monkey off of their backs, the sooner the Cubs might do the same.
Besides, George Steinbrenner cracks me up when he’s angry.
“Why? Because it would be so nice just to see Red Sox fans shut the hëll up about the Bambino and curses, real or imagined.”
Like Brad said, it’s Fox sports and YANKEE fans who won’t shut up about the curse (and there is NO curse). Bad enough we’ll have to listen to “1918” chants during the game, but McCarver makes it even worse. I’ll have the TV on mute myself. While I’m not a fan of the Sox radio guys anyone’s better then McCarver. Where’s Bob Costas when you need him?
Tonight
You should write for the Tribune, PAD.
I mean, a writer there had an article that basically said hte same thing (about the tie), only about if it were the Red Sox and the Astros in the WS.
Anyways, talking about curses is stupid. Houston’s been around for 40 years, and they finally won the first post-season series last night. Any curse? No.
Red Sox haven’t won a WS since 1918. Well, the White Sox haven’t won since 1917. Any curse? No.
It’s nothing more than the media getting their jollies.
The resolution? It goes to seven games, with the final game going into extra innnings, and when the score remains tied at 30 innings the Commissioner declares them both winners because no one can take it anymore.
Nope. At that point, the game will be called on account of locusts.
Red Sox vs Cubs is a commonly accepted sign of the End Times.
I think it would be nice if the *media* would just shut up about the “curse,” whether the Sox win or lose. Every Sox fan I know is beyond sick of hearing about it. (And I imagine Cubs fans are pretty tired of hearing about their curse as well.)
Nah, I figure that a Cubs/Red Sox game seven world series would end with the earth opening up and swallowing the stadium whole…
Bill writes:
Nah, I figure that a Cubs/Red Sox game seven world series would end with the earth opening up and swallowing the stadium whole…
Probably true, but since we’ve already had the earthquake series of 1989, I’m hoping that any further apocalyptic baseball championships will take different form–for variety’s sake if nothing else. So if a Cubs/Red Sox series gets called on account of locusts, frogs, or livestock pestilence, well, then that’d really be something.
I’m a Yankees fan but a part of me is rooting for the Sox as well. I’d love to see a Houston-Boston world series, to mirror the TX/MA presidential candidate situation…
I think the ideal ending for this season would be the Red Sox winning the World Series in Fenway by beating Roger Clemens.
Oh, there’s a curse. You don’t want to know how much money I lost on the publication of the Red Sox Fan Handbook…
The back of today’s Newsday has a very nice Evil Empire based poster of the Sox-Yankees series. Currently up at
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/
(scroll down; the front page is Christopher Reeve, the back page is below that)
It will be Sox-Astros in the World Series, Clemens will pitch game 7 (thus the Astros), Stephen King will toss out the first pitch for game 7, and something of Bucknerian level disaster will happen to the Sox in it. Why? Look at the schedule. Game 7 is in the American League park. On Halloween.
The meme I was trying to propagate last year when a Cubs-Sox series was possible was to call it the End-Of-The-World Series. Alas, the interleague schedule does have the two teams playing each other in the regular season next year.
Oh, and while I forget the exact details, last year the Boston Globe published a story that detailed just how both Boston and the Cubs could lose a World Series against each other at the same time. I believe the scenario required it to be game 7, all players on both teams to have played, so that their final nine players are all on the field, and there to be a collision injury to two players, one from each team, such that neither could continue to play, leading to a double forfeit.
Oh? How many innings is History going to pitch tonight? Or is he just batting? Which position is History playing tonight?
When History goes 20-2, 2.55 ERA over the course of a season, then maybe people should pay attention to what History did. Otherwise, just maybe, people should ACTUALLY FOCUS ON THE TEAMS PLAYING.
Well, given the recent history of the teams when they last played each other, the Red Sox were on a hot streak, met the Yankees, and choked, badly, while playing them. And anyone who watched the two teams last year knows that Sox will choke, badly.
I want to see them bat the Yankees, just to see them beat the Yankees, but given the state of things in the last few years, with these players, I want to predict Sox in six, but I’ll go Yankess in FIVE.
W.P. Kinsella wrote a short story many years ago, “The Last Pennant Before Armageddon,” in which the Cubs reach the World Series just as the world blossoms into nuclear holocaust. (Which, apropos of nothing, reminds me of seeing The Day After on DVD in Kroger the other day. I’ve gotten used to seeing DVDs in grocery stores, but The Day After…?)
Hey Peter,
You’re pretty open-minded…for a New Yorker.
You want to talk about Sox fan kvetching? Try listening to the incoherent palaver of transplanted Yankee fans on Boston sports radio.
Still and all, and against my heart, I say Yankees in 6, probably. They have this annoying trait of come-from-behind victories this year, and it has carried on into the playoffs. But it all hinges on Game Two. If the old Pdero shows up, the series may go the Sox way…but that remains to be seen.
Hoping I’m wrong,
Your Pal,
Mark
“but McCarver makes it even worse. I’ll have the TV on mute myself. While I’m not a fan of the Sox radio guys anyone’s better then McCarver.”
Oh, yeah: McCarver’s the Devil. I had the pleasure of meeting Jerry Remy at a book signing, where I said to him: “Tim McCarver’s got nothing on you my friend!”
OK, I’ll shut up.
MW
I grew up on Long Island. I’m still a Mets fan, even though I’ve since fled the area and it’s been a tough couple of decades.
My wife occasionally asks me who she should root for in a given series, usually so she can root for the other team. The last time they played, she asked about the Red Sox/Yankees match-up.
“The only acceptable outcome of this game,” I told her, “would be for an earthquake to swallow both teams into the ground before either has the opportunity to win.”
I’m still rooting for Mother Nature.
Personally, I’m pretty much fed up with both Boston and New York. Just flat out sick of them both. The ALCS is a total non-issue to me. I’m not even sure how much of it I will be watching.
In the big picture, I’m hoping that Bagwell and Biggio will finally win a World Series. Those guys deserve it.
If not Houston, then as a Philly fan, I can totally live with Scott Rolen’s OTHER team taking home a title. 😉
Well, this game is going so well tonight.
Schilling, 6 runs allowed. Ouch. At least they tried a comeback.
Yanks 1-0
It’s a mental thing with the Sox’s. They really think that they are going to loose to the Yanks. No matter what they do, they look over their shoulder & wonder, when’s it gonna happen? & the POOF Yanks win.
I was talking with a fellow Sox fan in the company gym just before the top of the 9th. He suggested it’d be a heartache to have the Sox made it back from 8-0 to 8-7 and then lose.
My response? “No, no, they have to go for the maximum heartbreak. They need to tie it now at 10-10 and then lose in extra innings.” To which he replied “No, what’d be worse would be for them to get ahead now and *then* lose in extra innings.”
And thus I was enlightened.
The REAL dilemma for today is gonna be how much the ALCS and NLCS tonight will draw folks away from the last debate.
Talk about monumental bad timing!
Yankees or RedSox — either one would be great.
We’ve won 3 out of 5 World Series matchups against the Yankees. (2 in the 20s, 2 in the 40s, 1 in the 60s) We should have faced them in 1981, but we were cheated out of a post-season due to the strike.
We’ve never faced the Red Sox. So that would be something new.
NL Prediction: Cardinals in 6. (Will win first 2 in St. Louis, will manage 1 in Houston, and Game six back in St. Louis)
Cardinals Fan
John – Cardinals beat the Red Sox in the 1967 World Series, Gibby was MVP
I seriously want to punch a priest square in the nuts right now. But I’ll wait… because the Sox are gonna square things up at Fenway this weekend.