Last night, as the wave of "Let's go Red Sox!" chants swept across Camden Yards, I was reminded once again that I would be happy if Boston never won another game. With their World Series wins in 2004 and 2007 and every other major professional sports team also winning its championship over the last decade, fans from that place have become more obnoxious and more worthy objects of revulsion than even Yankees fans. I will stand fast on this opinion forever until the next time the Orioles play the Yankees.
I'm not exaggerating about wanting Boston to never win another game, though. That would be the best. I'd sup on the tears flowing forth, although I would probably have to drive to Northern Virginia to taste them, because we all know the pink hat bandwagon will be gone when the team is not successful, just as last September, Fenway Park sat empty even though the game was "sold out" - mostly because glorified scalpers own half the seats.
I dream of that day when the Orioles can actually re-take their home park. Even as bummed as I was after Monday's ridiculous loss, I still convince myself that time of triumph is coming some day, although I have no idea when. I'll be ready for it, though, standing by to savor all the angst as the Red Sox unfaithful first ask condescendingly, "Why can't we beat the lowly Orioles?" What will seal the victory will not be those cries of disbelief, though. True victory will come years later, when little Sully III asks, "Daddy, when will we ever be good enough to beat the Orioles?" And Sully Jr. will turn away and be unable to answer, his heart rent over his inability to offer any comfort for that grim reality, all the while with visions flashing through his head of the future, when his son gets a job in New York City, marries a Yankees fan and raises Yankees fan grandchildren, wondering, if he ever comes across Sully Sr. in the afterlife, how he will bear explaining his failure to keep the fandom alive.
"I waited 86 years for them to win," the spirit of Sully Sr. will say, "and you let my grandson marry a Yankee fan?" And Sully Jr. will then realize that he has all of eternity to face this failure, and then and only then will it strike him that he has gone to hell, and that he should have remembered his verse from the Baseball Gods' Bible: "Whatever you did to the least of our brothers and sisters, you did also to us."
The Day of Judgment is coming, Red Sox fans, and you already know the face of your destroyer. Repent of your sins, pile back into your gas-guzzling SUVs, return to your ex-urban enclaves, and you may yet receive mercy. The day may not be today, tomorrow, or even next year, but the day is coming nonetheless. The baseball gods remember.
| Red Sox (A. Miller - L) @ Orioles (J. Arrieta - R) | |||