Skipping the News, Watching Baseball Instead

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Twenty years ago, the Boston Red Sox were on the cusp of elimination from the playoffs once again by the New York Yankees. The Yankees had won the previous season’s American League Championship Series in seven games – another heartbreaker for my beloved Red Sox. And it looked like another season of frustration was about to end ignominiously as the Red Sox trailed the Yankees three-games-to-none in the American League Championship Series in October 2004. I watched Game Four while staying at the Holiday Inn Town Lake in Austin, holding little hope and a glass of wine. No team in Major League Baseball has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit.

In my first half-century on the planet at the time (I’m rounding up), the Red Sox had made it to the World Series three times: in 1967, 1975 and 1986. They lost each time. Worse, they had repeatedly fallen short of even getting that far. The 2004 ALCS looked as if it would end up with the same result: the Yankees headed to the Fall Classic, the Red Sox heading home for a long off-season.

To summarize, the Red Sox won four straight games from the Yankees and then swept the Cardinals in four games to win their first World Series in 86 years, breaking the curse of the Bambino, leveled against the team when it traded Babe Ruth to the Yanks in 1918. Red Sox fans the world over wept with joy. People visited cemeteries to drape Red Sox pennants on tombstones. That was to let their dead relatives — who had gone to their graves without a World Series championship in their memory — know of the victory.

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Since the November election, I have assiduously avoided reading most of the news. No longer do we plop ourselves down in front of the television to watch the latest from CNN or MSNBC. Frankly, it is too damn depressing to take in large doses. I keep up with the headlines but no longer dive into every opinion piece from the various newspapers and magazines to which I subscribe. I have never been a fan of self-flagellation.

This is a minority opinion here Behind the Pine Curtain, but I consider the election results an absolute disaster for our democracy. I hope and pray I am wrong. So, to maintain at least a semblance of sanity, I turn to streaming television series that have nothing to do with politics when I grow weary of reading mysteries and histories.

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I found a show called The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox on one of the streaming services. It’s a three-hour documentary cut up in three parts that chronicles that amazing season, and the cast of characters involved: David “Big Papi” Ortiz; Johnny Damon; Curt Schilling; Derek Low; Jason Varitek; Pedro Martinez, Dave Roberts, and others, all fondly called “The Idiots.” All are now middle-aged and retired, some turning to broadcasting, others coaching or managing. It was delightful to see The Idiots again as they recalled those 18 days of despair and then triumph. This band of idiots took shots of Jack Daniels whiskey in the clubhouse before hitting the field. They earned that sobriquet.

The games went into extra innings and often didn’t end until well after midnight. Dan Shaughnessy, a columnist for the Boston Globe since 1981, called it the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead series, because that’s what we did.” Yup.

All games starting with Game Four were do-or-die for the Red Sox. Game Five went 12 innings, until Big Papi won it with a walk-off homer. Game Six went 14 innings, and the Red Sox won, again with a Papi game-running hit. That game lasted nearly six hours. No matter. I stayed glued to the screen. Game Seven wasn’t even close, as the Red Sox did what has never been done, before or since: They took four straight after being down three games. The Cardinals in the World Series never had a chance. The Sox swept them.

What election? I was watching classic baseball. I enjoyed the documentary so much I watched the final hour-long episode twice.

Now I am casting about for my next televised diversion, the news be damned.

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