It’s October. Which is awesome. Because October Baseball is happening. And everyone knows that October Baseball (always capitalized) is the best baseball. And Red Sox Baseball in October? There’s nothing like that. When the Red Sox make the playoffs, that’s like your birthday, Christmas, unlimited sunshine and free bikes all rolled into one.
Maybe it’s me, but I *like* wearing gloves to a baseball game. And a hoodie. And a big fuckin’ comfy coat. Boots too? Damn straight. Maybe it’s my natural Irish fear of the sun or my aversion to being too close to other sweaty people, but there’s just something about being in a ballpark, freezing your nuts off, and finding warmth in a flask of Jameson’s and the communal vibe of the bleachers that elevates the game.
Of course, this year, I don’t have to worry about any of that. The Red Sox didn’t make the playoffs. So I’m gonna have to miss all this magical stuff that comes with October Baseball.
You know what I mean. The stuff you only feel when your team is playing October Baseball.
Stuff like pacing and punching walls and rubbing temples and shouting at the television.
Wearing the lucky jersey every day.
High-fiving strangers in the street and seeing Red Sox T-shirt vendors on every corner.
Waking up at 5am on game day and carb-loading for an 8pm start.
Losing focus in meetings, letting your relationships slide, leaving that big project for another day, cutting out of work early, and driving through Kenmore and the Fens, even though you know you’ll be stuck in miles of traffic, just to soak in that crisp, sausage-tainted air.
Lying in bed but never quite finding sleep, your stomach knotting as it replays a particularly horrific inning or contemplates the next day’s match-up.
Accepting that it can end at any time, that any given game can be the season finale.
Knowing that, like any good love affair, the heart you’ve opened up and given away so willingly may end up speared, torn into two throbbing pieces and left on the frozen ground.
I have always said that I have never felt more alive and yet more jam-packed with dread than during the 2004 postseason. Those were some of the best days of my life, yet probably the unhealthiest stretch of my existence, both physically and mentally. I’ve well-documented the spiral of my post-2003 ALCS days. After game four of the 2004 edition, as the Red Sox began to show signs of life and the world starting becoming a better place, I was a wreck. And I mean that in the best possible way. I slept an average of two hours a night. Avoided human interaction. The lucky Pedro jersey which I kept affixed to my body became more toxic than a plutonium mine. I barely ate, and anything I did consume was made by either Hostess or Budweiser. I crept through my house like a man waiting for the FBI to break in at any time, fearing I was on borrowed time and that another October collapse was imminent. I was literally living like Chuck Heston in The Omega Man, shuffling around with a sense of dread in the daylight, and scurrying back home for first pitch by nightfall. It was exhilarating and horrifying and magical and at times it just didn’t seem real. But it was.
It’s also important to point out that I’m old. Not quite AARP old, but old enough to have grown up in a time where the Red Sox barely sniffed October, and when they did, it didn’t end well. I was there when the ball rolled under Buckner’s glove, when Clemens was ejected in the goddam second inning of game four of the 1990 ALCS, and when Roger returned to Fenway as a Yankee in the 1999 ALCS to start the only game of that Series we’d win. I was old enough to drink when I was convinced that my Dad and grandfather were telling me the truth when they said that the Red Sox would always break my heart.
But 2004 changed everything. The sleepless nights, the bloody knuckles, the fresh-punched holes in the wall, the years of life shorn off my body from weeks of neglect, the pile of broken TV sets I’d chucked out the window, all of it was rewarded. And then to think it happened again just three years later. And again after that. And again even after that. At latest tally I’ve seen four more Red Sox World Series parades than I expected to see in my lifetime. Yet the idea that October Baseball can fill me with unstoppable joy and not make me want to drive over my own nuts with a monster truck still feels odd. Since 2003, the Red Sox have played October baseball eleven times. That’s more postseason appearances than they made in the stretch of time from 2003 back to 1946. I can be nothing but grateful. But I still appreciate the occasional jolt of fear and loathing that October Baseball can inject into me, the realization that the guy who has to cover his ears and hide behind the sofa when the Red Sox season is on the line still exists. Oddly, it keeps me sane.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned at the start, we don’t get any of the good stuff this year, because the Red Sox won’t be playing October baseball in 2024. And that saddens me deeply.
But we’ll be back. These days, we always are.
