Twists of Fate

I have a love/hate relationship with professional sports. See, as a kid, I was very VERY active. I swam competitively for over a freakin’ decade. I loved going to games and I loved watching people play. I was the biggest Denver Broncos fan I could be between the ages of, oh, two to twelve, I think. I knew the players. I knew stats. I could predict what play they’d go with on the field and would scream and holler and squee along with the most seasoned beer drinkin’ bozo who ever went shirtless but for body paint in team colors in the stands.

And then the Broncos lost three Superbowls in four years, and my little pro sports fan heart just crumbled. Crushed. Like dust in the always blowing prairie wind, it blew away and left the abandoned shell of a fan behind with nothing but the mournful lowing of “what could have been” echoing off the walls of the ghostly fannish structures.

So which team do I pick to et back on the pro-sports merry go round?

The Boston Fucking Red Sox, of course! Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that the Sox hadn’t won anything in about eleventy billion years. Hell, even *I* knew that things were a bit of a joke for eternally optimistic Beantown fen, and I had approximately half of a nothing sort of interest in baseball. (Except for the baseball coach at my high school, but that’s a whole nother story.)

Why oh why would a woman who had sworn off anything remotely related to pro sports come back to the fold as a Boston Red Sox fan? Masochist, thy name is moiraeknittoo?

I blame my friends H and J. I’ve never met these women. In the grand tradition of cross-continental pen pals, these two women who I’ve known for, oh geez. Seven? Eight? years are both Sox fen, and over the years of chat and exchange of gifts at birthday and holidays, they, like all good crack dealers, have lured me into Sox fandom. The metamorphosis was slow. It was steady. It was insidious and possibly not premeditated.

And then 2004 happened. And my friends in Teenystateland (my affectionate term for Rhode Island and the Boston area, where they live) were in raptures! Hysterics! We were all out buying lottery tickets because the unthinkable had happened. The Boston Red Sox were the world champions! Obviously the world was coming to an end.

I think at that point I started paying a bit more attention. They were so incredibly happy, these two. They thrive on baseball season the way I swoon at the idea of plunging my hands into a freshly sheared Skylines Farm fleece. Nonchalantly, I began trying to learn the lingo and began turning the game on when there was absolutely nothing else to watch on television. I could identify why they’d get so excited at certain plays in the context of what that meant for the team, and subsequently the fans.

And then there was 2007 and I had to give up all pretense of not watching. I got sucked into the vortex, and was surprisingly OK with it. H & J sent me baseball books to read during “hot stove” season, and I actually paid attention to the roster when spring training rolled around in 2008.

This year, I paid for the Extra Innings package on my cable, and watched nearly every game that was available in my market, all the way on the other end of I-90 from the team’s hometown. I find myself sporting Sox hats, a silly plastic cup direct from Fenway with the game schedule on it as well as a yearbook that’s still faintly beer scented from an enthusiastic but clumsy fan, I have a World Series 2007 fleece, I know the faces and names of most of the current roster.

And on nights like last night, I celebrated along with the rest of the Red Sox nation when they pulled a fucking MIRACLE out of their asses in the bottom of the seventh inning and ultimately came back from a SEVEN RUN deficit to win over the Rays in game five of the ACLS.

And I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT. Part of me is screaming that this way lies more heartache and agony, but sometimes, you just gotta act on faith.

This year, during hot stove season, I’m taking the time to make all of us our own Red Socks (sic). Because I can. Because it melds my knitting and my newly revived sports fannish heart together in a physical representation of hopes, dreams and excellent friendship that spans years and the width of the country.

Go Red Sox! *cues up that Dirty Water*