As the final hours of the month of October dwindle down, the 2007 Major League Baseball season has officially concluded.
Gone are the weekend baseball conversations with friends over summer barbeques. Lounging around the backyard with a transistor radio listening to a game has come to pass. The day-to-day routine of checking the newspaper and seeing where each team is placed in the standings is finished. Gone are the season voices of Karl Ravech, Peter Gammons, John Kruk, Vin Scully, John Sterling, and Jerry Remy. The days are shorter, the nights are longer, and soon snow will cover the baseball diamonds throughout the land (maybe)!
For me the end comes as one of the most disappointing baseball seasons in recent history. I personally saw more games in different cities and parks this year then I have since I was sixteen years old. Yet the end was a train wreak as miserable as a Yankees fan can imagine!
The Boston Red Sox are World Champions.
In game four with two out in the bottom of the ninth inning Jonathan Papelbon threw a two-ball, two-strike fastball high and inside to pitch hitter Seth Smith. Smith half swung at the pitch out of the zone, striking out to officially end the season. Papelbon threw his glove in the air and jumped down from the pitchers mound. In a squatting position Papelbon waited for catcher Jason Varitek to meet him in front of the mound. Varitek jumped into the air in front of Papelbon who caught him as the captain raised his right arm in victory. The rest of the team began mobbing the battery, until the cluster of champions began to move toward first base. 1973.29 miles away from Denver (according to mapquest.com) in Boston Massachusetts, Red Sox Nation went ballistic. For only the second time in ninety years the Red Sox became World Champions of the great game of baseball.
With Japanese Pitchers, Dominican Sluggers, and American Fielders, the Red Sox have helped make our national past time truly a World Series. With the Core of the team intact, young and healthy, this is the model franchise in the game today. They have a better chance of repeating their dominance next season then any other team I can remember in recent years.
Ok writing the last few paragraphs has made me feel truly disgusting! I am wrapping up this article now, so that I can take four Advil, and sit in a hot shower for several hours thinking about every thing that is wrong with what I just wrote!
I look to 2008 with a sense of hope!
Hope that although my favorite team is no longer baseball’s model franchise, every new seasons brings with it a renaissance, and maybe just maybe the New York Yankees can be World Champions again.
