Chansky's Notebook: If They Could See 'Em Now

I still wonder if my parents have been watching the last 15 years.

The Boston Red Sox have now won four World Series since 2003, posting a record of 16-3 in those titles. They swept the Cardinals in 2004 and the Colorado Rockies in 2007, beat the Cards four games to two in 2013 and just polished off the Dodgers four to one Sunday night in LA.

Before becoming the most dominant franchise in Major League Baseball, the BoSox had gone 86 years since winning their last world championship, a drought commonly known as the “Curse of the Bambino,” which began after they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919.

Most kids who follow baseball today don’t know what I am talking about. But I remember it from those weekend mornings playing catch with my dad in the backyard, when he would say “You want to go to the ball game today?” and we jumped in the car and drove almost right up to Fenway Park — where we easily found a space and had our pick of thousands of tickets still on sale for that game. We were there one Sunday late in September when Ted Williams hit a home run in his last at-bat before he retired.

I remember it from birthday parties at Fenway, where three of my friends were invited to the game with me and my parents, and every time the Red Sox got a hit my mother dug a silver-covered chocolate kiss from her baggy pocket book to reward us. She loved to listen to the games on radio or watch on black-and-white TV, when the Sox usually lost.

In their later years, they saw some success but more heartbreak. The 1967 team went from last the prior season to first but lost the World Series to the Cardinals in seven games. The 1975 Sox lost Game 7 to the Big Red Machine after Bernie Carbo and Carlton Fisk extended the series with dramatic home runs in Game 6. And in 1978, they blew a double-digit lead to the Yankees in a September pennant race and lost the playoff game to a home run by New York’s weak-hitting shortstop Bucky Dent.

My dad was gone by 1986, when the ground ball through Bill Buckner’s legs cost the Sox the Series to the Mets. Mom was gone by the time Grady Little left Pedro Martinez in and they lost seventh game of the American League playoffs to the Yankees in 2003.

So after breaking The Curse in 2004 and being in the pennant race almost every year, I began wishing my parents could see today’s success like millions of long-departed and long-suffering Sox fans. I once asked a wise psychiatrist friend if there was truly life after death.

“Let’s hope so,” he said.

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Chansky’s Notebook: If They Could See ‘Em Now

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