As gratifying as it is to win these games, they have become so excessively fraught that to watch them is emotionally taxing in the extreme. I thought I’d be able to relax and get some work done when the Yankees opened up an eight run lead, but the Red Sox regrouped, metastasized, and emerged with a deadlier-than-ever assault. Clearly, they pose a threat that requires constant vigilance. Some day, they will win — perhaps tomorrow. It’s not a question of if, but when.
It may be unpopular and controversial to put it this way, but I think we have to get back to the place we were, where the Red Sox are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance. We’re never going to end this rivalry. But we’ve got to reduce it to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.
2 replies on “Rooting for the Overdog”
It’s too late to back away, to jump off.
Yet you are smart enough to see what’s coming, which is more than I can say for most Yankee fans. In the stands tonight at the Stadium: such, such hubris, which in fifteen years of watching Sox-Yankees games in New York I have never before experienced.
Yankee fans are pushing their luck with the gods, who have treated them so very well. Now Zeus is on his way. Very perceptive of you to sense that lone first raindrop tonight…
“hubris means never having to say you’re down 0-2”