I'll let you in on a little secret. This is not my favorite time of the year to be a baseball fan.
It's not that I dislike the baseball playoffs or the World Series. On the contrary—there are few things more exciting than a highly competitive playoff series played with a little nip in the air, particularly when said series winds up going to a seventh and deciding game.
The source of my angst is not the playoffs. It's the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs.
I'm not ashamed to say I am a lifelong Red Sox fan. Actually, it goes back even further than that. My father worked his way through Boston University as a vendor at Fenway Park. For as long as I can remember, the Olde Towne Team has been a staple of life in the Collins household, a tradition that continues to this day.
My childhood hero was Carlton "Pudge" Fisk. I can remember trying to bend my own catcher's mitt to create the same weird shape Fisk's had when he presented his pitcher with a target. I still remember vividly the first time I went to a major league game. It was at Fenway (where else?), and we sat in the left field grandstand only a couple of rows to the right of the fabled Green Monster. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when we came up out of that runway and I saw that field for the first time. Those are memories I'll take to the grave.
But there have also been Red Sox memories that are not so pleasant. I remember staying up late one night in 1975 and watching the aforementioned Fisk slap a fast ball into the left field nets to force a seventh game against the Cincinnati Reds, a euphoria that was short lived when our boys spit the bit the next night against the Big Red Machine.
I can recall furiously peddling my BMX Sand Blaster home from Four Corners school in 1978, only to watch our playoff hopes dashed once again when Bucky Dent clubbed a Mike Torrez offering into the left field nets. I was in my first year in radio and at the controls in 1986 when the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs, giving Game Six to the New York Mets, who would eventually win that series in seven as well.
So, like the rest of Red Sox Nation, I've endured a lot. But there is another element that adds to my anxiety this time of year, one that is as big, rich, and arrogant as the city it represents—the New York Yankees.
In my house, the Yankees were always the enemy. But my personal disdain for them went to DEFCON One the day Lou Pinella tried to run Fisk over at home plate in Yankee Stadium, sparking the brawl that resulted in the injury that ended the career of Sox pitcher "The Spaceman" Bill Lee. As I've gotten older, I've managed to temper those nasty feelings, although the Alex Rodriguez-Texas non-trade double-cross a couple of years back was a major test.
These days, my antipathy toward the Evil Empire is relegated to mere annoyance status until we get to September and October, when those pinstriped bastards never seem to lose, especially when they play Boston.
The best example of this came during New York's most recent trip to Fenway. The Red Sox may have a lock on the American League East, but the Yanks still took two of three in that series, and have won eight of the last 10 games between these two teams.
My friends, who are also fellow Red Sox fans, tell me not sweat it, that Torre's boys will be lucky to get the Wild Card this year because they have no pitching. That may be true, but look at that lineup. Not only is it stacked with All-Stars, but it has been a nightmare against Red Sox pitching, especially with some of the cheese Matsuzaka, Wakefield and even Schilling have been serving up lately. And while we still have Josh Beckett, a solid bullpen, and a decent lineup of our own, I'm worried that the Yankees are in the Red Sox' heads a little bit, and at the worst possible time.
Still the deniers persist. Some of them are still in that "2004 haze," where we finally won the World Championship after coming from behind against the Yankees and breaking the Curse of the Bambino. What a bunch of nonsense. Curse or not, this is when the Yankees thrive. They may be the best clutch franchise in the history of baseball, and the same apologists who scoff and laugh at my pain will also be the first ones to dial up sports talk radio and scream and yell if the Sox wind up on the canvas looking up at the Yankees in October.
So by all means feel free to break out the shirts and the hats, and order those playoff and World Series tickets. If anybody needs me, I'll be on the couch relaxing—at my therapist's office.
Chris Collins is the Director of News and Programming at WHMP Radio, and a part-time political columnist and sports writer for the Greenfield Recorder.
