The Best of Times, Almost

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LOOK, I'M A YANKEE fan--have been since long before most of you were born. I have benefited from Boston's suffering (most, after all, for Yankee gain) all my life. I reacted with boyish glee when, in 1949, Boston faced the Yanks one game up with two to go--and my guys won both for the pennant. And, although (honest to God) I didn't want Yaz to make the last out by popping to third, I decided that Bucky Dent was the greatest living American one afternoon in early October, 1978. The Red Sox, in other words, began as my mortal enemies.

That is, until 1967, the year of the Impossible Dream, and my rookie season in the Harvard professoriat. I loved that pennant race and cheered Boston on (why not, the Yanks were out of it, and one of my New York heroes, Elston Howard, was catching for the Sox). For the first time in my life, I suffered with you through the seventh Series game--though the final result was inevitable (I mean nobody but nobody could beat Bob Gibson, not even Lonborg, especially on two days rest).

My affection for Boston crept slowly apace until it blossomed in 1975, and I began to understand Boston pain. I watched the sixth game of the Series from a hotel room in Salt Lake City (no beer, not even before the seventh inning), and exulted in Fisk's homer with a glee unmatched since Bobby Thomson's for the Giants in 1951. I also watched, from the same room, the next afternoon as the Sox, in the finale, took a 3-0 lead into the sixth, and then blew it.

This cocky Yankee fan, accustomed to victory as a rite of fall, began to understand the uniqueness--also depth--of Boston's special pain. Not like Cubs pain (never to get there at all), or Phillies pain (lousy teams, but they did take it all)--but the deepest possible anguish of running a long and hard course, again and again, to the very end, and then self-destructing one inch from the finish line.

WELL FOLKS, GUESS WHAT? Call it shallow, fickle or anything else you want. But this year I was with you all the way. The Yanks never had a real shot (and Steinbrenner does wear on you after a bit). Maybe you thought I would switch caps for the Series and start chanting "Let's Go Mets." Not on your life. I'm a loyal New Yorker, to be sure, but the Mets are nothing to me. They didn't exist when I was a kid, and loyalties are shaped by those early years of splendor in the grass and glory in the flower.

I rooted for the Sox all the way, as hard and as diligently as I ever rooted in all my life (and spurred by my son Ethan, a Sox zealot too young to remember any previous post-season play).

What can possibly be said? It's a week later, and I'm still numb. To hell with the French Revolution; to hell with Dickens. This, not that, was the very best, and then the absolute worst, of times.

When, a millimeter from final defeat (with the champagne already uncorked in the Angels' dressing room), Henderson hit that fifth game homer, I reacted as I never had before. I didn't cheer or jump; I wept--not a few tears stifled by the customs of manhood, but copiously. Then, alone again in a hotel room (this time in D.C.), I had to watch when Henderson, reaching for immortality, apparently won the Series with another homer in the 10th inning of game six, and, with two outs and nobody on, the Sox came--not once but four times--within a micron of taking it all, only to blow it once again.

The Mets' scoreboard had already flashed "congratulations Red Sox." NBC had already named Barrett player of the game, and Hurst the Series MVP. But the Sox knew better. They had peeled the aluminum off the champagne bottles, but they hadn't popped the corks. You all know what the great Yogi Berra says about when it's over--and when it ain't.

Yes, I do understand finally. I came to it late, but I do understand now. This was worse, more bitter than ever. A total self-immolation, by guys we love and admire--by Schiraldi who got us there, Gedman who performed with such quiet efficiency, Buckner who, though hobbled, had fielded flawlessly. I even grieved for Bob Stanley (nine times out of 10, Gedman stops that ball, even though it must technically be ruled a wild pitch; and Stanley did what he was brought in to do--he got Wilson to hit an easily playable ground ball). Yes, this was much worse--worse than selling that great lefty pitcher named Ruth, worse than Pesky holding the ball in 1946, worse than facing the Gibson machine in 1967, worse than Joe Morgan in 1975, worse even than Bucky Dent and Yaz's pop to third in 1978.

What does it all mean? (We academics do have to ask that question after all.) Emily Vermeule, our great classicist and noted Sox fan, argued in 1978 that defeat had been inevitable because the Sox's epic matches the literary form of classical tragedy, where the hero must die.

This theory inspired from Roger Angell the greatest one-liner in the history of American sports literature. Responding to Vermeule's allegation, he offered another interpretation. He opined that God could just as easily have permitted Yaz to double off the "Green Monster" but that, at the crucial moment of Gossage's last pitch, God must have looked away momentarily and bent down to shell a peanut.

I held and abandoned my hypotheses in this vein during post-season play. After Henderson's resurrection in playoff game five, I actually dared to suggest that God was a Red Sox fan. After the most providential rain delay in recent sports history, between games six and seven of the Series, I decided that God cannot influence human actions, but still controls the weather. After the last game, I realized that He must hate the DH rule so much that He only favors the Sox within the American League. (I must, of course, now also entertain the possibility that either he doesn't exist at all or doesn't give a damn about baseball.) We are left alone with our pain.

The finale was too typical--an early Sox lead, eroded near the end, a late Sox surge, almost but not quite enough. Ethan cried when it was all over--and this was only his first time. I tried to console him, but ended up joining him. It's a puzzle, isn't it? I don't know why grown men care so deeply about something that neither kills, nor starves, nor maims, nor even scratches in our world of woe. I don't know why we care so much, but I'm mighty glad that we do.

Stephen J. Gould is Professor of Geology and the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, as well as an avid baseball fan. He teaches the popular Core course, Science B-16 "The History of the Earth and of Life."