The joy, exhilaration, fulfillment and satisfaction that come from this latest Red Sox World Series Championship cannot be matched by the complete and overwhelming sense of 'normalcy' I now feel.
This is what it should be like to be a fan of a professional sports team. You cheer your team all season long enjoying the wins while agonizing over the losses. The team is successful and reaches the playoffs where the intensity of each game rises to a higher level. The wins become more rewarding, the losses more painful. But there is no sense of sickening dread. No feeling of physical anguish, no heart-stopping, stroke-causing, mind-crippling, comatose-inducing accompaniment to every...win (the losses go beyond any literary description I am capable of)
I thought (hoped, wished, prayed) those feelings would have left me after the glorious 2004 Season. That October, The 25 triumphed over 86 years of not hopelessness, hope is what had made it all so cruel...
Sadly though, those same feelings persisted. Once the elation of 2004 subsided and a new season began, they returned once again. Only now they were accompanied by a new feeling nearly as devastating as 'what if I never see them win it?'. The feeling that 'what if I never see them win another one?'. Those fans of the 1918 Red Sox had no idea what their life and the lives of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would become. But fans of the 2004 Red Sox knew all to well the burden that had been hoisted upon us... "what if there are no more championships? what have we done to future generations who will be born in to this unholy cadre with only the mythical memories of the names of Ortiz, Schilling, Varitek, Ramirez and Foulke... no more real to them then the names Ruth, Hooper, Mays, Leonard and Strunk are to our generation?"
But now, after the Boston Red Sox second World Series championship in the last four seaons I feel a sense of... normalcy - which as a fan, is all I've ever wanted. I don't need to cheer for a team that wins Back-to-Back-to-Back' championships or becomes a 'Dynasty'. As a fan, all I have ever really wanted is simply the chance to enjoy the game. To know that if my team possesses the necessary talent and performs to their potential over the course of the season, that as a fan, I will be rewarded quite logically (remember the word 'logically' once held no meaning for Red Sox fans) with a Championship.
No longer does each season carry with it a sense of dread. No more intolerable anguish. All those feelings can now be replaced with normalcy. Happiness follows a win, disappointment a loss... and that's it. Am I somehow less of a fan now? I don't think so. Is being a Red Sox fan somehow less special, the experience less singular than it once was - probably. Is being a member of 'The Nation' now just like being a fan of any other successful sports team? I hope so...
The 25 made a chance at normalcy a possibility on October 27, 2004 but it wasn't until tonight, October 28, 2007, that Sports Fan Normalcy became a reality.
So Thank You and Congratulation to the 2007 Boston Red Sox - World Series Champions and bringers of normalcy to Red Sox Nation.
