My BWSC's Understudy On Game 2, Now That The Season Is Over

The story of Game 2 starts in Maryland at 8 in the morning when I picked up BWSC's dad (Mr. P for the sake of brevity throughout this post). From the time I picked him up, through the rest of the trip, one of the two of us would periodically comment how we couldn’t believe we were doing this. We stayed outside of Boston in Waltham in what was probably the last hotel room available in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I’m not kidding… our room didn’t even have heat.

We took "The T." I believe it stands for “Transit.” Buses and commuter trains also go by “The T.” Why they chose to further abbreviate MBTA to "T" is beyond me. It’s sort of like referring to a strike out as a “K,” but I digress. We went to Fenway to meet Brian and (not Joe) Morgan for lunch and do some souvenir shopping. And for the record, they stayed at their friend, Monica's (not Geller) place. She went to high school with the Baseblogger and the BWSC.

Anyway, when we got there at 2, there were already fans milling around the streets and shops and the buzz only built from there. There was a line of fans waiting for the game-day release of tickets that stretched all the way down Lansdowne Street. We’re talking thousands of people taking part in what was probably a futile exercise unless you were in the first 100 feet of the line, if that. From this point on, my excitement started to skyrocket. BWSC did a pretty good job of describing the scene around Fenway so I’ll just jump to 6 pm, when we entered the stadium. Here are the highlights:

They opened the gates early enough for us to see the Sox take BP. It’s a rare treat to get to watch the home team hit and it leads me to my first real baseball observation of the post. As BWSC mentioned, the Rockies put on quite a show. The Sox, however, probably disappointed a few casual fans. Sure Big Papi put a couple in the seats, but I don’t remember anybody else hitting one out, even Manny. The hitters were working on going the other way and hitting solid line drives. Guess which approach translated to a World Series title (actually it was a 2-1 game with very little action so this will probably be my only real baseball observation)?

The media frenzy is outrageous. Pretty much every inch of foul territory was taken up by some sort of news set-up. I have never seen anything like it and I spent most of BP waiting for somebody to hit a frozen rope off of Leyritz’s stupid leather golf cap. He was far enough down the right field line that it was a distinct possibility. Nobody did. It also gave me a chance to see some of my favorite baseball personalities up close including Gammons, Kurkjian, and Harold Reynolds (who, despite my "moobs," did not hit on me). Also Mr. P walked headlong right into Buck Martinez in the concourse behind home plate (we found this funny, but we were pretty giddy by this point).

I grew up going to Fenway, but I haven’t been in a few years due to the fact that I moved halfway down the east coast. I sort of forgot what it was like to go to a game there. BWSC touched on the fans and how they live and die with every pitch, but I think it is worth repeating. When the Rockies scored first you could hear a pin drop, it was almost scary (as opposed to, say, Camden Yards, where unless the place is filled with Yanks or Sox fans you can always hear a pin drop...sorry, had to). On the flip side, if things are going the Sox way it can be deafening in there, without any prompting from the scoreboard. Maybe the Nation has become diluted by bandwagon jumpers, but for a guy like me it was refreshing to be part of the crowd in Game 2. There was one guy who, despite being obviously pumped to take in a World Series game, was not particularly interested in the outcome and was actually playing Tetris on his Blackberry while Papi was batting with 2 guys on in a tie ball game. Mr. P and I considered lobbing his BB over the back wall of the stadium. We refrained, but the more I think about how many people would kill for that seat and it was occupied by that effer… man, it fires me up.

Finally, late in the game I started to get a little tense because of the close score, but instead of dreading them blowing the game (which I would have been doing pre-2004) I was thinking of what they need to do to win it. As a Sox fan, realizing this change in thought was very liberating.

There is a lot more that I can write about (Okajima’s warm up song, how loud the bullpen band was, what it was like to have “Shipping up to Boston” playing while Paps warmed up, watching what was probably Schill’s last game with the Sox), but this thing is long enough (that's what she said). Combine that with the fact that I’m pretty sure words can’t accurately describe the experience I had on Thursday night or what it meant to me (literally, a lifelong dream come true) and I think I need to stop here. Congrats to the Sox and my fellow fans on another championship. Here’s to many more (preferably without A-Rod).