Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

2004-08-02 - 3:57 p.m.

(It occurs to me that this may be a more traditional blog entry, where people you probably don�t know prattle about daily occurrences you could probably care less about:)

I lived most of my adult life in Boston, but I grew up in New York. Hence, I am a Yankees fan. Making the Yankees-Red Sox conversion is not impossible, but it�s a little like switching genders � more difficult than it�s worth for most people. You really have to want it.

That said, the Red Sox are definitely my second-favorite team. You�ve gotta respect the pathos and agony in fans� belief. �Wait �til next year.� When it looked like they would leave Fenway Park a few years ago, I called that they would win a Series in their last season at Fenway or first season at the new field. Now they�re stuck with the Curse, though. They were allowed to win a pennant last season only because a Sox/Cubs World Series would have caused some rift in space-time.

But of course, they blew it. I had a roommate once who claimed that the Sox were nothing if not reliable. Every season there was a date around the second week of August circled on the team calendar with a reminder note: �Start to suck.� And they respect that each year.

I had a very peripheral role in Red Sox tragedy once. In 1999, I was working in operations at a luxury high-rise apartment complex in Cambridge. One of our tenants was catcher Jason Varitek. He seemed to have a hard life for a major-leaguer. A maintenance guy sometimes ran across him sleeping in the hall cause his wife had kicked him out.

We had to do a state-mandated annual elevator test which meant the elevators would be out of service for about four hours. I signed off on the decision to do it at midnight on Sunday, figuring this would impact the fewest people. Who would be out so late on a Sunday night?

Well, the Red Sox were in the playoffs and Varitek came home from a night game (which I think they had lost) to no elevator. He and his pregnant wife had to walk up eighteen flights. With every stair and every invective from his wife, he must have thought �I may make a quarter million in my first season, but right now life kinda sucks��

Tragic.

� 2004 Geoff Gladstone

previous - next

Sign My Guestbook!
powered by SignMyGuestbook.com

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!