Red Sox Nation

Last night I watched the Boston Red Sox win their second World Series in four years and I thought of my father, Allan Kuusisto, who loved the Sox and who never lived to see his team prevail. My eyes grew moist as the final out was made and the Boston catcher, Jason Varitek ran toward the pitcher’s mound to start the celebration. How my father loved the Red Sox and how he suffered through their multiple World Series defeats and late season collapses. A New York newspaper said today: "This is not your father’s Red Sox." I surely knew what they meant. My father’s teams never had the stamina and self-possession of the 21st century teams from Boston. These ballplayers from Fenway believe that they will win and they put the pressure on their opponents to prove them wrong. My dad’s Red Sox were always straining to win but they never had that intangible dynamic of belief. These Red Sox believe.

I have a friend who thinks that team sports are atavistic exercises in vanquishing others and that this kind of competition is a bad model for human cooperation. I don’t know if he’s right about that or not. It has always seemed to me that baseball is about physics–that, and the nearly impossible task of battling gravity and mass. Of course there’s athleticism and luck and team work and yes, the plan is to beat your opponent, but in the end, both teams have the same opponent and it isn’t the other guys, its space and time and mass.

In effect: baseball only appears to be a human competition. This is why so many artists and writers love the game. The game is always about something else. And if your team loses, I think its safe to say that they didn’t lose to the other guys, they lost to actuarial matters and the occult happenstance of solid bodies moving about in time and space.

You say, "Ah, he’s just spouting this claptrap because his team won." I think the Red Sox were lucky. At every turn things could have turned out differently. I think that the Red Sox might want to ponder their fortune with some humility. The only likeable winners are those who take stock of their luck.

I hope the Red Sox will be likeable as winners.

Hi Dad!

S.K.