Being a Red Sox Fan is Not Good for One’s Mental Health
But every once in a while, it pays off
Author’s note: With football behind us, can baseball be near? I believe so, and I’ve chosen to mark the transition with a favorite personal Red Sox moment. Even if you’re not a baseball fan (or a Red Sox fan) the message of “Never give up” has range and meaning for all of us.
Being a Boston Red Sox fan is not always a smart choice. This assumes one has a choice. Some are born into the insanity and tribulations of hoping their Red Sox team performs, and there is simply no escape. It becomes them — like wearing a warm coat and wool hat on a cold October eve.
That happened to be us on October 13, 2013.
The Boston Red Sox were playing the Detroit Tigers and were four outs away from being down 0–2 in the American League Championship Series. It was a frigid fall evening, and everyone's mood was dark. Red Sox fans had been down this path too many times. Our friends, who had enabled our attendance by winning the lottery that granted them four tickets, chose to head home at the seventh-inning stretch.
“No sense in staying,” our friend Russ said. “It’s cold, the team is cold, and I can’t take another bad moment in Red Sox history.”
We understood this, but we weren’t budging.
Now, why did our friend say this? It made no sense unless you remembered:
The 2003 ALCS debacle: Manager Grady Little left pitcher Pedro Martinez in the game too long, costing the Red Sox what seemed like a sure-win against their arch-nemesis, the New York Yankees. The Yankees edged out the Red Sox in a painful 4–3 ALCS win, and Grady Little was soon fired. As fans, we were fired up. Red hot!
The 1986 biggest fielding error: In 1986, in the World Series facing the New York Mets, Red Sox's first basement Bill Buckner missed a routine ground ball in the tenth inning of game six, allowing the Mets to score the winning run. And eventually, win the series.
The Curse of the Bambino, a superstition named after Yankee great Babe Ruth suggested the Red Sox couldn’t win a World Series after he was sold to the Yankees in 1920. As far as Buckner’s fate, he left the state and moved to Idaho to escape the media and fan anger. Fans have since apologized.
It would take two years (1988) for the Red Sox to return to the ALCS, only to be swept by the Oakland Athletics.
Of course, others might look at the Red Sox history and believe fans are spoiled. That making it to the ALCS should count for something. And, having since won four World Series — 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018 — should count for more.
The Red Sox might just be the victim of high expectations, but also, blown opportunities.
When our friends left game two of the ALCS, my husband and I hung in there, freezing — but determined — to get every last penny’s worth of our expensive tickets…
The tickets were over $200 each, which in 2024 might sound like chump change but felt like a lot.
I didn’t blame my friends for leaving.
It felt like the script had been written, and fans were to endure another humiliating loss in a game where our hopes had been so high. Boston had the best record and top seed in the American League. Detroit was the №4 seed.
But then again, the Tigers had their All-Star pitcher Max Scherzer, who was fierce. On that night, Scherzer took a no-hitter into the sixth inning before a few cracks started to appear.
As soon as I said to my husband, “It’s just not our night,” the world changed.
Not with a whimper — but with a bang.
Here is the sequence of events that had all of Boston singing the next day.
We (yes, I assume their identity as “we”) were trailing the Detroit Tigers 5–1 at the bottom of the eighth.
Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks hits a one-out double.
Outfield Jacoby Ellsbury gets on with a walk.
Second baseman Dustin Pedroia hits a two-out single.
With bases loaded, David “Big Papi” Ortiz is now at the plate.
Detroit’s pitching was no longer an iron wall. Now, there seemed to be some possibilities.
It was the bottom of the eighth when Tigers manager Jim Leyland brought in closer Joaquin Benoit. Benoit delivers one special pitch that changes the night and our mood.
Once again, Big Papi becomes our hero.
We were sitting in right field, surrounded by die-hard fans who never say never when we saw the grand slam.
“Woo hoo!”
I cheered until I had no voice.
What followed was an iconic moment that would be replayed over and over again, and it would still not be enough. Torii Hunter, the Tigers’ center fielder, went head-over-heels into the bullpen as he tried to reach the ball. A second later, Boston police officer Steve Horgan raised his arms in jubilation.
So did we.
We now had a tied game, and anything seemed possible.
The unfortunate truth about being a Boston Red Sox fan is that you always assume failure is around the corner. We believed in Big Papi and were thrilled he had made it a game, but we still had a ninth inning to get through.
And we were used to calamities. They just seemed to naturally follow us.
We were freezing, but no one was getting up from their seat to buy hot chocolate. We had a ninth inning to watch, praying that the miracle Big Papi put in motion would continue.
So top of the ninth — enter Red Soxcloser Koji Uehara. We knew the Tigers had a lot of great bats and we still had to keep the Tigers at bay. Uehara pitched a scoreless inning. He would eventually win the ALCS Most Valuable Player (MVP) award.
Now the Red Sox were up. Outfielder Jonny Gomes got on base and moved to second due to a throwing error. Then came an unlikely hero, catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who hit a walk-off single.
The Red Sox won 6–5.
At least for this night, we wouldn’t have another dark chapter to add to the many that preceded it.
In 2013, we would eventually celebrate a World Series championship against the St. Louis Cardinals. It was a moment of total glee, and my husband and I felt lucky that we were there during a pivotal game that made the difference.
Had the Red Sox not come back in game two of the ALCS, they would have been down 0–2 heading to Detroit, no longer with home-field advantage. The comeback in game two meant we were on solid ground and could make a run for the trophy.
And run, they did!
And our friends who left the game early?
It will go down as one of their lifetime regrets, even though it made solid sense at the time.
It is hard to imagine a sports event that we attended that will ever outlive that moment… that crack of the bat that spelled…
H-O-P-E and eventually V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!