I don\u2019t know why that song in particular. \u00a0I don\u2019t know how I even came by that song in particular. \u00a0But as I stood in the Oasis Laundromat in Mountain View, California, watching game 6 of the American League Championship Series, I kept hitting the \u201cback\u201d button on my new (ish) gold iPod Mini over and over, and listening to the Pogues play \u201cThousands Are Sailing.\u201d There was a full moon, there was Curt Schilling bleeding through the sock, and I was watching the baseball postseason in a new place for the first time since 1997, and the Boston Red Sox were trying to pull off the single biggest comeback in human history since Our Lord rose on the third day.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t remotely a Red Sox fan in 1997. \u00a0I was aware of the existence of the Sox, was becoming vaguely aware of the whole mythology around the CURSE, had met several folks that year from the general area of Red Sox Nation. \u00a0I suppose that by the time I left DC, they were my American League team of record. \u00a0I\u2019d been to a game at Fenway, but that wasn\u2019t saying heaps; I\u2019d been to an ALCS game at Yankee Stadium in 1998 and a World Series game at the Jake in 1997, plus games at Kaufmann Stadium in Kansas City, Shea Stadium in New York and – of course – Oriole Park at Camden Yards. \u00a0And I suppose from a fandom standpoint, I was already much more invested in the San Francisco Giants, whose own World Series trip in 2002 had gone pear-shaped.<\/p>\n
But Boston meant some very good friends – some of my best, actually – and it also meant a whole lot of the DC Irishness from the Four Provinces and thereabouts. I did plenty of screaming along with the McTeggarts\u2019 version of \u00a0\u201cCharlie on the MTA\u201d at half-past midnight. \u00a0I\u2019d read all the pertinent literature by then, of course – Updike and Shaughnessy and the like – and I\u2019d been a shirttail participant in 1999 and 2003 postseason failings. \u00a0To say I was part of Red Sox Nation was completely incorrect, but I could at least claim a valid visa good for six months without recourse to public services.<\/p>\n
The song is all about the Irish who had to leave their own country to escape the poverty, the famine, the general hopelessness, and I suppose in a way it rang true with me. By the time I left DC, I wanted<\/em> to leave, but I didn\u2019t want to have<\/em> to leave. \u00a0I suppose maybe if the last couple of years hadn\u2019t been such a battle, if I hadn\u2019t felt like we were never, ever<\/em> going to break through against idiot users and even stupider upper management – if I\u2019d had a shred of hope that we could win, I would have wanted to stick it out and keep fighting. But I knew it wasn\u2019t going to happen, and I knew which way the future lay, and I went.<\/p>\n Standing there in the laundromat, watching Schilling bleed through the sock like some sort of arcane mystical act of blood expiation, I guess I was hoping for a symbolic victory of my own. \u00a0By proxy, if the Red Sox could climb out of the grave and do the unthinkable, if they could do something that had never been done, then maybe we\u2019d have a win. And maybe it would mean eventual victory in the real world, somehow, and that the fight hadn\u2019t all been for nothing.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t miss the fight. \u00a0But since I still have the fight, I miss not having to go it alone. \u00a0And if I can\u2019t have my crew, Monday to Friday and weekend nights to boot, shoulder to shoulder, I wish I at least had the cigars back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t know why that song in particular. \u00a0I don\u2019t know how I even came by that song in particular. \u00a0But as I stood in the Oasis Laundromat in Mountain View, California, watching game 6 of the American League Championship Series, I kept hitting the \u201cback\u201d button on my new (ish) gold iPod Mini over … <\/p>\n