anatomy of a post season

it happens to me every year. i bottom out. i'm not talking about the games that strike fear in me over the course of a season, because c'mon, the likes of guys like Roy Halladay and CC Sabathia demand the respect of fear. i'm talking about the dwindling days of a baseball season, when the end is imminent. i hit rock bottom. it's something of a rite of passage for me, each season, and i have to say it just once. "the season is coming to an end." i have to say it out loud, feel the sadness that it brings, just for a moment.

maybe it seems as though, with a 3-1 deficit and every remaining ALCS contest an elimination game, i am giving up. maybe that seems unforgivable, after what we witnessed as Red Sox fans in 2004. and again in 2007. maybe it seems as though my faith in the inconceivable is subpar. but hear me out.

i *need* to do this. i have been watching baseball--and specifically Red Sox baseball--since before i have memory. it is so deeply entrenched in who i am that i can't remember a time without it. in fact, i was hearing these games in utero. from the moment i had eardrums & could register sound, i have had the vibrations of Red Sox baseball in my head. and what came before 2004 is something that i don't *want* to forget. i don't want to forget what it is to lose, to not be in contention year after year. i don't want to expect it. or worse, become complacent. because with remembrance comes appreciation for what can be accomplished, and how hard-fought that battle can be. and so every season, just once, i have to feel that crushing defeat one more time.

and then? then, i bounce back. i am refreshed from the singular act of releasing the demon from my gut. i have faced, in my mind, the worst that can happen. and now i can sit back & enjoy again. perhaps i will be enjoying the amazing feat of a Red Sox team that can come back from a huge deficit when they are pinned to the wall, not once, not twice, but three times. the fact that 2004 happened at all is reason enough to believe until the final out is recorded in Boston's season. but if they can't? if they can't rally back? i want to have faced the sadness and be able to enjoy the last game. i want to soak in the sounds of a ball cracking off a bat and the THWACK! of a ball slapping into a glove. i want to see the Green Monster and hear the last strains of Sweet Caroline as we come back from commercial. i want clap along to the "let's go Red Sox" chants rising up from Fenway Park and call YOOOOOUK as he steps to the plate. i want to savor the communion between pitcher & catcher as the signs are flashed & the pitcher winds up. i want to capture a mental snapshot of a diving catch, a crisply turned double play and a wall-ball double. because i just cannot get enough of this.

because my real sadness is not in defeat. no, i am proud of my boys and i wouldn't get up & walk out of a baseball game in the sixth inning, nor would i boo any man in Boston whites, not for any reason. no matter what the outcome of their season, the fact that they make it to October is a gift to me, as a fan, every time it happens. my real sadness lies in the realization that even if things play out perfectly, even if they end their season spraying champagne and hoisting the trophy overhead, the fact is that the season is ending, sooner rather than later. the promise of Spring has long since passed into endless Summer, at which point time seems to speed up.

so each year when i say "their season is ending," in part i am mentally padding myself, just in case, but what i am really doing is mourning the end of another season and the coming of a long Winter. whether we go out as World Champions or having given it our best shot, the inevitable is fast approaching. there will be a four month lack of baseball and i will begin counting days until February, when my boys gather up their boxes of equipment and make the trek to Spring & sunshine.

even though i am sad, there is still one more day. and the hope of maybe one more day after that. one thing the Red Sox have taught me is that it isn't over until it's actually over. and always, there comes again the promise of Spring.