World Champion Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox victory in the World Series certainly deserves a blog entry. As you can see if you visit our website (www.lowelldeeds.com) and check out the “photo gallery,” registry employees supported the team by wearing Red Sox outfits all week. The Halloween 2004 photos also have a baseball theme. Personally, I don’t feel the same euphoria I experienced when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl back in 2001. This is more a sense of relief; of disaster avoided. My earliest baseball memories are of the Impossible Dream team of 1967 and, while great catches and timely hits by Carl Yastrzemski are certainly prominent, so is the beaning of Tony Conigliaro and Jim Lonberg’s post season broken leg suffered in a fall while skiing. Both injuries cut short their talented careers. Then it was on to 1975. Dramatic home runs by Carlton Fisk and Bernie Carbo in game six are most memorable, but if Jim Rice hadn’t broken his hand late in the season, the addition of his offensive production to the World Series team might have been enough to beat the Reds. Then there was Bucky Dent’s playoff winning home run in 1978. Enough said. The closest one had to be 1986 where the world championship was cut short when Mookie Wilson’s ground ball rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs and Calvin Shiraldi, the Red Sox “closer” just couldn’t nail it down in game seven. After the game, some Mets said Shiraldi looked like a “deer in the headlights” and they knew they would win. And so the long awaited victory in 2004 has, for me, an aura of disaster avoided. Maybe like the Patriots, the Red Sox will quickly win a second world championship. That, I am sure, will feel more like winning than like not losing.