Crimson and Scarlet

Today in New England, “The Game” referred to the classic football matchup of the Harvard Crimson vs. the Yale Bulldogs. Harvard beat Yale to a pulp, 35 to 3. This finishes Harvard’s season with a perfect 10-0 record. Congrats to the Crimson!

In the Midwest, on the other hand, “The Game” referred to another classic football matchup, The Ohio State Buckeyes versus the Michigan Wolverines. Ohio State beat Michigan by not such a wide margin, 37 to 21. Congrats to the Buckeyes!

I guess that makes me two for two today with wins from a team in my original home state, and a team in my adopted home state.

He Died Happy

Fred Hale, Sr., the world’s oldest man and lifelong Red Sox fan, has died at the age of 113, just four weeks shy of his 114th birthday. I had previously written about Fred during the World Series, and I’m glad that he got to see the Sox win one more time before he passed away.

Red Sox Rally Report

Corey and I finally made it to the “Rolling Rally”. The Alewife T station parking garage was full, and we couldn’t find any decent on-street parking in the area. We ended up parking on a random side street in Arlington and then walking to the Alewife T station… not a bad walk, maybe 10 minutes or so.

Our Route We got on the Red Line at Alewife, and got off at the Charles/MGH stop. This was right in the thick of the action towards the end of the land part of the parade route. We then walked up Cambridge Street a ways, stopping at varoius places to check out the crowd and the surroundings. We waited around there until the Duck Boats carrying the Red Sox arrived, watched as they went past, and then followed along with the massive crowd as the amphibious vehicles headed to Storrow Drive and the Charles River. We hung around on the Boston side of the Longfellow Bridge for a whlie, then gradually made our way across the bridge. We waited on top of the bridge until we could see the boats enter the water, then we continued over to the Cambridge side of the bridge. We hung out on there until the boats finished their loop around the Charles River Basin, then we ducked into the Kendall/MIT T stop and headed out. All in all we were there from around 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The pace of the parade was a bit faster than originally planned - they added extra length to the parade to help spread people out a bit more, but it started and ended at roughly the times planned for the original, shorter route. So the Duck Boats went past a bit quicker than I’d hoped, and I didn’t have as much time to frame good camera shots.

The Crowds The crowds were absolutely the biggest I’ve ever seen in Boston. There was a veritable sea of bodies flowing down Cambridge Street after the Duck Boats passed. And that was just towards the end part of the parade route - we didn’t even go up to see the crowds near the beginning at Fenway, or the middle near the Common. There were a few places where you could get close enough to see clearly, but for the most part, the crowd was 6-8 people deep. I had to hold my camera up as high as I could to take any decent photos most of the time. There were a few drunks to be seen, but by and large the crowd was quite orderly. We witnessed several morons climbing on the bases of the Longfellow Bridge at various locations, and also some kayakers getting right in the path of the Duck Boats as they were traveling through water under the Longfellow. Other than that, however, there were no fights, no vandalism, no police intervention necessary - at least as far as I could see.

The Feelings It was great to be able to witness this piece of history and to be able to celebrate with 3.2 million other Red Sox fans. To see all of the pride, excitement, spirit, what-have-you… just awesome. The crowds were full of cheer and enthusiasm, and as dumb as it might sound, it was really cool when we got “The Wave” going continuously up and down the Esplanade and onto the Longfellow Bridge.

The Proof So if you’re wondering what it looked like, check out the photos. Or, as the sign said,

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(There are no captions yet, but I’ll try to add some soon, as some of the photos probably need an explanation…)

(I also have a few short video/audio clips that I shot on my camera, which I’ll post when I have some time. Update: they are posted now!)

Let’s Get It Started

I’m headed into Boston to see the Rolling Rally. If things go well, I’ll be back later with some cool photos. If things go badly, I might not even get to see a thing.

Stay tuned.

WOOOHOOOOO

CURSE REVERSED!

Great Balls Of Fire

That’s what Pedro Martinez was throwing tonight, as he shut down the Cardinals to give the Red Sox a 3-0 lead in the World Series. Now we just have to win one more game, and we have four chances to do that. Preferably it would happen tomorrow night, but after 86 years of waiting, I’m sure the Red Sox will be happy with the win whenever they can get it.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals are in the hole 0-3, and the only baseball team to ever come back from an 0-3 deficit in a 7 game series was… the Red Sox.

The Voice of Experience

Fred Hale, Sr. has seen many teams play in the “Fall Classic”. In fact, he’s seen all of them. Born just 52 years after the invention of the sport, Hale was 12 years old when the first World Series was played between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans. The Americans, later to become the Red Sox, won that 1903 series, and would go on to win again in 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918. Then, as we all know, Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees, and the “Curse of the Bambino” ensued. The Red Sox haven’t won a World Series ever since.

Now the Sox have two more games to win before they can claim the win in the 2004 World Series. And Fred? With all of that history, he’s rooting for the Sox.

Come on Sox. Win it for Fred.

(Thanks to the Baseball Almanac for the info - you guys all know that I don’t know jack about this stuff on my own. )

One, Two…

Two wins down, two wins to go for the Red Sox to win the World Series for the first time since 1918. That’s great and all, but the Sox are heading for St. Louis for at least two more games. The Cards have a 6-0 record at home in this post-season, so there’s a pretty good chance they could take the next two games and force a seven-game series. Also, the Sox have been committing some pretty atrocious errors this World Series - eight errors in the first two games. Hopefully that won’t lead to anything on the level of Bill Buckner’s blunder in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

Home-run Wrist Warmers

Becky knitted these for me while we were watching the Red Sox:

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I wonder how long it would take for her to knit a full set of 25 wrist warmers and send them to the Sox for good luck? Could it be done before the end of the Series? Speaking of which, the Sox are leading the Cardinals 1-0 in the series, and they’re in the lead in Game 2, 4-1 in the bottom of the 4th. Go Sox!

And so it begins.

The Red Sox win over the Cardinals, 11-9 in the 9th inning of the highest-scoring Game 1 in World Series history. Three more games to go to win it all. If the Sox can sweep the first four games, it will mean an eight-game winning streak against two of the best teams in baseball.

I had to keep telling myself “This is just game 1, save your enthusiasm…”

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