'BLO IT RIGHT BY 'EM: Breaking Down the Plummet From Grace

So there you are. Alone. You’re sitting on your couch in Old Quincy and you’re stunned, all but empty, the response paper and other article you’ve been working on shoved mercilessly to the side. Moments ago, you had left your friends and your seat on a dirty green carpet in DeWolfe because a change of scenery felt necessary.

The game’s not over yet, by the way, but the score doesn’t matter.

You know what’s going to happen. You can feel it. You’ve seen enough games in your lifetime to know that this time is going to be different.

And so here you are, below the slanted white ceiling, thinking. Shifting in your shoes, more uncomfortable than you’ve ever been, wondering how in God’s holy name it got to this point.

Your mind still seems trustworthy, though. You begin to work out scenarios, how you’ll deal with it, how you’ll rationalize the damage and craft retorts and somehow reach for the will to study for your midterm next week, write the paper due by Monday at noon comparing the Odyssey to a Korean film named Chunhyang. Yes. You begin to put things, ultimately, in perspective.

You fail. It all comes spilling out.

How could Gary Sheffield seemingly strike out more than he ever has in his career over these last four games? How can 26 straight innings equate to only two games, and two losses? Why didn’t Alex Rodriguez just mow down Doug Mientkiewicz when he was blocking the basepath? Or at least try to incorporate the karate chop arm motion from the start of his run?

How does Mariano Rivera not make it back to the World Series? How does Bronson Arroyo not get made fun of by everyone who ever encounters him? What happened to John Olerud?

Ultimately: How does this happen in Yankee Stadium?

And suddenly, there you are, right in the middle of it. You’re not sure how you got there, but now you’re lost amid the flash of cameras, inexplicably surrounded by the music of the just generally inexplicable Harvard University Band. You’ve become a bystander at a crime scene, a rubbernecker on the highway, a solemn attendant of your own funeral. And you can’t leave.

Fueled by emptiness, looking for resolution, staring blankly, you manage to stand it. You talk to your friends in the pit, fist-pumping for what seems like an hour straight, and make jokes asking them if this is the riot for the WNBA Championship.

They, your friends, don’t rub it in your face.

But then, there are those who do. Not directly, of course. But the kid you recognize who is winning attention by dancing on the top of the T stop is from Texas, not Boston, god dammit. There is that person from section who’s going crazy just caught up in the moment. Then you see a few real fans who can actually provide an attempt at justifying why the “Yankees suck”—not so much “Jeter swallows,” though—and you realize that hey, this is big.

This, as the countless columns and television shows will say, is historic.

So you have a friend take a picture of you extending dual middle fingers to all those cleverly chanting, “Who’s your daddy?” You resign yourself to being the one unsmiling person in every photograph someone will take of Harvard Square on the night of Wednesday, October 21st. (You feel no such anger towards those who dumbly started the chant “Four more games” as opposed to “Four more wins,” though.)

But most of all, you feel the t-shirt bearing Hideki Matsui’s name and number bleeding you underneath your jacket, burning, making you wonder what would happen if you just shed your coat before everyone and reminded them that a pennant does not a World Champion make. That you, of course, a Yankee fan, should know.

And that’s the truth, isn’t it? The New York Yankees, after all, do not have their number of ALCS victories posted outside the Stadium in the Bronx.

They declare World Championships, not the number of rivalry games won. You feel like this could be some sort of rap lyric.

And hey, can someone please tell you how many World Series the Red Sox have won since 1918 now? Can someone please tell you what the Red Sox are in the public consciousness, if they are no longer the Yankees’ tragically embittered, totally luckless rivals? What they are if not just another team that has improbably beaten the Yankees once in their organization’s history—but, of course, is still nowhere near the 26-time World Champions? Nowhere near the best franchise in professional sports?

…Even though the invincible franchise that claims that title is, now, less invincible than before?

Well, probably not. In all likelihood, there’s not anyone in this town who’d give you those answers, not without a severe beating, at least. And understandably so.

Despite Fox25’s harrowing footage of two women fighting, the random destruction of a Sovereign Bank sign in Kendall Square, and a man fleeing, resisting arrest, there is some objectively poetic beauty in such a win. There is something that you yourself acknowledge in the sheer improbability of the Red Sox beating the Yankees. There is something about sports enthusiasm coming to Harvard, albeit in the worst way.

And all you can say, in the end, is wow.

So there you are, again. Alone. You’re sitting on your couch in Old Quincy and you’re stunned, all but empty, the response paper and other article you’ve been working on shoved mercilessly to the side.

The game’s over now, and, you conclude, the score still doesn’t matter. You know what’s going to happen. You can feel it. You’ve seen enough games in your lifetime to know.

Curses work in mysterious ways.

But below the slanted white ceiling, there you are, thinking. Shifting in your shoes, more uncomfortable than you’ve ever been, wondering how in God’s holy name it got to this point.

April seems like an eternity away, and in your sophomore year, finally, you know what it means to be from Boston.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu. His column appears on alternate Fridays.