I’m going to keep this relatively short and sweet.
I just finished watching ESPN’s 30 in 30: Four Days in October. It is the story of the greatest comeback in the history of professional sports, when the Boston Red Sox – mired by 86 years of heartbreak – defeated the New York Yankees after being down three games to none to capture the American League Championship, and eventually the World Series.
The big retort from Yankees fans has always been their number of championships (now at 27) compared to that of the Boston Red Sox. It is not the difference in allegiance that causes hatred and tension between Sox fans and Yankees fans, but the difference in perspective. If you are born into New York, you are born into what is called the greatest city on Earth. You are bred into a culture of success, a culture of winning. Not just in sports, but Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, Times Square, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere. For New York, and for Yankees fans, winning is a way of life and baseball is just an extension of that.
In Boston, the story is different. Our history has been one of struggle, and of heartbreak. Boston was the birthplace of the American Revolution and one of the few American cities ever occupied by an invading force. The Battle of Bunker Hill is known as a turning point in that war… it is a battle where the Americans lost but dealt so many causalities to the British before running out of ammo that it was considered a moral victory if not a tactical one. This is our history. We’re born into a culture of “There’s always next year.” It’s a cruel joke; a dark saying to mask the anguish of another heart-wrenching disappointment.
Sports have always served as a vessel into which we pour our hopes, dreams, and aspirations. For Boston, the return on that investment had always been pain. To point where it seemed losing was an inevitability. October 2004 changed all that. Suddenly, we weren’t losers any more. We were the nerdy kid who always got picked on and finally stood up for himself. We were George McFly knocking out Biff Tannen in one punch, and single-handedly changing the course of history.
When the Red Sox defeated the Yankees in 2004, it was more than a series of baseball games, and it was more then the end of a silly curse or the jubilation of a World Series title… it was vindication. Vindication in every way shape and form. We’re told all our lives that anything is possible… I don’t know anyone who actually believed that prior to October 20, 2004. I know I didn’t. And that’s why those four days in October are important. Not because we won the ALCS or the World Series, and not because we defeated the Yankees and the Curse in the house that Ruth built. But because we – yes, WE – finally had reason to believe all the stupid cliches we’d been told our entire lives.
Every cloud has it’s silver lining.
Work hard and you’ll succeed.
Anything is possible.
