Baseball

As a personal note, I know there are lots of not-Red-Sox fans. They have a big payroll, second only to the Yankees usually, and Boston fans are obnoxious. I grew up there, so I know.

19 years ago yesterday, my dad died. In 1999, and since he wasn't 81, he never saw the Red Sox win a World Series. During the 2004 series, my brother and I called each other every night and talked about how happy our dad would have been. In Game 4, David Ortiz's home run barely cleared the wall and we were convinced that our father had somehow tipped it over.

I think that most people today have no idea what it was like in the 60s and 70s in New England, with the Red Sox. No one had more than one TV. If the game was being televised, it was on. If you were in the car, your dad was driving and the game was on. There were no headphone jacks in cars, where everyone could listen to their own thing. It was always the game. During the summer, playing out in people's back yards after dinner, we kids ran from yard to yard to yard and the Red Sox game was playing out of the windows of every house, like the sound track of summer.

I don't think there'll ever be another time where whole families are listening to the same thing. Where people are remembering that their parents and grandparents never saw a world series come home.

We've won 3 now (2004, 2007, 2013) and yet the friends and family I know always think: I wish my dad could have been alive for a win, I wish my grandparents could have.

So I'm glad for the win and unapologetically greedy for another.