Weltall... you do have a point though. As always there are lots of fair-weather fans who will abandon the team quite quickly... bandwagon fans always appear, and especially when it's a team like the Red Sox. So plenty of fans will just think 'cool the Sox won" and go on being the same... I was more specifically talking about the hardcore fans.
Darunia Wrote:All right---I'll make a deal with you:
Tonight I will pray (honestly) to Jesus; if the Red Sox win the world series, I'll say to him, I will:
1.) Never speak out against religion in TC again.
2.) Formally admit the possibility of his existence in a binding edict.
3.) Formally apologize to all Christians around the world here at TC in an edict.
...but...
If we don't win,
all I ask of you (the Christian community here) is that you be more flexible and understanding with me and my anti-religious frustration. That's all. More understanding.
Deal?
Originally posted On Friday, August 27, 2004.
You can start with me.
First off, if Darunia doesn't believe in God, then he can't possibly honestly pray TO God. It's not possible.
Second off, again, you can't dictate edicts or terms with God. You can't say "if you do not wish for me to burn this house down give no sign" or something like that. It is akin to walking up to someone and saying "if you don't want me to punch you, say so", and then when they just ignore you and walk off, somehow feeling justified in punching them saying "BUT I DEFINED THE TERMS! I AM THE BOSS OF THE CONVERSATION AND BY STATING TERMS, THEY ARE IN EFFECT, THAT'S JUST HOW POWERFUL I AM".
So, honestly this really doesn't mean anything.
I never expected him to actually honor it anyway, because it was a pretty dumb thing to write...
I know the reasons it was good we won (like in the other thread), but ... my reservations still exist... This NY Times article says it well.
This quote by Theo Epstein (Sox GM) says what I was saying earlier perfectly. And as he says, it isn't a joke... it's a serious issue.
Quote:"They're going to be heartbroken at not being heartbroken," said Mr. Epstein, a novelist who is chairman of the creative writing department at Boston University. "It's not just a joke. That's what's made us unique. We were the Boston Red Sox that never could win."
I honestly doubt that any other fans really understand what this means to this region.
Quote:With Nothing Left to Win, Fans of Red Sox Suddenly Feel a Loss
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: October 29, 2004
BOSTON, Oct. 28 - It didn't take long to go from ecstatic to existential.
Having waited 86 years for a World Series championship, Bostonians found themselves on Thursday swirling with elation, but also scratching their heads.
What are Red Sox fans to do when the angst of being one of the world's greatest underdogs is gone?
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"I'm having trouble dealing with it," said Mike Andrews, who played second base for the Red Sox in 1967, when they lost to the Cardinals during one of their many close-but-no-cigar face-offs.
"You're just kind of caught saying, 'What's next?' " said Mr. Andrews, who now leads the Jimmy Fund, a cancer organization in Boston that is the team's principal charity. "I don't want to say it's a letdown. But it's certainly something you let become part of your life and it's gone now, and we need to come up with something new."
Bostonians have never been baskers, and the afterglow of the Red Sox' extraordinary World Series triumph over the St. Louis Cardinals has caught more than a few people without their psychological sunblock.
"I wish I were able to be more relaxed," said Nathan Levin, 98, who remembers the last time the Red Sox won, in 1918, a time when he used to walk five miles to Fenway Park, wait outside the players' entrance, and once got ushered into the ballpark by Babe Ruth himself.
"What it feels like for a 98-year-old man to sit here and watch the Red Sox win it all?" said Mr. Levin, who now yells at the television and second-guesses the manager from his home in West Palm Beach, Fla. "I lived for them all these years. After 1918 and waiting 86 years for this team to do it all again is beyond words for me."
But, he said, "Now it's over, what are we going to do next?"
Even Leslie Epstein, whose son, Theo, is Red Sox general manager, feels the tension inherent in having a championship team in Boston.
"They're going to be heartbroken at not being heartbroken," said Mr. Epstein, a novelist who is chairman of the creative writing department at Boston University. "It's not just a joke. That's what's made us unique. We were the Boston Red Sox that never could win."
Mr. Epstein, who has lived for 26 years in the Red Sox Nation, pointed out that A. Bartlett Giamatti, the former baseball commissioner and avid Red Sox fan, once said that Fenway Park was the place to understand Calvinism in America, to learn that people sometimes fail and that failure can build character.
"There's a crack in Calvinism now," Mr. Epstein said. "Now, we're going to have to find something else. Maybe Bostonians will be secretly wishing for a Kerry loss so they can wail about that."
For the next few days, of course, most fans will be reveling proudly, especially at a giant parade on Saturday that will wind from Fenway Park to City Hall and is expected to draw more than three million people, according to the mayor's office.
And for some the victory can be seen as a harbinger of miracles to come, not just on the ball field.
"Suddenly all things seem possible," said Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on genocide at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
"For ordinary people who sort of thought, 'Maybe I'll never get that promotion,' maybe they think now anything can happen," Ms. Power said. But she also recognizes that she and many others will never feel quite the same about the Red Sox and about baseball.
For example, this summer, when Ms. Power traveled to Sudan to learn about the killing in Darfur, she listened to most Red Sox games on the Major League Baseball Web site in the middle of the Sudanese night. Stopping for a night in Paris on her way back, she dashed to an Internet cafe in time to hear the eighth inning of the Red Sox playing the Yankees.
"Would I next year go to an Internet cafe at 4 a.m. to listen to a Yankees-Red Sox game?" Ms. Power said. "I don't think so. The stakes of it just seemed higher because of the underdog role. It just felt bigger then."
And as the writer and baseball aficionado David Halberstam said Thursday, "Some of the magic has probably been snatched away.''
Like the lunar eclipse that turned the moon red and then swallowed it up during the fateful game on Wednesday night, this Red Sox victory strikes some fans as a little supernatural. Everywhere, people are talking about feeling changed, about venturing into uncharted territory.
Richard Berlin, who runs an insurance brokerage firm in Peabody, Mass., cast it in 12-step language.
"It's just like the alcoholic who frees himself from the bonds of drink and says, 'Now I can figure out who I want to be,' " Mr. Berlin said. "We're the Red Sox Nation. Maybe we'll need to be the Prozac Nation, but I hope that's not the case."
Many wonder whether fans will turn into unseemly braggarts, in particular taking the opportunity to lord it over Yankees fans as payback for years of pinstriped abuse.
"A team that loses in some ways is going to be easier to identify with for most Americans than one that wins," Ms. Power said. "Are we going to become that which we can never imagine being? Are we winners now, and does that make us sort of less empathetic, less humble? That's what being on the other side of the jackboot for 86 years leaves people able to do. Yankee fans don't feel for what we've gone through. Are we going to become like them?"
Mr. Epstein does not think the transformation will be too drastic. "With the first ball that goes under the third baseman's glove next year, all will be normal," he said. "It will still be the grumpiest city in America."
Ms. Power sees a chance for a city to lighten up by removing its chip.
"Maybe it will just become about a baseball rivalry instead of a humiliated city," she said. "It could make baseball less about the meaning of life and more about just baseball."
And, she said, almost as if to reassure herself, "that wouldn't be such a bad thing."
Katie Zezima contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/sports...oref=login
A Black Falcon Wrote:I never expected him to actually honor it anyway, because it was a pretty dumb thing to write...
I know...neither do I. Still pretty funny though.
A Black Falcon Wrote:I honestly doubt that any other fans really understand what this means to this region.
Talk to me when you haven't even
gotten to the World Series in 50+ years. The Cubs getting to, let alone winning the World Series, would mean an incredible amount to the Chicago area, and the legions of Cubs fans around the country.
Okay, sure... but I know it's a stereotype, but it seems like while Cubs fans definitely care about the team it isn't as deep -- cheer them whether they're winning or losing... but at least they are fans, so okay. Chicago fans well might understand (the White Sox haven't had any more success either!). But anyone else?
Yea; I hope the Cubs win in '05, and the White Sox in '06.
And the Yankees never more! :evilha:
It is nice to have a 1-0 advantage over the Yankees in this millenium, isn't it... (2000 is NOT in the 21st century!)
The White Sox don't deserve to win. Their curse isn't simply from bad luck, yunno.
Yeah, the White Sox ownership has never really treated the team as a big-market team. They always say they will spend more on the team when more fans show up to the games, but it doesn't work like that. You need to put a good product on the field to draw so more fans aside from the hardcore Sox fan base. I know White Sox fans would hate this, but they need to appeal to Cubs fans instead of playing up the "Cubs suck" mentality.
I think the White Sox' curse has a bit more to do with 1919... if you want to look at curses that is... if you want to look at reality, then sure, it's because they underfund the team and then say that they can't pay until people start showing up... but as you say people won't show up until they are good. And given the White Sox, it'd probably require repeated success to make much of a dent...
White Sox should maybe have a fresh start... get a new logo, new uniforms; try and appeal to a newer audience. The way they are now, a long-time loser, with nothing great to speak of, they need to---do something. Or maybe I'm wrong.